A late-season snowmobiler on the Pemberton Glacier is being credited for saving the lives of three men who were aboard a small plane that crashed on the icy glacier.
The 1963 Beechcraft Musketeer plane took off from the Pitt Meadows airport just before 8:30 a.m. Sunday, June 5th and the three people aboard planned to land in Pemberton before returning to its home base in Pitt Meadows, according to reports in the Pitt Meadow Times.
According to other media reports, a West Coast pilot named Brandon Campbell heard his snowmobiling friends talking about discovering an old crash site while riding near Whistler on Sunday. Campbell automatically put two and two together and thought he should check this out. He took a friend, jumped in his own airplane, and flew directly to the ice field where his snowmobiling buddy had taken pictures of the downed plane on Sunday afternoon.
Though the unidentified snowmobiler first thought he was taking a photo of an old plane crash site, it turned out not to be an old crash site at all but rather the crashed and missing Beechcraft. The 1960's vintage aircraft was forced to make a hard landing on the glacier ice and was stranded overnight, and without a beacon or cellphones, the pilot nor passengers were able to call for help.
The three men in the plane were identified as the 81-year-old pilot Vern Hannah, passenger Zbigniew Jedynakiewicz and a Polish tourist. After marking their names on the side of the plane, the trio endeavored to hike out of the crash site. They were rescued by Search and Rescue personnel the next day in a nearby valley—cold and hungry but uninjured.
The alert snowmobiler who took a picture of the downed aircraft and shared it with his friends prompting experienced pilot Brandon Campbell to go in search of the crash site in his Cessna 180 has to be considered a hero. Campbell eventually lead Search and Rescue officials to the crash site on the glacier.
“We are happy the pilot and two passengers survived,” said Bill Yearwood, regional manager of the Transportation Safety Board in an interview with the Pitt Meadow Times newspaper. “We hope to talk to him about how the aircraft was performing and what led to the plane’s collision with the glacier. It’s pretty clear the aircraft didn’t have the performance to climb up that glacier.”
Yes, three men have a snowmobiler to thank for their rescue from a very precarious, potentially lethal situation.
