RCMP Chopper plucks five from lake
After drifting for 15 hours on an icy Bennett Lake in temperatures close to -40, five Carcross residents were rescued by an RCMP helicopter Tuesday.
The Whitehorse Star, January 5, 1990
RCMP Chopper plucks five from lake
After drifting for 15 hours on an icy Bennett Lake in temperatures close to -40, five Carcross residents were rescued by an RCMP helicopter Tuesday.
The trip began last Saturday, when Rick Halladay took four passengers down by boat to visit Jim Ambrose and his family on Bennett Lake.
"We'd taken some supplies in - just a Christmas/New Year's visit,” Halladay said in an interview Thursday.
Halladay had Ambroses's father, Ron Avery, and four other passengers on board - Curtis Pugh, his wife, Janet and their daughter, Anna, all of Carcross.
They made the two-hour trip from Carcross to the Ambrose house on the west arm of Bennett Lake in Halladay's 8.4 - metre aluminum boat.
On New Year's Eve, after staying one night with Ambrose, they loaded up the boat and headed for Carcross, but strong winds forced them back.
In the morning, they tried again. But engine problems Halladay calls "mysterious” delayed their departure.
"We couldn't find anything wrong with it,” Halladay said. "There didn't seem to be any apparent mechanical problem. It just wouldn't fire - we had spark, we had fuel.”
Halladay and Ambrose worked on the engine all day. "Then mysteriously, it started late that afternoon,” said Halladay.
Conditions had been good all day. Winds were moderate, and visibility was good except for some fog.
"The engine finally started, for some mysterious reason. As mysteriously as why it wouldn't go, it went.”
The two men let the engine idle. In the meantime, New Year's dinner was almost on the table in the Ambrose house. Halladay and his passengers thought they might as well stay and head out after a good meal.
In the 14 years he'd spent on Bennett Lake, this was the first time Ambrose had guests for New Year's dinner.
"In fact,” said Halladay, "we'd broken the record for boat arrivals there by a good three weeks.”
Fearing the lake would be frozen in the morning, Halladay declined the invitation to stay the night, and headed out after supper.
At 8 p.m., with fog so thick they couldn't see more than 15 metres, the four set out after supper.
On the lake's main arm, the fog hung onto the water, making it impossible to see the pack ice until they were on it.
Skirting the ice, they almost made it to the mouth of the Wheaton River - the journey's half-way mark. Then the engine problems began. It would start, but carburetor problems kept it from running. After repeated starts and stalls, the battery died.
Although Halladay said he was used to these adventures, for the other four, "it was a very novel experience.”
"They were somewhat nervous. We were in heavy fog and nobody was certain as to where we were. They only had my word to go by.”
A few trees and a rocky shore line were all they could see as the boat drifted on the lake.
Half-way home, they navigated by a glow Halladay said he could see coming from Carcross.
While he hooked up a spare battery and worked on the engine. Ron Anesty kept his eye on the distant light to keep their bearings.
But engine problems persisted. "It would run for half a minute and then it would quit,” said Halladay.
Before the spare battery had gone completely flat, Halladay gave up. An hour after they'd left the five were drifting back toward the Ambrose house.
His passengers were bundled in blankets under a tarpaulin, coming up periodically to ask where they were.
"They could see about as much as I could underneath the tarp,” said Halladay.
At 10 p.m., he called Daphnie Mennell in Carcross on his radio phone. She relayed his message to the RCMP - he'd be calling them on the hour.
They drifted along the shore, too steep and rocky to land on, hoping to make it back to the Ambrose house, paddling only to keep away from the rocks. "If we'd hit the beach, we would have been wrecked,” said Halladay.
For 7 1/2 hours, they drifted in temperatures close to -40 below. "The ladies sang some hymns for awhile,” said Halladay. "I think they were water related.”
Halladay said he didn't doubt they would survive. "My main concern was if the weather should take a turn for the worse, then you had something to be concerned about... if it had come to that, I could have pulled in at any one point. I would have jeopardized the boat, but I could've got people onto the shore line and started a fire.”
Since they'd started that night, ice had formed across the lake making it impossible to return to the Ambrose house. "It was in sheets, but it had cracks in it. It was just enough that you had to pound on it with an oar to break it.” Halladay said.
They broke the ice, inching their way toward a shore line suitable for landing the boat and the helicopter Halladay thought would be needed to get them home - the RCMP boat already in dry dock.
By 4:30 a.m., they were gathered around a fire only a kilometre from their starting point, Halladay said. But a rocky shore and a ridge too steep and icy to climb meant they had to stay where they were.
Finally, after almost 15 hours after they left, the helicopter was coming. "I could hear it through the fog,” Halladay said. "Everybody was straining their ears. Then it showed up out of the mist.”
They were airlifted, cold but safe, back to Carcross in a Trans North Bell 206 helicopter, leaving Halladay's boat and gear behind. But Haladay says he's going to go back this weekend by snowmobile and canoe to get it.
