“You Look Like Hell”
Late Saturday evening, soaked and tired from swimming across a channel, Blake reached the Tinayguk. The map had deceived him —— it was no thin blue line. It was about as wide as the Koyukuk, too big and cold to swim. And he was too weak. Hypothermia would kill him.
Filled with regret for the peril he felt he had put them in, Blake decided to go back to his dad. He was so far from the accident site that no one would look for him here. Wet and miserable, he found a place to build a fire, huddle next to it and sleep.
At noon on Sunday, he finally approached the junction of the Tinayguk and Koyukuk and a wide, open gravel bar. Pilots sometimes flew over this spot. If they did, they might see him.
Blake was freezing. Neil was baking. He curled up under his small shelter to stay out of the sun. But a spark from the fire landed on the roof, and the dry tinder burst into flame. Neil had no way to carry water. Helplessly, he watched his shelter burn to ash. Then, without a knife, his hands chewed up from the ice, he began to build another.
By Monday, the third day without food, both men were growing weaker. Blake was right about the planes —— he'd seen several flying at 10,000 feet, but they couldn't see him. He decided to build a signal fire. The river had washed 30-foot spruce trees into a logjam nearby. Even small ones weighed 100 pounds. Blake struggled to carry them to his fire and quickly became exhausted.
On Tuesday evening, Dirk Nickisch, a pilot out of Coldfoot, Alaska, took several people up on a sightseeing flight. Midway through the tour, he spotted a raft on the river. Flying downstream about five minutes later, he thought he saw something moving on a gravel bar. He flew down for a closer look.
Hearing a plane, Blake bolted upright. He grabbed his life jacket and ran out onto the bar, waving his arms wildly as the plane roared above the treetops and passed over him. Then he dropped to his knees. Please let them see me and know I'm in trouble.
