Lost on the tundra

Jimmie Larsen's drive home is taking him a lot longer than he expected. When the 32-year-old pilot left Bethel yesterday afternoon, he expected to snowmachine back to his hometown of Chefornak in four or five hours. Instead, Larsen got lost and ended up in a Bethel hospital bed.

After a few hours of riding it started to get dark, so Larsen checked his backpack for his GPS. It wasn't there. He tried to take it slow and not panic, and used his satellite phone to call his girlfriend Anna in Chefornak. Looking back, Larsen was pretty thankful he had the phone with him.

"It would have taken a lot longer to find me if I hadn't have had that," he said, chuckling. "Probably would have been an ice cube."

The distance between Bethel and Chefornak is about 82 miles, Larsen said.

While Anna got the rescue sparked up, Larsen backtracked on his blue and black Yamaha to look for the GPS. He wasn't on an established trail, and the frozen bluffs and lakes didn't make navigation any easier. "I could see, but not far," he said.

It was also getting colder. Bethel showed a low of minus 5 yesterday. Larsen said he jumped up and down to try and keep warm while he was out on the tundra.

After Larsen called for help, volunteers from the villages of Chefornak, Tuntutuliak and Kipnuk spread out for a ground search, according to a dispatch from the Alaska State Troopers. Larsen said a Cessna 172 from the Civil Air Patrol landed and picked him up at 7 p.m. The Trooper dispatch said alcohol is reported to have been involved in this incident. Larsen said he hadn't had very much to drink: just two drinks of R & R whiskey over a few hours.

On Monday afternoon Larsen was recuperating in the Bethel hospital, watching a History Channel program about bridges. The frostbite is worst on his pinkies and the ring finger of his left hand, and the fluid has to be drained from his hand as it heals. His snowmachine is still sitting out on the tundra. When asked how he was going to retrieve the machine, Larsen said "I'll let my uncle go get it."

Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com.