Report released on fatal 2018 Alaska Range crash

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its report on a plane crash that took the lives of five people, including the pilot, last summer in the Alaska Range.  The report does not list a definitive cause for the crash.

On August 4^th of last year, shortly before 6:00 pm, a DeHavilland Beaver piloted by Craig Layson crashed into an area on Thunder Mountain, about fourteen miles from the summit of Denali. The flight was for K2 Aviation, the Talkeetna based subsidiary of Rust’s Aviation.

According to the NTSB’s report, Layson was able to contact K2 personnel in Talkeetna via satellite phone twice after the crash.  He reported that everyone on board was injured, and there might have been multiple fatalities.  Layson said that he was trapped in the wreckage and could not confirm the status of his passengers.

When the flight took off from Talkeetna, weather conditions were relatively calm and clear.  After the crash, however, conditions worsened in the Alaska Range.  A National Park Service rescue helicopter was launched from Talkeetna that same evening, but was not able to locate the downed plane due to deteriorating conditions.

It took two days for a rescue helicopter to get close enough to the plane that a mountaineering ranger could be lowered to where the plane had come to rest in a crevasse.  That ranger confirmed that Layson and three passengers were deceased.  A return trip a few days later confirmed the death of the fourth passenger.

Due to dangerous conditions where the plane came to rest, National Park Service rangers decided that a recovery attempt would be too risky, and the plane and its occupants were left on Thunder Mountain.  

In April of this year, rangers flying near the site of the crash saw that more than 4,000 tons of ice had detached from the mountain near the crash site, and the plane was no longer visible.  It is presumed to have come to rest near the base of Thunder Mountain in an unnamed fork of the Kahiltna Glacier.