“We want to live!” – Joseph Blank

            ’It all began as a lark – a joyful adventure in wild Alaska. But as the young couple faced starvation in the arctic winter, it turned into a nightmare in survival.”

            On the ninth day of their terrifying trek through the unhabited wilderness of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, Denise Harris silently cried out, Why me? Why Roger? Why are we being put through this awful misery? They were without food, their clothing was always wet, and frost-bite was blackening their toes.

            It had begun as an adventure. More than an adventure –a dream of gold and freedom, and the joys and peace of living in the wild. Denise, 20, and Roger Lewis, 31, had headed for Alaska in the spring of 1979 in search of oppurtunity, challenge and wide-open, beautiful country. They settled in a little house in Seward, on the northen rim of the Gulf of Alaska. Their landlord had a lease on the abandoned Sunny Fox gold mine, about 80 air kilometres from Seward. With gold’s price soaring, the mine could be holding considerable wealth. The landlord wondered if Roger and Denise would like to go out there, begin reopening the road to the mine and obtain ore samples. If the operation succeeded, they would each get five percent of the net profits. They grabbed the offer.

Plastic Cocoon.

On October 31,1979, they left Seward in a landing craft loaded with a house trailer, earth-moving machinery, tools and supplies. The party included Nuka, a stray mongrel that had adopted Denise and Roger, and a powder man to do the rock blasting. The landlord assured them he’d fly out in a few weeks to replenish their supplies and pick up ore samples.

            Denise and Roger found an abandoned shoreline cabin for themselves and left the trailer 6.5 kilometres away, to the powder man. Roger commuted to the mine site by kayak. Denise cooked, laundered, baked bread and handcrafted Christmas gifts.

            A month passed. Winter started to clamp down. The plane with the promised supplies didn’t arrive. The couple’s only contact with the powder man was by kayak; yet now the protected lagoon over which Roger had paddled froze solid. They saw no trails cutting through the mountain terrain. Except for occasional beaches, the coastline was sheer –mountain dropping almost vertically into the water.

            Around december 20, after seven weeks, they were near the end of their food. How could they survived the long winter without help?

            To the south was the open gulf, and Roger reckoned he could paddle the kayak towards the Portlock timber camp, 95 kilometres away, in the hope of encountering some fishing boats. He wanted to go by himself, but Denise was afraid to be left alone. She cried until Roger relented.

            They left the powder man a note and loaded the kayak with supplies and Nuka. The moment they began riding the undulating swells, Denise felt raw terror. The kayak, only 75 millimetres above water, seemed tiny and vulnerable. Before darkness fell, they pulled on to a beach, set up their two-person tent and heated soup on a small, self-starting stove.

            At the end of the fifth day, after they had travelled about 50 kilometres, a storm moved in with two-and-a-half metre waves. They beached the kayak at Gore Point, a treeless spur of land that jutted into the gulf, and set up their tent against a cliff about 30 metres from the water. The wind and rain slashed at their nylon shelter. Inside, they waited for the storm to abate, at first unaware that the rising waves were chewing up the beach and creeping ever closer.

            By 2.30 the next afternoon, the waves were only two metres away from them. They crawled out of their tent and moved it to a ledge about a metre above the beach. But the waves kept creeping up the cliff, so they moved still higher, to a small, cave-like formation of boulders, leaving their supplies on the lower shelf. Rain doused them from an opening at the top of the formation, and Roger decided, “I’m going down for some plastic to seal off that hole.”

            ‘No, don’t go,” Denise pleaded.

            Ignoring her, he descended and grabbed the sheet of plastic. Then a great wave crashed into their refuge; suddenly, he was swimming and gasping for air. Then the wave receded. “We’ve got to get higher,” Roger shouted. Still holding the plastic, he pushed Denise through the opening in the boulders, then followed with Nuka. He spread the wet blanket over them and encased them, head to toes, in plastic.

A step for a cake  

            By daylight the storm had diminished; but half the kayak and most of their equipment had been lost in the waves. Denise and Roger tied a rope between the two upright paddles and hung out their wet clothing. They spent most of the day huddled together in the tent.

