State troopers are watching the weather for a chance to return to the scene of an avalanche that killed Conoco Phillips Alaska President Jim Bowles and left another Conoco worker missing Saturday on the Kenai Peninsula.
Low clouds, high winds and heavy rain prevented searchers from looking for the body of 40-year-old Alan Gage Sunday, according to troopers. Friends say the father of two disappeared in a cloud of snow when a slide walloped their snowmachine group in the Grandview area wilderness.
He is presumed dead.
Other snowmachiners on the trip said it took as little as 15 minutes to generally locate Bowles -- head of the largest oil and gas producer in Alaska -- but 90 minutes to shovel him out of the snow. Members of the group said they then tried for up to an hour and a half to revive him.
"We dug and probed and CPR'd until it was dark," said Ed Gohr, a former Conoco employee who is part-owner of an equipment rental company and rode with Bowles and Gage Saturday.
Gohr and another snowmachiner, CH2M Hill Vice President Bob Lacher, described the avalanche moment-by-moment Sunday. Here's what happened, they said:
Bowles and another rider were at the front of a pack of about 10 snowmachiners riding in groups along a relatively flat bench. They traveled beside a tall mountain -- it looked to be 3,000 to 4,000 feet -- loaded with snow.
Gage was following close behind the two leaders. At some point, Bowles' snowmachine became stuck, Lacher said, and another rider ran over to help.
"About that time, I just happened to be looking up as I was traveling up the bench and saw the first of about four or five pieces of the mountain break loose," Lacher said.
The avalanche began about 500 to 700 yards above the snowmachiners, he said. The first wave of snow hammered the rider who had been trying to help Bowles, slamming him into the throttle. His machine accelerated to safety.
But Bowles was caught -- pinned beneath 10 feet of snow, his friends said.
GAGE DISAPPEARS
Lacher managed to turn his machine around and speed back the way he'd come.
"Just as I did, I saw Al (Gage) up and to the left get hit with the main force of the avalanche and disappear in a cloud," he said.
Lacher waved and pointed, warning the nearest snowmachiners to spin around and accelerate out from under the avalanche, he said
After the avalanche, other snowmachiners in the area joined in the search. They could see one of the skis from Gage's snowmachine poking through the snow, but no sign of the rider, the men said.
"Because Jim had a beacon we were able to find him, I'd say in 15 or 20 minutes, we knew what part of the mountain he was buried under," Lacher said.
The slide came maybe 100 yards from an area where the group had been riding for 25 minutes, Gohr said.
ROLE OF BEACONS
The avalanche was reported to troopers at about 12:30 p.m. along the west ridge of Grandview, about a half mile from Mile 43 of the Alaska Railroad tracks between Girdwood and Seward.
Initial trooper reports said Bowles was buried for about 45 minutes before friends located him, and announced dead after rescuers tried to revive him for at least 30 minutes.
"One of the party members rode down about a mile to the railroad tracks and contacted a railroad worker who then contacted us," said Trooper Howie Peterson.
The section of the avalanche that caught the snowmachiners was about 150 yards high by 150 yards wide, Peterson said. "It was a heavy, slow moving slide."
Troopers said late Saturday night that Bowles and Gage weren't wearing beacons. But Bowles was apparently found with the device, troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said Sunday.
Troopers still believe Gage was not carrying a beacon. Lacher and Gohr, his fellow snowmachiners, agree.
Gage's wife, Dalon Gage, says that's hard to imagine. Her husband her "always played it safe," she said.
"This was not a go goof-off, play around, screw-off group of guys," Dalon Gage said. "They were very safe, well-versed, trained."
BAD WEATHER
Alan Gage grew up in Alaska and is an avid outdoorsman who often hunted and fished with other members of Saturday's group, she said.
He worked for the oil field services company Veco for eight or nine years before joining Conoco about five years ago, where he worked as a project control lead for the company's capital projects division, Dalon Gage said. Conoco runs the big Kuparuk River and Alpine oil fields on the North Slope.
Along with Bowles, most of the snowmachine group were friends who work in the energy business or supporting industries and get together for outdoor trips, the snowmachiners said.
Lacher and Gohr worked with Gage at Veco at one time, they said. Another of the snowmachiners along on the trip, Eric Spitzer, is a state trooper who led the efforts to revive Bowles, Lacher said.
The search for Gage was called off as darkness fell Saturday night, while poor weather prevented Troopers from looking again on Sunday.
There was a low cloud ceiling, high winds and heavy rain in the region, Peterson said. "Everything is ready to go as far as the search. It's just weather permitting."
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