Snowmachiner owes rescue to technology, caring people

Sunday evening, 25-year-old David H. Conyngham text-messaged a friend that he was stuck on Bald Mountain Ridge, according to Alaska State Troopers.

The friend, 59-year-old Ronald J. Payne II of Wasilla, quickly lost contact with Conyngham and called troopers around 9:30 p.m.

A helicopter was dispatched from Anchorage, but heavy snow turned it back.

Troopers then turned to Mike Spain, a longtime volunteer search and rescuer who lives high up the Willow side of the pass. Spain headed out just after midnight by snowmachine with his brother David, his next-door neighbor.

The men encountered heavy snow, temperatures around zero and howling winds, especially at the exposed top of the ridge, Mike Spain said Tuesday morning. They checked the ridge but found no sign of Conyngham.

Snowmachiners like to play in the deep powdery snow that piles up at treeline on the ridge, Spain said, so that's where the brothers focused their search. At first, the number of trails from other machines complicated things. But then they spotted a trail that looked fresher than the others and kept to it.

With the hours passing, the searchers needed to refuel their machines. Spain called his wife, Michelle. Wearing her nightgown, she brought fuel up to a nearby trailhead.

Meanwhile, the Air National Guard had launched a helicopter just after 1 a.m., but by 5 a.m. the helicopter returned to Anchorage, contending with poor visibility and low fuel, troopers said.

By morning, with the weather improved, David Spain topped a hill and saw a snowmachine stuck -- buried down to the ground -- in the snow, his brother said.

Just before 9 a.m., the men called troopers and gave them the Global Positioning System coordinates of the sled, a Polaris 700 RMK, Spain and the troopers said.

The brothers followed Conyngham's tracks away from the machine for more than a mile until the trail entered a stand of trees too thick for their snowmachines to enter.

The men updated troopers and waited for an Air National Guard helicopter. They heard the chopper fly up the ridge and land, but couldn't see anything. "Not 10 minutes later, the troopers called and said we found him," Spain said.

The helicopter took Conyngham to the emergency room at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, troopers said. He was released with no injuries or medical problems.

Conyngham was well-prepared, Spain said. He had plenty of gas, plus snowshoes.

"The only mistake he made was not taking somebody with him," he said.