Sometimes things turn out for the best, and sometimes there is a little excitement just when you really need it, like the middle of March. That's what happened in Haines this past week. We had two miracles. (Or close to it.)

A Skagway man was rescued off a nearby glacier alive and well after days without food, and Haines schoolchildren lined up to get the autographs of three classical musicians who played a concert here. Many of the local students had never seen a cello before. The school has a band, but not an orchestra. Now, whenever they look up at these mountains, they may hear that cello in the wind. I know I will.

Which brings me to the mountain rescue. By now you no doubt have heard of the 28 year old Skagway man, Kyle Dungan, who was rescued on the Meade Glacier by an Army National Guard Blackhawk Helicopter working with the Coast Guard three long days and four nights after the alarm went out that he needed help.

Haines pilot Drake Olson, a former Le Mans race-car driver who won the Porsche Cup in 1985, was supposed to pick Kyle from a two-week ski adventure on the Meade. (The glacier is across Lynn Canal from Haines, North of Berners Bay and South of Skagway in the Juneau Icefield.) But when Drake flew over to get him, the sunny morning was changing fast.

Meanwhile, the Ahn Trio, sisters and rock stars of the classical music world, were riding the ferry up from Juneau and were wowed by the sun, sea, and those same towering white mountains on both sides of the Lynn Canal that attracted Kyle Dungan.

Drake was flying around up there too, looking for his client who was not where he said he would be. He found him, about seven miles away and 4,300 feet up on the glacier. It was too rough to land and the weather was getting nasty.

On Monday morning Drake went back in another storm and was able to drop him a satellite phone. Kyle told him he'd been out of food for four days. That's when the Coast Guard tried to rescue him and were turned back by snow and fog.

I found that out Monday night at the concert during intermission. But as I listened to the music afterwards, I forgot to worry. The trio was so good, both visually and musically, that I was completely captivated.

New York's Ahn Trio opened the show by saying how great Haines is, which endeared them to us instantly, and then how impressed they were that a crowd came out in a blizzard to see them.

When the show was over we gave them two standing ovations, and it is safe to say, sort of fell in love with the vibrant and talented Korean-American sisters, who my friend Tom noted were even cooler than the heli-skiers. They wore sparkling high heels while the audience was in snow boots.

"Maybe they'll move here," I said to my husband the next morning over coffee. He looked out at the swirling snow and said, "they do sixty concerts a year. They'd never be able to get in and out of here in the winter."

He had a point. The Coast Guard couldn't even give Kyle a ride home to Skagway in this weather. It is easy to forget how unforgiving such a pretty place can be.

Luckily, the Ahn Trio had already planned to ferry back to Juneau, so their shows went on. But the adventure skier spent another day and night on the stormy glacier. Our house shook as the big choppers came and went from the airport. The radio news said that no one was answering the satellite phone.