SITKA, ALASKA
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Alaska State Troopers identified the hikers as 23-year-old Ryan Hunt of Sitka and 18-year-old William Boone of Juneau.
According to Sitka Mountain Rescue Captain Don Kluting, the pair became stranded on a steep hillside at about 18-hundred feet on Sunday. He says they had left on their trip up the mountain in the middle of the night. Officials received a call for help around 11 a.m. Sunday.
A Coast Guard helicopter deployed just before 1 p.m. with a three-person mountain rescue team. After the pair was found, the team was dropped off about a quarter mile away and up several hundred feet.
Kluting says the rescue team made its way to the hikers, who were clinging to berry bushes. He says if they’d let go, they would have suffered significant falls, and that their packs and rifles already had fallen away.
According to a Sitka Police report, one of the hikers appeared to be hallucinating and was becoming belligerent with rescuers.
Kluting says his team hoisted the hikers up to 3-thousand feet, then back down to 15-hundred feet in another location, where all were able to hike out.
The operation involved six technical rescuers and 12 other team members who hiked up the valley. It took about 12 hours.
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