When Kristin phoned to give me the news, her first words were: "Have you heard from Nick yet?" Turns out it was the best thing she could've said. By unwittingly placing my hubby in my subconscious as a live, breathing, phone-dialing man, I never had that nanosecond to fear she might follow "Nick's plane went down" with anything other than "but he'll be okay."
Kristin and Scott are clients and friends. Nick was up in Wyoming working with them for a few days, but on Valentine's Day they were both too busy to fly, so Nick and their pilot-neighbour made plans to enjoy a scenic flight around the stunning area in his new Scout, a tiny two-seater (one front, one back). Scouts are often used for bush flying and relatively low-altitude stuff, and they were not breaking any height rules when they struck the power lines - just bones. What's weird is the experienced pilot in the back (G.) knew the terrain well and had warned Nick about the lines coming up; Nick had already seen them and was gently pulling up to give them a wide berth, and both pilots agree that they thought they were well clear of them.
The impact of the wing launched them into an uncontrollable spin, eventually colliding violently with the hilly ground, upside down. The snow cushioned their landing helping to save their lives - along with the angle of impact, the strong cockpit frame (all that was left), and the 5-point harnesses they were wearing - but if the 911 call G placed hadn't been picked up by the cell tower that was erected a month ago (!) they would have frozen before anyone even knew they'd gone down.
A friend heard the call on the radio, took off in his own plane, spotted them and relayed the GPS coordinates to the helicopter. There was too much snow for the copter to land, so they put down a mile or so away, while search and rescue snowmobiles made the trip in.
Meanwhile, Nick was hanging upside down with his head in the snow, trying to extricate himself from the harness, but his right hand wasn't working. G had a broken collar bone and ribs and couldn't help. It took forever to unpin his left hand while the gashes in his face filled his eyeball with blood, but he ultimately got it and crawled out of the wreckage. One of the wings was flipped over onto the other, which was why everything he'd done to save the spin hadn't worked, and he rested on the double-wing, shivering uncontrollably next to G, waiting for the life-saving snowmobiles.
Nick's used to rough conditions, climbing Himalayan peaks (8,000m+) in blizzards, but says he's never in his life been as cold as he was on that wing.
Kristin and Scott had heard about the accident but had no news about Nick and G, and knowing that 9 out of 10 people do not survive power line strikes, spent the next three hours living through the hell I would have shared, had they called me then. They knew one of the them called 911 but didn't know if it was a sole survivor, nor what shape they were in.
The snowmobiles arrived right about the same time the ambulance, which had been called to the closest drivable spot, was sliding off the road into a ditch. Whooops. A second ambulance was called. Nick was strapped to a sled and pulled behind one of the snowmobiles which kept getting stuck. These poor guys dug out the toboggan again and again until reaching the helicopter.
Three and a half freezing hours after hitting the ground, Nick was in the hospital in Idaho Falls. It's exceptionally quick considering where they crashed. It's an eternity when you're heading toward hypothermia.
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