10 Daring Ice Rescues and Recoveries

Copyright 2016 by Gary L. Pullman

Often risking their own lives to rescue people lost in treacherous terrain and unforgiving climate conditions, seamen, mountain climbers, soldiers, Coast Guard personnel, crews aboard icebreakers, members of the Royal Air Force, and volunteers have searched for, found, and brought home adventurers, fellow climbers, military personnel, scientists, journalists, tourists, and others. Sadly, not all search missions end in rescues. Sometimes, rescue operations end in the recovery of dead victims' bodies. In either case, though, rescuers dare to face the dangers associated with their mission, which, in the eyes of most, make them heroes. Here are the stories of 10 daring ice rescues and recoveries. 

10 Elephant Island, Antarctica, Rescue

 

Shakelton's Return to Elephant Island, Antarctica

In January 1915, Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922) and his crew became stranded aboard his ship, Endurance, when it was “trapped in ice” during his Trans-Arctic Exploration. Leaving the ship, they established a camp on “floating ice.” Later, his ship sank, and, after four months on the ice, he and his men escaped to uninhabited, ice-bound Elephant Island, located “off the southern tip of Cape Horn,” in Antarctica, well away from shipping lanes. As his men became more and more debilitated, Shackleton and a team of five men climbed into a 6.7-meter (22-foot) lifeboat and made their way to South Georgia, an island in the southern Atlantic Ocean, where Shackelton “trekked to a whaling station” and organized a “rescue effort.” Returning to Elephant Island on August 25, 1916, he rescued his other crew members, none of whom died, despite having been stranded on the island for almost two years. 

9 Uttarahand, India, Rescue

 

Uttarahand Mountain, India

On June 16, 2016, nature called. When Jaishri Dumbre, age 33, responded, she promptly fell half way down a .30-meter (one-foot) -wide, 30.5-meter (100-foot) -deep “crevice in a glacier in Uttarakhand,” India. Part of a 35-member team ascending Draupadi Ka Danda mountain, Dumbre was camped with her colleagues at an altitude of 4,816 meters (15,800 feet). Two attempts to rescue her failed. A fellow mountaineer tried to get inside the crevice, but was unable to do so. The second time, Digamar Singh Panwar, a “senior instructor” at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, succeeded in getting inside the crevice, but she was unable to “pull her out.” Finally, Panwar, crawling back into the crevice, managed to free Dumbre by thawing the ice around her. “My birthday falls on June 12,” Dumbre said. “From now onwards, I will celebrate it on June 16, the day when I was reborn.” 

8 Siachen Glacier, India, Rescue

Siachen Glacier, India

In 1984, India launched “Operation Meghdoot . . . to reclaim the [Siachen] glacier from Pakistan. Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, a soldier of the Indian army, was part of the patrol that's operated on the “demilitarized” glacier since the 2003 ceasefire between Pakistan and India. In February 2016, for six days, Koppard, one of six men caught in an avalanche that struck their remote military post, was “buried” 9.1 meters (30 feet) below ice and snow on the glacier. Rescued from the 6248.4-meter (20,500-foot) location by 150 soldiers and two dogs, Koppad was “initially declared dead by authorities.” However, when he was found to be alive, the comatose soldier was flown to New Delhi aboard an Indian Air Force (IAF) plane, in the company of an IAF “critical care specialist” and a “medical specialist from the Siachen base camp.” Doctors found “no cold exposure-related frost bite [sic] or bony injuries,” but he was placed on a ventilator “to protect his airway and lungs.” Unfortunately, despite his rescue, Koppard died the same day. 

7 South Pole Rescue

 

Amundsen-Scott Scientific Facility

To medevac a worker who'd fallen ill at the remote U. S. Amundsen-Scott scientific facility operated by the National Science Foundation, a Canadian airplane flew 2,414 kilometers (1,500 miles) “from a British base in Antarctica.” The nine-hour 2016 trip occurred during dangerous conditions. Four personnel aboard the aircraft, “the pilot, the copilot, a flight engineer, and a medical worker,” landed “on compacted snow,” in the dark, the only illumination that of a full moon. Despite the June 2016 day, the temperature was -60 Celsius (-75 degrees Fahrenheit), but the wind-chill factor made it seem like -77 degrees Celsius (-108 degrees Fahrenheit). Weather conditions are unpredictable in Antarctica and change quickly. Tim Stockings, of the British Antarctic Survey in London, said, “The latest mission is pushing the limits of what is acceptable.” 

6 Nunavut, Canada, Rescue

In April 2016, after locating a 63-year-old man, his 16-year old son, and his 47-year-old nephew, the crew of the Twin Otter rescue aircraft that had found therm itself needed to be rescued. Pauloosie Keyootak of Nunavut, Canada, his son Atamie Qiyuqtaq, and his nephew Peter Kakkik were riding snowmobiles through “a remote tundra valley” when they got lost in a blizzard. Other planes, including two Hercules and other Twin Otters, also took parts in the rescue operation, searching in shifts as they flew over search grids.

