Kell Morris doesn’t remember exactly how he started to fall or his stomach, but he remembers perfectly the moment a 320 -pound rock hit his back – from the launching pain to being crushed and the immediate conscience that he was in trouble.
Morris, 61, said that May 24 was “beautiful, beautiful” in Seward, Alaska, where he lives with his wife, Joanna Roop. The couple decided to make a trail near a remote glacier, more than 190 km south of Anchorage.
They looked for a point to cross a stream when the soil that supported a group of rocks gave way. Morris said he tried to “surf” on the gravel he slid but lost his balance and rolled downhill.
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“The next thing I remember is to be stretch in the stream and still hear the sound of the stones,” he said.
Roop, also 61, heard the same unmistakable sound.
She ran to the landslide, calling for her husband, but got no response.
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Upon finding him, Roop described the situation as “bad to worse”.
Arrested under the massive rock, Morris could barely keep his body out of cold water, fed by the glacier.
“We evaluated that I wouldn’t take a long time in that cold water,” said Morris. He then asked his wife to leave in search of a cell phone signal with the couple’s two phones. After walking about 270 meters, Roop got contact with an emergency center (911).
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Rescue teams from various agencies, including the Seward Fire Department and Bear Creek’s Volunteer Fire Department, were mobilized.
But the rugged terrain made the advance difficult. It was then that a volunteer of Bear Creek, who works for Seward Helicopter Tours, heard the emergency call.
This volunteer and a pilot offered to transport six firefighters to the place where Morris was arrested.
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The rescuers found Morris with signs of hypothermia, entering and leaving consciousness, stomach in the stream, with the rock on his back, and Roop holding his head out of the water, according to a statement from the Seward Fire Department.
The teams used air bags, ropes and “brute force” to free it, the department said. Once warm, Morris “became more alert and his vital signs improved.”
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