            On the following day, a wolf appeared and began tugging at a T-shirt on the line. Angrily, Roger asked Denise to pass him the rifle. He put a shot into the animal’s back. Still alive, eyes glaring, the wolf rolled down the slope to the water’s edge. Roger vainly waited half an hour for it to die, then fired another shot. It missed. Moving closer, he pelted the dying wolf with rocks until the animal turned its head; then he charged and hit it with a small axe. He held the head underwater until the wolf was dead.

            Roger skinned it and cut slices of meat to warm on the stove. A haunch went to Nuka. After they ate some, Denise packed the remainder of the nearly raw meat in a plastic container.

            The next morning, Roger brooded over their plight. They had seen no vessel, heard no aircraft. The kayak was damaged beyond repair. Their only way out was to climb steep Gore Peak and trek northwards through the snow.

            They sorted through their possessions, filled two duffel bags with necessities and began their climb. About 30 metres above the beach, Denise slipped and lost her grip on her pack. It rolled into the sea. Gone were the tent, stove and remaining food. Now they had only a single wollen blanket, a foam pad, the rifle with its three bullets, a small saw, a small compass, and a few odds and ends.

            That afternoon they reached the crest of Gore Peak and began working their way around it. As Roger grasped a projecting rock, it suddenly loosened, and he tumbled downwards. I am going to die, he thought. His fall was broken briefly by a narrow ledge. Then he slid down an ice field towards a 150-metre precipice. The thought of Denise, alone, made him spin around, and he frantically dug in his heels. He stopped less than 10 metres from death’s edge. Hampered by a painfully bruised hip, he made his way back to Denise. She could say nothing. Her eyes were wide with fear.

            At dusk they scooped away some snow at the base of a spruce tree. Roger cut boughs with the saw.denise spread the pad over them. They lay down, pulled up the blanket and spread several layers of boughs over it.

            Sleep was never sleep. They were wet and cold. They prayed and wept. The pain from the frost bite blackening their toes was unrelenting. Starting another day was torment. Their stiff clothing crackled with each movement as they reached for tree limbs to pull themselves erect. Then the worst: pushing their swollen feet into waterproof boots that now were severa sizes too small. They packed the duffel bag. Roger hoisted it to his shoulder and mumbled, “Let’s go.”

            Roger sometimes thought about the rewards for survival. I’m going back to that café in Seward where Harold makes that wonderful German chocolate cake. This step is for Harold. This step for that cake.

Talk to God

            On the tenth day, their way north along the coast was blocked by a frozen waterfall about 45 metres high. It had to be climbed. Roger chipped out hand-and toe-holds with his hunting knife, then, with Denise following he slowly worked his way up the slippery slope. The ice eventually gave way to an impasse of snow-covered rocks. To his right, about six metres away, Roger saw two bushes that would get them within reach of safe walking terrain.

            He groped towards the bushes. Just as he clutched a branch, he heard a sharp cry; Denise was rolling down the ice. She hit bottom and lay there for a few minutes in a daze. She started up the slope again, but made it only half-way before slipping back to the bottom.

            She lay there, crying. “Roger, come down here and help me. I’m weak.”

            He didn’t see how he could help her, especially with the burden of the duffel bag. But if he left the bag attached to the bush and they couldn’t reclimb the falls, they were surely lost. “I’m not coming down. You have to get back on your own.”

            “I can’t, she screamed. “Throw down the blanket! I’m staying here.”

            “You do that and you’ll die. I’m not throwing down the blanket and I’m not coming down. We’ll die separately.” His heart ached for her. “Try again. Try!”

            For half an hour they continued the exchange of pleadings and refusals. But with Roger exhorting, Denise finally began to climb again, clawing into the ice holes with fingers that soon became bloody. And then she was reaching for Roger’s hand, looking up into his face. He was grinning, but it was the grey, anguished grin of a marathon runner tottering across the finish line.

            As the days passed, the pair turned more and more into themselves. Death was on their minds. Plodding on, Roger talked to God. Why have you allowed this to happen to us? Some day someone will find what is left of our bodies and he will never know who we were or what we went through. Why?

            Once, Roger asked Denise, “What would you do if you found me dead one morning?”

            “I’d let myself die alongside you.” She scrutinized Roger’s face. His cheeks were sunken, his skin devoid of the colour of life.

