*** Alaskan Musher Survives 6 Days in the Wilderness ***

Rescued musher saw one too many trails 
By BRIAN O'DONOGHUE
Staff Writer

Saturday, February 05, 2000   5:46 AM MST     
 
Jon Little/Anchorage Daily News
REST STOP-- Two Rivers musher Rod Boyce relaxes in a Soldotna motel room
Friday after being rescued in the Caribou Hills. Boyce spent six days alone
on the trail waiting out bad weather after getting lost in the Tustumena
200 race. 

SOLDOTNA--Rod Boyce looked gaunt, moved somewhat painfully, but appeared
bright-eyed as he retraced his logical steps toward rescue over the six days
after he blundered off course in the Tustumena 200 sled dog race.

"It didn't start hurting until afterward," the News-Miner city editor said
of his condition. He spoke in a cheerful but raspy voice before a long
-awaited nap at the King Salmon Best Western Hotel in Soldotna.

Conditions weren't that bad in the immediate hours after Boyce left a
checkpoint 50 miles into the race last Saturday. Making what felt like good
time, the racer mushed two hours, he said, before something didn't feel
right. It dawned on him that trail markers looked, well, different. "They
had reflectors, so I kept on going."

Studying the trail ahead as he continued, Boyce suddenly realized that what
he took to be runner marks were ski tracks carved by snowmachines. More
telling, the surface of the well-traveled snowmachine trail no longer showed
any paw prints. "OK," the musher decided, "I'm going to turn around."

Before long, he found himself traveling along a trail paralleled by another
trail, one had markers, one didn't. After a while he didn't see any markers.

The racer turned around again.

Wind was picking up. Boyce kept going and going, seeking markers of any kind.
He was climbing now. The snowmachine tracks became thinner and thinner. The
team had been traveling, perhaps four hours. By then, it was blowing and
snowing a bit. "I started thinking maybe I should find some shelter, some
trees or another," he recalled. "I was looking to take a break until daylight,
so I could get oriented."

He'd been traveling in some spruce, but that had thinned out. All at once,
Boyce found himself mushing downhill. "I stepped on the brake but the leaders
just pulled me down into a valley." At the bottom, he kept rolling along what
appeared to be snowmachine tracks climbing up a hill.

Boyce found himself pedaling in soft powder as the team hung a right on the
crest of a ridge, shooting into a tunnel of thin head-high alders.

That's where Boyce stopped.

Making camp, the musher took stock as he stumbled around, sinking his bunny
boots in soft powder up to his knees. Boyce had been counting on the supplies
waiting at the Tustumena's next checkpoint, a mere 18-mile jaunt, or so he'd
assumed.

Instead, he had two bottles of alcohol fuel for his team's cooker and roughly
one third of a gallon of Charlie Champaine's freeze-dried lamb for dog food;
he'd figured that was plenty for a quick snack en route.

For himself, Boyce had even less: a tiny bag of Reese's Pieces peanut-butter
candy and another small snack the musher soon gobbled and no longer even
recalls.

"I knew right then I was totally lost, so I shifted to milking it," he said,
describing how he immediately placed the dogs on a broth ration of water
flavored with four lamb cubes.

Zipped inside his 5[1/2]-foot-long sled bag and a 20-above sleeping bag -taken
because the lighter weight offered a presumed competitive advantage, Boyce
slept fitfully.

A largely barren landscape of unfamiliar ridges greeted him mid-morning Sunday.
Having spent virtually his entire four-year mushing career tooling along familiar
trails in Two Rivers. Boyce didn't know this country between Kasilof and Homer,
nor did he have the slightest clue where he might be in relationship to the
Tustumena Trail.

From his work at the paper, Boyce recalled that Alaska State Troopers warn that a
person truly lost in the wild without food usually assists searchers, and
preserves energy, by staying put.

The 10-dog team kept the lost musher too busy to fret. Fearing fights, he tied
them off to alders separating them. Several chewed themselves free. Gizmo and
Josh, his main leaders, were a big comfort climbing atop the cramped sledbag that
night.

On Monday, his second day stuck on the ridge and facing a worsening storm, Boyce
thought more about survival stories he'd edited through the years. Most of all he
thought about Robert Bogucki and the importance water played in the Chena
-Goldstream firefighter's survival during an extended trek in an Australia desert.

"He went a long time on just water."