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Comments (4)
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stephen moran on Feb 10, 2022 at 5:06 am
I knew Rick well over the course of several years - 1972-1973. Shirley's comments are right on the mark. Whoever wrote that if it wasn't for bad luck, he wouldn't have any luck at all certainly had Rick Halladay in mind. I let him winter over in my tent frame just outside Whitehorse. When I returned in the Spring, it was a disaster zone! 30cm horse sh*t on the floor, all the glass/ceramic ware broken due to water freeze - the little house practically destroyed. That was Rick's calling card. No respect for either himself nor others. I am grateful I survived the experience!
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Ruth, Janet's Daughter on Dec 11, 2019 at 3:40 pm
Most women have more sense than men. My Mother, the above-mentioned Janet, was no exception to the rule.
My Dad should have known better. For the well read and educated man he was, he still trusted fools and tried to be a true friend to whomever he met... I'll leave that right there.
Here is the thing, Shirley ... And whomever else reads this, both Janet and Curtis are dead now. I have the photographs taken that night they were stranded showing the idiot who took them out and what could have been the end of all their lives.
Let's leave it in the past where it belongs. Fools will always roam the earth and the only way to thin their population would be to remove all warning labels from dangerous items.
Ugh.
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Shirly Ambrose on Aug 21, 2019 at 8:56 pm
This is such a ridiculous story...not because of the Star but because of how Halladay obviously related it to the Star; and he surely did relate all this because it is the way he talks. I recall this ordeal vividly thirty years later and I was eighteen when it happened. The article if relayed in appropriate mood and mode would have read more like a horror novel rather than an edgy comedy skit. It was yet another classic suicide excursion for the notoriously daredevil Rick Halladay. My family wanted no part of these kinds of rarest visits. His visits made us nauseated because he was always pushing the envelope. It was more an ominous experience for the Ambrose trio than anything else because we knew how dangerous the late season was and no one should have been traveling that lake later than October ideally. They were two months past the safe deadline for boating. It was insane what Rick did in inviting people form Oklahoma brand new to the area and not realizing much more than Rick about the dangers. I think deep down they did sense more than Rick as he was as dense as a rock, he made it his favorite pastime to be rescued from the wilderness and then brag about it immediately afterwards and laugh his head off over it; always claiming he knew exactly what he was doing despite being rescued in the end by men as well as even women.
So another thing that is poorly portrayed thanks to Ricko, is that they brought us out supplies. Well they did bring eggnog and fruit but certainly no important supplies like flour or sugar or meat...but we never needed any and never asked for any as we were already tucked in for the winter by two months and my parents were good providers. Rick made his foolish adventure sound more like a humanitarian effort toward us, to help cover his sorry behind. What a clown. And Ron Anstee (my dad's step father) also...Ron should have known better than come with Rick and bring the new family with them. The dumbest ones were Rick and Ron and they made quite a pair the two of them. We befriended everyone...scolded two of them and tried to make the best of it while they landed on us. Our stress was high. We seemed to be the only ones worried sick about the five visitors, although Janet seemed to sense more danger than anyone she came with, a mother's instincts I suppose and maybe she just had more common sense than all the men. Janet seemed almost as stressed as we were is what I recall.
My parents tried to convince them to stay one last night because you should not boat in the complete dark when temperatures drop further and since they were already there, if the lake froze over, at least everyone could have stayed days or weeks with us if necessary until the same helicopter could rescue them from the comforts of the cabin. No one would have endangered their lives if they stayed but instead Risky Rick had to chance it all over again.
It is priceless how Rick carries on how mysterious and unusual it was that his boat motor was being finicky and unreliable...geee do you THINK so? That is precisely what boat motors are known to do that time of year in such temperatures with condensation and frost building in the gears. Nothing normally works at such temperatures and only a moron thinks otherwise. I thought this old article was long buried with only a few physical copies left but since it still has such longevity, I feel it is time one of my family finally addresses it which (we) never have.
Weather has changed much in thirty years up here (holding HAARP mostly responsible) and now one can sometimes boat later but in those years there really were no exceptions...November onward was deadly in primary degrees to be boating anywhere and often mid to late November was as bad as December. And the ice froze over the middle of the lake almost every year around December 24-28 and Rick dared to come out during/after that timeframe. Only ignoramuses would invite guests out with them on suicide missions like that one. It was a terrible idea coming out then. Proven by the end of the story and needing helicopter rescue. Only by the providential grace of God did any of them survive.
Halladay just never learned his lessons and thrived on the danger. Yep I realize he could be reading this. This was the SECOND boat trip he made with the other one at the turn of the month a few weeks before with Ron Anstee. If that was not enough and our warnings ignored completely, he was yet again on our doorstep and with more people. This ordeal happened only four months before he came out again uninvited on the April 26th decaying ice, and fell through, with his double track machine in front of our bay (machine stayed up while he went down). My father had to take a small canoe over the ice and hope to rescue him without them both going under. That day he tried to invite Neil Young's father Scott Young out with him but Scott providentially escaped the whole scene that day and Rick came alone to wreck our day. Yeah and that is the truth.
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Lucien LeSage on Dec 21, 2017 at 6:21 am
I have known Curtis Pugh for many years. He has told me this story several times when he was a Baptist Missionary in the Yukon, He tells it similar but slightly different. For one thing Anna helped paddle the boat. Rick also slept so close to the fire that his boots melted. And he never went and got his boat the next day. But for the most part that is what happened.