Part I: Seasoned Alaska pilot recounts Knik Glacier crash landing Part II: 'Perfect storm' of deadly conditions tested Alaska pararescuers Part III: Another aircraft crashes before successful rescue from Alaska's Knik Glacier About the series: As the attention of the world in August turned to efforts to rescue four survivors of a Western Alaska plane crash that left former Sen. Ted Stevens and four others dead, a separate effort was under way to save five people trapped on a glacier some 300 miles away. With a mountain storm raging, the men of the Alaska Air National Guard's 210th, 211th and 212th Rescue Squadrons would go to extraordinary lengths to rescue a pilot and four tourists. This is their story.

In an otherworld ruled by unseen mountain gods high to the east above the well-known, strip-mall hometown of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a desperate saga of survival and derring-do took place in August 2010 as four steadfast and determined pararescue specialists from the Alaska National Guard struggled to save five victims of a plane crash trapped in a storm near 8,400 feet on the Knik Glacier.

Men whose stock in trade is courage and toughness would later confess that both were pushed to the limit to bring to a happy end one of the most difficult of difficult rescues ever staged in the wild mountains of the 49th state.

And to think it all began, strangely enough, with a simple favor done for a friend. In one of those acts of friendliness and generosity for which Alaskans like to think themselves famous, 49-year-old Wasilla pilot Don Erbey offered to take a buddy's visiting relatives on a quick flight-seeing tour of the Chugach Mountains. It was to prove a fateful decision, though Erbey didn't know that as he drove across the Matanuska-Susitna Valley on a pleasant day in August to pick up the key to his father Roland's six-seat Piper Cherokee aircraft.

Don's own single-engine Cessna 170 wasn't big enough to carry the visiting Lantz family on a planned flight up the Knik River valley, over the Knik Glacier and on toward the vast, uninhabited wilderness that stretches from Upper Lake George east of Palmer to College Fjord at the north end of Prince William Sound. For the Lantzes -- Fred, Mary Jan and their two grown sons, 27-year-old Patrick and 22-year-old David -- this was the trip of a lifetime. Standing at the Palmer airstrip, Alaska already presented a vast and dramatic departure from the view to which they were accustomed back home in Galveston, Tex.