That seemed to be the thing to do. Melting snow for the dogs, keeping his own
Thermos full, became Boyce's occupation. He had ample matches, or so it seemed,
and the surrounding green alder, while a lot of effort to collect and tough to
burn until he began smearing on Trusty Husty foot ointment, provided fuel
sufficient to keep his cooker melting snow for water. "I kept a fire, a little
one in the cooker, going four to six hours a day."

He also took those alders and fashioned a HELP using his folding saw, a gift
from his wife Julie.

Boyce was proud of his sign, each letter was 15 feet across and further
distinguished by harnesses placed dangling from stakes along its edges. "I
realized it was kind of small when I saw a plane go by."

Tuesday it was really blowing on the ridge, with cold air shooting through a
gash one of his dogs had chewed through the foot of his sled bag, seeking food
that didn't exist.

Boyce awoke with a scare. Drifts had consumed his camp, covering not only the
dogs, but all of the gear he'd carelessly spread. He used his snowshoes to dig
for his precious folding saw, the cooker and other suddenly precious
possessions. Heaving the snow off to the side created berms surrounding the
small camp.

Digging on his knees, Boyce realized it was much warmer in the small windless
basin. "I said, 'I think I'm making this the kitchen,"' he said, describing
his new shelter, which he covered using alders and the worthless icy-toed
sleeping bag.

During a brief break in the weather, Boyce strapped on his snowshoes and
mounted the first of what became strategic forays. Taking care to unzip his
Refrigiwear suit to avoid sweating, he would stamp out a path for two hours,
time to allow him to return to camp by sunset. That was a priority. It was the
nights that were longest, commencing with sundown's gloomy proclamation that
rescue was out of reach for another day. He knew people were searching, heard
the snowmachines buzzing in distant valleys, watched one helicopter burst
from the clouds over the next ridge, though he attempted to use his headlamp
as a SOS beacon and waved an old red jacket. No one noticed the man on the
ridge.

Despite familiarity with rescue stories that hinged on the individual staying
put, Boyce also recalled polishing his reporters' copy on stories that didn't
end favorably for the target of an Alaska wilderness search.

"I remembered sometimes those end with a body recovery instead of a rescue."

On Wednesday, the fourth day of his ordeal, Boyce skipped his meager Reese's
candy ration, electing to horde the tiny energy it contained for a major
snowshoe march, should that seem necessary.

On Thursday, Boyce again consumed only water, adding to the allotted daily
candy ration to the tiny cache intended to fuel the draining snowshoe march
he now planned for Saturday. That night he lay under the stars with his dogs,
surprisingly content for a man stranded without food the better part of a week.

"I thought if Julie were only here with me this would be great," he recalled,
"then I thought that's crazy."

On Friday, after finishing another HELP sign on a different ridge, this one
lined with grasses and brush, Boyce set forth, midmorning, extending one of
his snowshoe trails to a ridge he hadn't yet reached.

From the top, he sighted a distant snowmachine passing on what was a defined,
possibly major, trail. The weather was clear. Boyce saw three snowmachiners
pass by, indicating this was the source of the trail traffic he'd been trying
for days to pin down. Rewarding himself with his last Reese's ration, Boyce
decided to go for broke.

Perhaps 90 minutes later he was kneeling on the hard-packed trail, touching
his forehead to the ground as he paid homage.

"I'm the missing Tustumena musher," Boyce announced as a snowmachiner pulled
up.

Ron Poston, a local snowmachiner assisting with the search, handed the musher
a Power Bar and told him to climb aboard.

The California boy in Boyce now marvels at the staggering scale of the search
mounted by troopers and residents of the storm-battered Kenai. He told Gov.
Tony Knowles as much when the governor called him after his rescue.

"It's like I told the governor," said the musher, sporting a weary survivor's
grin, "what a great state to get lost in." 

------------------

Saturday, February 05, 2000   5:46 AM MST       
  
   *** 'Just amazing they didn't see him' ***
 
TIM MOWRY
Staff Writer

After covering more than 500 miles of trail on a snowmachine and spending five
days looking for lost Two Rivers musher Rod Boyce, Ed Borden can't wait to hear
Boyce's story.

"I've put 520 miles on a snowmachine since Sunday looking for this guy," said
Borden, race marshal for the Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race in which Boyce was
competing when he disappeared early Sunday.

"We've had airplanes in that area, heat-seeking helicopters ... we had 100
people on snowmachines looking for this guy, we had people going up the side of
mountains chasing wolf tracks and we never had a signal from him, nothing,"
said Borden. "I've gotta hear this story."

Why or how searchers failed to find Boyce remains somewhat of a mystery.

