A couple of hunters from a small northern Canada village are being called the “luckiest two guys in the Arctic” after an RCAF patrol aircraft happened on them purely by accident and flew them to safety after a tricky landing on sea ice. Eugene Gibbons and Tyler Amarualik, of Hall Beach, a hamlet of 750 people on the 68th parallel in Nunavut, were hunting caribou last Wednesday with Lloyd Satuqsi when their snowmobile broke down. While Satuqsi started walking the 25 miles back to Hall Beach for help, the other two hunkered down in temperatures that reached -40 overnight. Meanwhile, the next day an RCAF Twin Otter, which is normally based at 440 Squadron in Yellowknife, was taking part in a patrol mission as part of a military exercise when one of the crew members spotted one of the men.
The aircraft commander, Capt. Thom Doelman, told the CBC that given the vast open spaces of the Canadian Arctic, the odds of the encounter are incalculable. “You could probably go crazy trying think of all the things that had to line up for us to see these guys out there,” he told the TV network.Because the exercise was based out of Hall Beach Airport, the Twin Otter wasn’t equipped with the skis it uses for off-airport operations and Doelman had to land on the ice with wheels. To ensure the ice could carry the weight of the plane, he checked the strength by setting the aircraft down on the main wheels with the nosegear elevated, ready to add power and take off instantly if it showed signs of cracking. The ice held and Doelman was able to taxi up to the hunters’ makeshift camp. They were back in the air a few minutes later where they alerted the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police about the third hunter on foot. He was found in a ground search early the following morning. He was hospitalized with hypothermia and frostbite but the two men rescued by the plane had only minor frostbite.