Worst moment

              About the 15^th day, Denise began to change; she determined to fight the idea of death rather than accept it. In particular, she focused on her mother, on the times she had become angry and shouted at her. I have to tell her how much I really love her.

            To Roger, however, the suffering had become senseless, pointless. “Perhaps we shouldn’t try any more,” he told Denise.

            “I’ll keep on, even if I have to crawl on my knees. So what, no lower legs. Can still have babies. Go to the cinema. Lots of things. I’ll crawl if I have to.”

            “All right. I’ll crawl with you.” He realized that now she was the stronger of the two, and he admired her.

            One morning, during a break in their robot-like plodding through the snow, Denise told Roger, “If we’re going to go on, we need food. Tomorrow  we should kill Nuka and eat her.” Tears dripped from her eyes. Roger demurred. “No, no. Let’s wait and see. There’s always a chance I’ll spot a moose of a goat..”

            On the following day, Roger saw some ducks on a near-by pool. As he raised his rifle, Nuka also saw the birds and, barking, dived into the water. The ducks flew away. Roger realized that if they encountered a moose or a goat Nuka would innocently repeat her action. The dog was a liability. He told Denise, “ Tomorrow we’ll have to do it.”

            The next morning, January 9, was the nineteenth day since they had left the cabin. The time had come. Roger pulled Nuka towards him and petted he affectionately. Then, hating what he had to do, he plunged his knife into the dog’s heart. Nuka gave Denise a startled look, and died.

            Frantically, they skinned the animal, Denise ate a part of the warm liver. Roger swallowed a piece of the heart, but gagged on the second sliver. Weeping, Denise cut the remaining meat from the bones. Then they took the carcass to the edge of the gulf, said a prayer and threw it into the water. It was the worst moment of their ordeal.

            About two o’clock that afternoon they reached the edge of a cliff that dropped into a large inlet. Suddenly, a loud whirring sound broke the long silence, and an orange-and-white Coast Guard helicopter appeared above them. The couple waved and screamed, but the helicopter flew on until it disappeared/

            Dumb with dismay, Denise and Roger stood staring at the empty sky. Finally, Roger said, “They could be looking for us.” Working with a kind of panic that produced new strength, he cut down spruce boughs and laid them out in a snow-covered meadow to form a huge green SOS.

            Four days earlier, the landlord back in Seward, who claimed his own pilot had been delayed by bad weather, telephoned bush pilot Bill DeCreeft and hired him to check on the trio. A heavy snow prevented DeCreeft from taking off in his twin-engine amphibian. On the following day, he located the powder man, who told him, “I made it across the ice to their cabin nearly a week ago. They took off in their kayak a while back –perhaps three weeks. Must be dead by now.” DeCreeft flew along the coast for a time, but saw no sign of life.

            The powder man had reported the missing couple to the Coast Guard. The next day they informed DeCreeft that half a kayak and some strewn clothing had been sighted at Gore Point and that they would proceed to search the coastline.

            DeCreeft decided to join the search. He was flying slowly, with no pre-arranged flight plan, near Gore Point, scanning for boot tracks, at the time the helicopter missed the couple. Just as Roger had completed his work and was standing in the middle of the O,DeCreeft spotted the SOS. He made a slow sweep, wagging his wings. Roger shouted, fired his remaining three bullets, and fell backwards into the snow in excitement.

            DeCreeft contacted the Coast Guard. About an hour later the helicopter was hovering above the meadow. A door opened, a basket was lowered, and the couple was hoisted to safety. In the cabin Denise and Roger wept and hugged the crewmen, and tried to say “Thanks.”

            That night the weather began closing down. Blinding snowstorms and hysterical winds made low flying nearly impossible for most of the next two weeks.

            Denise and Roger would spend six weeks in the hospital for treatment of frost-bite, malnutrition and exposure. Denise would have to have parts of six toes amputated, Roger parts of four toes and outer sections of both feet. The day after they were hospitalized, a visitor asked them, “What do you want to do now?”

            They looked at each other and smiled. “We want to live!” they chorused. “Just live!”

“Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight. Indecision is a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind.” –J.McK