Anchorage Daily News

The small city of Gustavus in Southeast Alaska was mourning the loss of two well-liked residents and community mainstays Friday, hunters who died in the crash of a small plane in a remote corner of the state.

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Steve Wilson, 41, and Eric Lochman, 36, were killed when Wilson's single-engine Maule went down in the Brooks Range about 50 miles north of Arctic Village, according to the Alaska State Troopers and federal aviation authorities.

Wilson was a lifelong resident of Gustavus, a town of about 450 located 50 miles northwest of Juneau. He owned Wilson Air, an air charter service out of Gustavus. He and Lochman had been on a private hunting trip, said Marion Farley, office manager for Air Excursions, another air taxi in Gustavus.

Lochman "was a relative newcomer to Gustavus who married one of the local girls here," the city's mayor, Sandi Marchbanks, said Friday.

Wilson's plane crashed on Monday, shortly after Wilson, Lochman and Wilson's 15-year-old son, Mickey, landed at Cane Creek, which is in the Philip Smith Mountains, part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

After setting up their hunting camp, the two men got back into the airplane to scout the area for Dall sheep, leaving the boy behind. They told him they would be back in 30 minutes, according to the Alaska Air National Guard.

They never returned.

On Wednesday, the pilot of another aircraft flying near Cane Creek noticed the boy's SOS, the National Guard said. The pilot landed and learned that his father and partner had not returned. He offered to take the boy from the camp, but the teen insisted on staying, Capt. Guy Hayes, a Guard spokesman, said Thursday.

The pilot notified authorities, and by early Thursday the Air Guard had mounted a search. The crew of a Pave Hawk helicopter picked up the boy. They also found the wreckage Thursday afternoon and landed at the site, Hayes said. The Pave Hawk's searchers, para-jumpers of the 212th Rescue Squadron, were not authorized to recover the bodies.

The plane crashed for unknown reasons into a mountainside at about the 4,000-foot level, said Allen Kenitzer in Seattle, a spokesman for the FAA's Alaska region. The coordinates of the crash site given by Kenitzer place it roughly between Cane Creek and Arctic Village.

The Maule burned on impact, the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday.

"There was an extensive post-crash fire," NTSB regional director Jim La Belle said in Anchorage.

Investigators with both the FAA and the NTSB were flown to the scene Friday by the North Slope Borough Police Department. The team recovered the bodies and examined the aircraft, said Tim DeSpain, a spokesman for the Alaska State Troopers.

Residents of Gustavus learned Thursday that Wilson and Lochman were missing, Farley said.

Gustavus is an "absolutely close community," she said. "To have two people in one community in a crash like this, it's an incredible loss."

Marchbanks said she knew Wilson personally. The city used Wilson Air for official business at times. Wilson also flew guests of Marchbanks' Glacier Bay Country Inn from Juneau to Gustavus and back again, she said.

"He was a good guy," Marchbanks said. "He liked to hunt. He loved flying. He did a lot of flying. He just grew up here and was part of the community. His entire family were some of the pillars of Gustavus."

Lochman owned a construction business that the city also did business with at times, she said.

Lochman's wife was expected Friday to travel to Fairbanks, according to Marchbanks. Wilson's sister apparently lives there, she said.

Wilson's son, whom the Guard brought to Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks on Thursday, had been turned over to a relative in Fairbanks, according to DeSpain.

Find Peter Porco online at adn.com/contact/pporco or call 257-4582.