ANCHORAGE, AK - An Alaskan man is alive, thanks fo the quick thinking of his wife, after he was pinned face down in an icy creek underneath a 700-pound boulder for three hours.
Kell Morris, according to the Guardian, survived the incident with only minor injuries after his wife held his head above water to prevent him from drowning while waiting for first responders to arrive after he was pinned down by the boulder. He and his wife were hiking near a remote glacier south of Anchorage.
He was in a spot that was inaccessible to all-terrain vehicles, but thankfully a sled dog tourism company that operates on the glacier overheard the 911 dispatch and offered up its helicopter to ferry rescuers on the scene. Once rescuers arrived, it soon seven men and inflatable air bags to lift the boulder off as Morris drifted in and out of consciousness.
Morris, 61, said he realizes that he is likely the luckiest man alive, and as he said, "Luckier that I have such a great wife." His wife, Jo Roop, is a retired Alaska State Trooper. They moved to Seward, about 120 miles south of Anchorage, from Idaho in fall of 2024 when she took a job with the local police department.
Clinton Crites, the Seward fire chief said that the couple wanted to avoid the big crowds that coverage upon the Kenai Peninsula during holidays and decided to instead hike near Godwin Glacier on an isolated and undeveloped trail behind a state prison. Their trail was a rocky creek bed lined with large boulders deposited by the glacier.
Morris said he noticed dangerous boulders, some weighing up to 1,000 pounds, along the banks of the creek. He said he tried to avoid them the best he could, until he came face-to-face with an area he couldn't pass. He said, "I was coming back and everything, the whole side slid out from under me."
He tumbled down the embankment, which was about 20 ft, and landed face down in the water. He said he immediately felt the boulder hit his back in what Crites described as "basically an avalanche of boulders." Crites said that the way Morris landed, there were rocks under him, in between his legs, and around him that thankfully caught the weight of the boulder.
However, the massive rock still had him pinned. He said he felt intense pain in his left leg and was waiting for his femur to snap. He said, "When it first happened, I was doubtful that there was going to be a good outcome." His wife tried for 30 minutes, putting rocks under the boulder and trying to roll it off of him. When that didn't work, she left to find a cell signal to call for help.
Fox News reported that Morris said, "I was very lucky" and "God was looking out for me." His wife used her law enforcement experience to send exact GPS coordinates to dispatch The Seward Fire Department. They said that a volunteer at the nearby Bear Creek Fire Department who works for Seward Helicopter Tours heard the call "while working and he and a pilot volunteered to respond to the scene." He picked up six firefighters via the helicopter and transported them to the Morris. In doing so, Crites said he cut down on 45 minutes of travel time.
The Seward Fire Department said that Morris is expected to make a full recovery, but "it is no doubt that without the help from the Seward Helicopter Tours this incident could have had a much different and potentially fatal outcome."
The firefighters used two air bags normally reserved to extract people from wreck vehicles to slightly lift the boulder. Crites said, "But then it just became an all-hands brute force of 'one, two, three, push.' And seven guys were able to lift it enough to pull the victim out."
