A grizzly mauling and an 'oh no' moment during flight: Brushes with death in the Alaska backcountry

It's not a good thing to hear your pilot exclaim, "Oh no" midway into a flight, but I trusted Joe Huston. I knew him and I knew that he was skilled. So how could this be? I worked beside the man for five years and hadn't seen him in just as many.

I had seen Huston near death before. Was it happening again? Were we going to meet our end together?

During the long days of Alaska summers, Huston would board his Cessna 206 and commute from Wasilla to Anchorage, weather permitting. This day, his flight path took him toward the arc of an exquisite rainbow. As he later explained, Huston knew somehow that this day would different.

I first met Huston in Anchorage in 1996. It was winter and we were preparing for the coming summer. Both of us would be working at a Tikchik Narrows Lodge, a high-end Bristol Bay fishing resort in the 1.5-million-acre Wood-Tikchik State Park. At the lodge we became fast friends, sharing walks and conversations. Together we would bemoan our four-month seclusion on a small peninsula, deep in the wilderness, Huston missing his wife and I, my future husband. The ebb and flow of lodge visitors would become a blur of faces and fishing stories. Yet the beauty of the place and the adventure brought us back year after year and we delighted in each reunion.

Surprise on my doorstep

Huston was fit and vowed to remain so. In our isolation we had limited opportunities for exercise. One option was jogging on the dirt runway along the thin neck of the peninsula, and he did so with admirable devotion.

Surrounded by alder bushes, my summer cabin sat nestled at the end of the runway. Early one July morning in 1997, Huston came to my door, covered in blood.

We all have moments in our lives when time stands still. Maybe it's a hard fall, a skid on an icy road or the sight of a badly bloodied friend. When I heard a polite knock, I opened the door, saw Huston standing there and time stood still.

Seized by disbelief, paralysis took hold. This can't be Joe, I'm thinking. The shape before me looked like a museum wax figure, pale and covered with blood.

"Are the guys playing a trick?" I asked myself.

I wouldn't have put such a stunt past the young men at the lodge. If so, it was well done. In my mind, the blood was fake, the exposed collarbone probably made of wax — too smooth, too perfect in its whiteness. I saw at least a dozen puncture wounds. OK guys, I think, this is a little over the top.

Still standing, just steps from me outside the door, Huston manages to gasp in rasping breaths, "Get help!"

Abruptly, disbelief turns to horror. Circuits in my mind refire and I tell Huston, "Sit, wait, I'll get help." He slumped down on the outdoor step in his tank top and shorts, a bloodied and moaning mass at my feet. Clutching my unbuttoned shirt, I dash to the main lodge in my fuzzy red slippers. Halfway there, to gain speed, I lose the slippers and they remained on the ground the rest of the day, standing out in the bright green grass as red as the blood that covered my friend.

Moments later, I returned to Huston with a young employee to tend his injuries — a collarbone laid bare and shoulder misshapen, large puncture wounds in his chest, back and thighs. Later we would learn that he suffered a punctured lung, too.

'This looks bad'

During our attempt to render first aid, the young employee blurted, to my dismay, "Oh, this looks bad!" I hoped that Huston's rhythmic wails of pain were enough of a distraction for him to have not heard her.

Before long, the grounds came alive with crew and guests. A visiting anesthesiologist took over our attempts at first aid and soon she, Huston and a pilot were loaded into a Cessna 206.

Normally, no one would fly that day. The cloud ceiling was nearly to the ground, but there was no choice.

The typical 45-minute flight to the nearest town became nearly two hours of horrific weaving through low clouds. Only the skill of Bud Hodson, owner of Tikchik Narrows Lodge and a seasoned bush pilot who now has 32 years in the air, helped ensure that one tragedy didn't become three. There was a near-constant threat of being blinded by a newly formed cloud, unexpected fog, or running out of fuel. But Huston's labored breathing and incessant wailing left no time for indecision.

