Pilot survives plane crash on plateau

Katharhynn Heidelberg

MONTROSE - The emergency transmitter's battery could have died. The search could have been abandoned. So much could have gone wrong, but somehow, everything turned out just right for the pilot of a small plane that crashed on the Uncompahgre Plateau Wednesday.

Scott Thurner, 57, of Milwaukee was found alive with minor injuries after search and rescue personnel Thursday spotted the wreckage of Thurner's Cessna 172 in a canyon south of Raspberry Tower, which is located just west of the top of Highway 90 approximately 20 miles west of Montrose.

He was treated for cuts and bruises at Montrose Memorial Hospital shortly after 10:30 p.m. Thursday- close to 30 hours since crash landing into some trees.

"It's amazing," Montrose County Undersheriff Dick Deines said this morning. "I can't believe that he's uninjured. The terrain was so rugged and rough the helicopter wasn't even able to land near that site. I can't imagine an aircraft going down and somebody walking away from it."

Thurner was traveling from Laughlin, Nev. to the Montrose area, possibly to visit a son in nearby Hotchkiss. He started his journey with a good tailwind, but encountered heavy clouds when reaching the Divide area of the Uncompahgre, MCSO Lt. Shawn Cline said this morning.

Cline said Thurner dropped down, believing he could go up through a hole in the clouds; instead, the Cessna iced up and lost 75 percent of its engine power.

"He had to pick a spot to put (the plane) down because he was trapped by the canyon and couldn't turn out," Cline said.

Mark Young, Montrose County coroner and a pilot himself, spotted Thurner from a Civil Air Patrol plane at 3:45 p.m. Thursday, almost a full day after Thurner's 3 p.m. Wednesday crash.

"The airplane is completely demolished," Young said Friday. "How he survived is absolutely beyond me, and particularly with no (serious) injuries."

The MCSO received its first indication that something was amiss when emergency location transmitter (ELT) signals began coming in late Wednesday.

"The transmitter had been detected three times, but there was nothing we could do. It was just a general area. We knew it was on the Uncompahgre Plateau," Deines said.

The Sheriff's Posse and search and rescue members were called in. Young, who is a member of the Sheriff's Posse, said teams conducted a ground search in the Dave Wood Road area. "ELTs only give a general location and there's a lot of error in them," he said.

The Dave Wood Road area search was terminated at 3 a.m. Thursday.

"The only way you can check for aircraft like that is to fly in," Deines said. However, heavy cloud cover delayed airborne searches until Thursday afternoon.

"We decided to go back and search the area by air, since the weather finally cleared," Young said. "The satellite had picked up the (emergency) beacon again and at the same time, we picked it up again in the (Civil Air Patrol) airplane. We homed in on it and had it down to about a quarter mile.

"We finally spotted him. He was waving to us, so we knew he was alive."

Ground teams tackled the area from two sides - one team from the Montrose area and another from Nucla side of the crash site. Young and the CAP pilot returned to ground, going in on foot also.

Rescuers had to plod their way through 4 to 8 feet of snow and up a steep terrain.

"The final 600 feet we had to snowshoe in to where he was," Young said. "We snowshoed him (out) and used ropes to get him out of there."

From there, Thurner was taken to a waiting snow-cat vehicle that Cline said had been furnished by San Miguel Power and transported to the hospital, which he reached roughly six hours after first being spotted.

"He's lucky we went where we went," Young said. "We weren't going to go that way because we didn't think he was that far north."

Thurner was lucky in more ways than one. According to Young, the search was nearly called off entirely, after nothing was found in the Dave Wood Road area.

"He hadn't filed a flight plan, so there was no report of an overdue or missing aircraft," Young said. "His son didn't even know he was missing. ŠWe weren't sure what was going on."

Because false signals are possible with ELT technology, Young said there hadn't been a plan to search after early Thursday morning.

"I had a gut feeling," he said. "I just wanted to go check from the airplane. About 15 minutes after we took off, the satellite picked up the beacon."

Thurner had apparently shut off the beacon during Wednesday night to conserve its battery - a smart move, as it turned out.

"If we wouldn't have found him yesterday, his battery would be dead and he probably would've frozen to death waiting for help," Young said.

"He's very lucky."

Though Thurner didn't have much food or water, he dug a small snow cave the first night and a larger one Thursday, Young said.

"He called the first little snow cave Motel 6. Then he dug a bigger one and called it the Holiday Inn. Luckily, he had the smarts not to try to go anywhere, because in that deep of snow, he wouldn't have made it very far."

Though a person's chances of surviving a plane crash depend on luck many times, steps can be taken to improve the odds.

Young said pilots should always file a flight plan and let people know where they are going. Additionally, they should carry food and survival gear.

The official cause of Thurner's crash will be investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Contact Katharhynn Heidelberg via e-mail at katharhynnh@montrosepress.com