Anchorage Daily News

The pilot injured in last week's plane crash in Denali National Park was in stable, satisfactory condition Sunday at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, a nursing supervisor said.

Daniel McGregor, 35, was injured and walked 20 miles to safety after a single-engine Cessna 185 he was flying crashed Wednesday in spruce trees near the East Fork of the Toklat River. McGregor's passenger, 67-year-old biologist Gordon Haber was killed.

A field investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board inspected the crash site Friday, said Larry Lewis, an NTSB investigator in Alaska who is not working on the case.

"(The investigator) has flown back to Seattle, where he's normally based, so that he could go in and talk to the pilot at the hospital there," Lewis said.

Alaska, home to a thriving culture of small-plane pilots, averages about 100 to 110 aircraft crashes a year, Lewis said.

A retirement in January left the NTSB short one investigator in Alaska, Lewis said, so Seattle-based investigator Joshua Cawtha is handling the crash.

"Certainly because he has a live pilot that can tell him a lot about what happened, this one could be done in 90 to 120 days," Lewis said.

McGregor told a camper who helped him out of the park that heavy winds coming down the valley "caught the plane wrong."

Haber's body has been turned over to the state medical examiner, said park spokeswoman Kris Fister.

Initially, both the pilot and the biologist -- a well-known advocate for Alaska wolves -- were presumed dead. The week brought a rollercoaster of emotions, Fister said.

"Whether or not you agree with Gordon, he's been part of the fabric of the community and of this area, and no one can dispute his passion for what he did," she said.

Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.

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