Anchorage Daily News

FAIRBANKS -- Although she was paid $210, the idea of renting a room and feeding a meal to Dave Roberts didn't sit well with Jamie Klaes, manager of the Bettles Lodge.

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The fact that the Alaska Air National Guard paid for his room and board rubbed Klaes the wrong way.

"It felt like he was being rewarded for stupidity," Klaes said on Monday, three days after the Air Guard rescued Roberts by helicopter from an isolated area in the Brooks Range.

Roberts had set off from Bettles two months earlier. "We pretty much assumed he was either going to have to get rescued or die out there," Klaes said.

THE QUEST

Roberts, a 54-year-old Australian, was trying to walk almost 100 miles across the Brooks Range wilderness when he set off a long-distance distress call on Friday. He'd been out there alone for two months. Safe in Fairbanks on Wednesday, Roberts said he prepared for his adventure as best he could.

He never wanted to call for help, he said in a phone interview from a hostel. "I put it off for about two weeks, because there was no way in hell I wanted to do it."

Beginning in September, Roberts spent three weeks by himself at Nutuvukti Lake, west of Bettles. He spent the next several weeks walking back toward the tiny community, about 180 miles north of Fairbanks.

"The purpose of the trip for me was to explore solitude, to experience wilderness directly," said Roberts, a photographer who kept a video diary as he traveled.

He hauled a 140-pound sled full of supplies behind him, he said. A persistent stomach bug left him dehydrated while frequent, stabbing pains pierced his cold feet.

He traveled fewer than 40 miles in two months -- far less than he'd expected.

"I thought I could go a couple a miles a day, average."

Worried about frostbite and fatigue, he signaled for rescue about 50 miles west of Bettles on Friday. The Air National Guard flew him to Eielson Air Force Base on Saturday afternoon.

Alaskans have little patience for seemingly ill-prepared adventurers, and news of the rescue prompted comparisons to another explorer who trekked into the wilderness 16 years ago -- Chris McCandless. McCandless starved to death after trying to survive on his own for more than three months near Denali National Park.

Roberts has read the book about McCandless' life and death, "Into the Wild." He says the comparison is unfair.

Unlike McCandless, Roberts had plenty of food, a global positioning system and never lost his way, he said.

"It wasn't like I was testing fate and going to live on a 10-pound bag of rice."

Still, Klaes said she saw the rescue, and its expense, coming before Roberts ever left Bettles.

BROKEN BOOTS

Klaes' family owns the local lodge and Bettles Air Service. The fact that Roberts didn't appear to be hurt or sick made her question why the federal government would spend thousands of dollars to rescue him.

"He didn't seem injured in any way," Klaes said. "In my own opinion, he should have had to fly out in a chartered plane by himself."

Roberts didn't know who would have to pay for his rescue when he made the decision to get help, he said. "I didn't presume that somebody else was going to pick up the tab on that."

Klaes said her family refused back in September to fly Roberts out to be dropped off for his expedition because he didn't have what they believed to be adequate gear for the trip.

That's not what Bettles Air told him, Roberts said.

"They never once said anything about, in their opinion, this trip was ... ill-planned, doomed," he said.

Another air taxi service took him out.

Klaes' brother, Tyler, a pilot, said it was easy to see, right from the start, that Roberts wasn't prepared. He had mailed winter gear to Bettles but it didn't show up before he was scheduled to fly.

"We told him to go back to Fairbanks and gear up and he said, 'I don't have the money for that,' " according to Tyler Klaes.

Roberts said that's not true -- that no one told him to return to Fairbanks for more gear. He said he lived in weather similar to Alaska's for eight years -- in Northeastern Saskatchewan -- and knew what to expect.

When a box carrying his boots didn't arrive, he said, he bought a pair of Chinese-made bunny boots from a Bettles local.

But on the third day he wore them, the boots began to crack, Roberts said. He made makeshift replacements out of his other equipment, such as boot liners and a canvas duffel bag.

"Those things held up beautiful," he said. But Roberts worried his handmade shoes would wear out during the trip and admits he wore the cracked bunny boots too long.

DISTRESS CALL

Alaska State Troopers say the rescue began with a distress call sent to a control center in Texas on Friday morning. The locator beacon was registered to Roberts and showed that he was in the Brooks Range. The center contacted the troopers' Anchorage office, which notified the Anchorage Rescue Coordination Center.

"We were told he had possible frostbite and some kind of gastrointestinal pain," specialist Maggie Moonin with the RCC's public affairs office said. "Our best bet was to go out there and take the man to get help to where he needed it."

The RCC dispatched a Hercules C-130 plane and Pavehawk helicopter from Anchorage and located Roberts about 5:20 p.m.

Rescuers could not land because of bad weather and instead dropped a satellite phone to Roberts, who had a campfire burning. Using the phone, Roberts told rescuers he was not in need of immediate help but was experiencing early signs of frostbite and he possibly had giardiasis, Moonin said. Giardiasis is an intestinal infection caused by a parasite.

The rescuers returned to Bettles until the weather improved. They returned to get Roberts at approximately 1:30 a.m. He stayed the night at the Bettles lodge and complained about the lack of Internet service, according to Klaes.

He was just asking, said Roberts. Not complaining.

BETTER THAN A DUMMY

Trooper Michael Wery picked Roberts up at Eielson Air Force Base and drove him to Fairbanks. He helped him check his bank account and find lodging at the $35-a-night hostel.

Moonin said it's not the Air Guard's job to determine whether somebody needs to be rescued -- they were simply responding to a distress call, she said.

"If we're told someone is distressed or in need of assistance, we can't go out there and say, 'You look fine. Let's go back,' " she said. "Our guys went out there and did their job. They did what they're supposed to, and we're going to keep doing it to make sure people stay safe within Alaska."

As for the cost of the rescue, Moonin said she didn't know how much it cost, only that it was paid for with federal funds and it's considered a training mission.

"I'm sure it wasn't cheap but in the same respect it gives our guys good, solid training doing what they're supposed to do," Moonin said. "It's a shame tax dollars go to pay for this but at the same time it's better than taking some dummy out in the middle of nowhere and saving it."

Roberts' toes are still numb, he said. His toenails are dark from the frostbite.

He plans to fly back to Australia on Dec. 8.

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