The plane that found the men was equipped with skis, but “it broke down on landing.” Although the rescued men were able to take shelter from the freezing wind, they were stranded inside the “broken aircraft.” They'd been missing for 11 days when they the Twin Otter rescuers found them. They told the rescue crew they'd taken “a wrong turn in blizzard conditions,” been “swept . . . far off course,” and, “low on fuel,” had no choice but to hunker down inside an igloo Keyootak constructed using “a small knife.” They subsisted on a caribou they'd shot. Hearing of the disabled plane's distress, a Cormorant helicopter crew hastened to the location, landing in the dark, with only the aid of their aircraft's lights. The rescued men were flown to a hospital for examination.

5 Antarctic Rescue by Chinese and Australian Icebreakers

Casey Station, Antarctica

Thanks to a joint 2014 rescue operation on the part of Chinese and Australian icebreakers, 52 stranded people are home again. For 10 days, their ship was “stuck in Antarctic ice.” The rescued included scientists, journalists, and tourists aboard the Russian MV Akademik Shokalskiy. A helicopter assigned to a Chinese icebreaker “ferried” the “marooned” passengers to the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis. Once weather conditions allowed, the rescued were transported to Casey Station, “an Australian base in Antarctica,” and, from there, to Hobart, in Tasmania, Australia. Several previous rescue attempts, including one by the Chinese and another by the Australians, working independently of one another, were unsuccessful. The rescued party, led by Professor Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales, was conducting a study of “the effects of climate change on the region.” 

4 Antarctic Rescue by U. S. Coast Guard 

To rescue the 26 people whose 63-meter (207-foot) “Australian fishing vessel,” Antarctic Chieftain, was stuck in ice, U. S. Coast Guard cutter Polar Star had to break its way through 240 kilometers (150 miles) of ice. Having “damaged three of its four propellers in the ice,” the Chieftain had been stranded for a week 1,450 kilometers (900 miles) northeast of McMurdo Sound. The commander of the Polar Star said, “The ice conditions that we found the fishermen in were dire.” After the Polar Star freed the Chieftain, the vessel “was able to maneuver on its own,” despite its damaged propellers.

3 Paxson, Alaska, Recovery 

Unfortunately, the 2013 search for a lost 9-year-old boy, Shjon Brown, turned out to be a recovery, rather than a rescue, operation. Although a search team discovered his “helmet and goggles,” they couldn't “dig deeper,” and the Army's Black Rapids high-angle rescue team “were subsequently called in to assist local officials.” Brown's body was covered by “six to eight feet of snow, under the snowmobile he was riding when he fell into the glacial hole.” He'd been riding with his father, when he fell into the hole. They were competing in the annual Arctic Man Classic at the Hoo Doo Mountains near Paxson, Alaska, 225 kilometers (140 miles) southeast of Fairbanks. The boy's remains were “sent to the state medical examiner's office for an autopsy.” 

2 Iceland Recovery by ICE-SARS

The 18,000 volunteers of the Iceland Association for Search and Rescue (ICE-SARS) search for climbers who fall into glacier cracks or have “simply disappeared.” The group fills a void, since Iceland has no standing army. Since ICE-SARS receives no government assistance, the organization must raise the funds they need for everything “from snow trucks to snowmobiles to climbing ropes.”

Not all ICE-SARS searches end successfully. In 2011, a Swedish climber “fell into a crevice.” Fortunately, his “cell phone signal” lasted “long enough” for him to summon assistance, and “hundreds of volunteer rescuers” scaled the glacier “in the darkness” to conduct a search. Four days later, they found the climber. Unfortunately, they were too late: he'd already died. 

1 Iceland Recovery by the RAF

When he learned of a fatal crash involving four World War II airmen, Icelandic historian Hordur Geirsson made it his “life's work” to find their remains. On May 26, 1941, Flying Officer Arthur Round, age 26, and Flight Sergeant Reginald Hopkins, age 21, picked up “two colleagues,” Pilot Officer Henry Talbot, age 24, and Flight Sergeant Keith Garrett, age 22, from the hospital ship Leinster, aboard which they'd been treated. Their bomber “took off in fog” but never landed. Eight aircraft searched for the missing men for 11 hours, but to no avail. When the RAF departed two months later, the crash site was “lost as it became encased in ice.” In 2000, after an intense summer thaw, an “an RAF mountain rescue team” found the men's remains—and those of their aircraft, which was in bits and pieces, scattered over the .9-kilometer (3,000-foot) elevation crash site. The rescuers concluded “a fire had engulfed the plane on impact.” Working under extremely dangerous conditions, the team recovered the veterans' remains and many of their personal belongings. They were interred in Reykjavik's Fossvogur Commonwealth war grave cemetery. Their memorial service was attended “by relatives of the families of all four men.”