The following day, Alaska Fish and Game wildlife biologists arrived at the lodge to investigate. After inspecting tracks and the size of paw prints left on the runway, one of the biologists said the attacker appeared to be a 3-year-old brown bear, probably recently abandoned by its mother. The animal had likely been surprised, they surmised, and probably attacked out of fear.

According to Huston and the wildlife biologists, Huston had seemingly done everything correctly when faced with a bear in the wild.

He waved his arms and called to the bear, identifying himself as a human. As a juvenile, perhaps the bear couldn't read the cues.

After a brief stay in a Dillingham hospital, Huston was hospitalized in Anchorage for nearly a week, recovering from surgeries to a punctured lung, a separated shoulder and numerous other wounds.

He returned to the lodge later that summer. Knowing that nothing could dampen Huston's sense of humor, the lodge staff gave him a T-shirt with long, tattered rips and blood stains simulating a bear mauling. In bold letters were the words, "I survived a bear attack in Alaska." In the same spirit, Huston told us he changed his email address to "bearsnack."

As fishing season ended, I thought it might be the last time Huston and I would meet. Our lives were going in different directions, yet, there we were, flying in a float plane over Cook Inlet.

Sparks and smoke

We talked about the lodge and friends we'd made there. I asked about his injuries and whether he still experienced pain.

"Some," he said, adding that he still had nightmares. He told me of his quest to avenge the pain inflicted by tooth and claw by hunting bear whenever he had the chance. I decided to keep my thoughts on this to myself. I couldn't understand how the death of an innocent bear could salve his wounds. But apparently not all wounds, physical or emotional, heal. As I pondered this, the plane suddenly made a loud "pop." Sparks flew from the engine followed by smoke that wrapped around the plane's nose.

With the engine nearly silent at extremely low power, Huston calmly said, "We have to attempt an emergency landing. We have blown a cylinder." He radioed our coordinates to the air-traffic control tower in Anchorage and then began scouring the landscape for a place to land the burly de Havilland Beaver. Prior to the flight on Alaska's aviation workhorse, I had signed a waiver acknowledging that I was aware of the danger. Wood, fuel and sparks from a crash can be a recipe for disaster.

As Huston and I listened to the odd hush of the plane's engine, he directed it away from the Cook Inlet's roiling waves and toward land dotted with lakes. Even I knew they were all far too small for a safe landing. I glanced at Huston's eyes and saw how intensely he scoured the Earth. My heart raced.

My thoughts went first to my fiance and then, oddly, to our friends who had traveled so far to be with us and enjoy Alaska. They had all left ahead of us and were at a lodge, awaiting our arrival. I felt heavyhearted that Huston and I might ruin their visit. In retrospect, it amazes me what went on in my mind as I pondered the idea of perishing in a ball of flame. Inexplicably, a sense of peace followed. I told myself that I had lived an amazing life. I have traveled far and I have loved deeply. It was OK to let go. At the same time, I wondered why we didn't land on the inlet? And why am I so calm?

With only a few minutes of low engine power left, a beautifully large lake came into view; it was the only one in sight that could accommodate the Beaver, its load of fuel, lumber and the two souls. We landed safely. Huston and I exchanged smiles of relief. After waiting a few hours, two more Beavers arrived. We reloaded one of them and headed on our way to the lodge.

The other plane and two pilots remained to repair the damaged plane. After our stay, Huston flew all of us safely back to Anchorage and explained to me how we had only three to five minutes after the cylinder blew. Finding a lake large enough in that area bordered on a miracle. I asked why we hadn't landed on the inlet and he explained, as most Alaska pilots would, that the rough waters would have surely flipped the plane, leaving us to drown in the icy waters.

That's when he reminded me of the rainbow and he said, " I knew it, the rainbow. I knew that day was going to be different."

Lynn Dewey Weingarten, an Anchorage resident since 1996, is a certified medical assistant at Anchorage Community Health and freelance writer.