Boyce, who was missing for six days in the Kenai Peninsula's Caribou Hills
after disappearing from the Tustumena 200 trail, was found walking along a
trail at about 1:30 p.m. Friday by a snowmachiner who was heading to Homer
to join in the search for the lost musher.

Boyce was found on the south side of Eagle Lake Plateau, a 1,600-foot rise
only about 10 trail miles from Caribou Lake, the last place he was seen early
Sunday morning.

The rookie musher did precisely what everyone--troopers, race officials and
local mushers--suspected he did. He made a wrong turn onto a well-marked
snowmachine trail going south toward Homer and camped about five miles from
the Tustumena 200 race trail after becoming lost in a blizzard.

Snowmachines scoured the area and searchers in helicopters and airplanes had
flown over the area, too, said Gordon Orth with Central Emergency Services in
Soldotna.

"Everybody said 'We think he turned on that trail' and he did," said Orth.
"That first day we got clearing we had planes from Civil Air Patrol and
helicopters searching that area."

A helicopter with an infrared heat sensor that flew over the area never picked
up any sign of Boyce or his 10 dogs, either.

Search coordinator John Brown with Alaska State Troopers in Homer, said the
heat sensor may have just missed Boyce's presence on the snowy landscape.
"It may not have flown directly over him," he said.

Snowmachiners from a club in Homer also searched the area around Eagle Lake
extensively, said Orth.

"It's just amazing they didn't see him," Orth said of searchers.

Orth said the search for Boyce was a major one.

"It's been a huge effort," said Orth. "I personally put 350 miles on a
snowmachine this week and I had searchers in my group that rode over 500 miles
in the last five days."

Troopers applauded Boyce's survival instincts and said the musher adhered to
the No. 1 rule for someone lost in the wilderness.

"Mr. Boyce did a great job of staying in one place," said Brown, who
coordinated the search from Homer. "Doing a search where someone is moving
around is much more difficult. Stay put and we will find you. It may take us
a little while to get there, but we'll get there."

Homer musher Jack Berry said Boyce probably wasn't more than five miles from
his house and he was only two miles from the end of Homer East End Road, which
parallels Kachemak Bay.

"That's right up back behind my house," said Berry, a veteran of both the
Iditarod and Yukon Quest sled dog races who has trained in the Caribou Hills
for the past eight years.

"The trail he got on is one of the main snowmachine trails (in the Caribou
Hills)," Berry said.

The trail has been marked with a variety of reflectors by both he and the
snowmachine club in Homer, Berry said. Boyce told troopers he was following
a well-marked trail when he realized he was lost.

"He said he was following the race markers and pretty soon they didn't look
the same and changed even more," said Brown. At that point, Boyce pulled off
the trail and set up camp in some trees just below the ridgeline, about five
miles off the race trail."

He spent the next five days sleeping in his sled bag, rationing his personal
and dog food and cutting beetle-killed spruce trees with a handsaw to fuel
small fires he burned in the cooker used to melt water for the dogs.

Boyce could hear snowmachines, airplanes and helicopters buzzing by looking
for him at different times but the weather prevented him from getting to them.
When it cleared on Friday, he left the dog team and decided to hike out.
Boyce had walked about 5 miles when a snowmachiner heading into Homer from
Caribou Lake to join the search came up on him.

"He said, 'Gee, are you the guy we're looking for,"' Trooper Sgt. Jim
Hibpshman said.

Boyce was loaded aboard the snowmachine and he told rescuers where his dog
team could be found. Homer musher Dario Daniels was reportedly retrieving
the team and driving the dogs to Homer to be checked by a veterinarian.

"They are all alive, hungry, tired and thirsty," said Brown.

Troopers were far from giving up hope that Boyce would be found alive.
Searchers know that people can survive long periods if they keep their wits
about them.

Brown thinks of a man and an unforgettable interview after a rescue several
years ago. "I always think about Odd Arne Skaldebo. I keep his card here on
my desk. He was a geologist that was lost on a long hike (north of Fairbanks).
He made it three weeks without any support and two weeks with no food. I
think of him when I'm out there trying to find somebody."

When the sun came out strong Friday, Brown had a good feeling about the
search. "It lifted a lot of spirits," he said. "Hopes were high."

Bill McKee, president of the Two Rivers Dog Mushers Association, was "tickled
pink" to hear searchers had found Boyce, who is vice president of the club.

"We had called off our next race because there wasn't anyone to organize it,"
said McKee. "Now maybe Rod can come back and get it together."