Bomber Glacier

High up on glacier in the Talkeetna Mountains are the ghostly remains of a B-29 Superfortress. I don't know if it had a name before the crash, but once the plane was added they started calling it Bomber Glacier. There's an interesting story about the crash but i'll get to that later.

There are several long roundabout ways to get to the glacier but i decided on the most direct route, starting on the Reed Lakes trail. August 28th was one of the good days during the summer of 2012. After a week of heavy rain tthe day started off perfectly sunny but the mountains had a chill in the air. I decided it was probably my last chance to go to Bomber Glacier before winter closed in on the high mountains.

The stream coming from the upper valleys is one of my favorite areas but at the end August it was flooded over the trail and forced me up into the boulders on several occasions, eating up time. Although flooded, it was still crystal clear stone filtered water. It was a foreboding sign for what September would be like.

Lower Reed Lake on a very nice day. I like to ride my bike the first mile of the trail. Then it's 2.3 miles of hiking to get up to the first lake. Ascending another mile gets you to the second lake.

Bomber Glacier is held back behind the high walls in the background. To get there you have to climb over them. There's a cool waterfall up there that i have never taken a good picture of. High on the mountain wall you can also see (not in this picture) a deposit of pure copper almost glowing green/blue in the grey rock around it.

My second favorite area on the hike. A wide tarn that i really wish was warm enough to swim in.

Upper Reed Lake. If you look at the far left side of the background rock wall 2/3 of the way up is a narrow line of snow. We had to cross that snow, and directly up from the left side of the snow the top ridge makes a vague "w" shape. We crossed over the ridge on the left "v." If you use the right side "v" you will encounter a much more frightening descent on the other side. At that point my partner (who i just met for the first time at the bottom of the lake) turned back. It's a 1,200 foot climb and scramble in 1/2 a mile that seems harsh after a 1,800 foot climb over 4.5 miles.

This is what it looks like shooting into the sun after climbing up to the notch in the ridge.

Bomber Glacier. It's much steeper than it looks here. Crampons are necessary. You can faintly see the rope i used here right above my name. There had been a bad storm up here the night before. The rope was frozen and cut my hands. The rocks below were all covered in a quarter inch of clear ice and the shaded faces at he far right bear patches of popcorn ice.

The large but inconspicuous wreck can be seen across the ice on the far right. It's a 200 ft. descent and a 1/2 mile walk to get over there. The diagonal line across the foreground hides a very steep face of ice. You can see a faint trail in the snow disappear over the lip. My friend Sonny Young tried to walk across the glacier and ended up dislocating his shoulder by sliding hundreds of feet into some rocks. I always had a hard time imagining how that happened until i walked across it myself and realized how incredibly steep it is in places. Although there are no crevasses the surface is recycled and was unpredictable. This is really not a good place to dislocate your shoulder. It's a long way back.

From this point i think the best description of the wreck is to reprint an account of the disaster from one of the survivors of the wreck. The following is transcript of a radio program by Frank E. Baker. For now his website is located HERE

Heroism High in the Talkeetnas

On November 15, 1957, about 6:20 p.m., a B-29 training aircraft from Elmendorf Air Force Base with a crew of 10 was returning to base after a radar-calibrating mission farther north. Weather had deteriorated and the ceiling had dropped to below 5,000 feet as they made their way south past Talkeetna. A routine radio report from the aircraft reported no problems. The plane was scheduled to arrive at Elmendorf about 7 p.m.

Staff Sergeant Calvin Campbell, then 34, was assigned to the right scanner position, about mid-point in the aircraft behind the engines. One of his tasks was to monitor the two engines on the right side. Staff Sergeant Robert McMurray had similar duties on the left side. In the pilot seat was 1st Lt. William J. Schreffler.

In the co-pilot seat was Capt. Erwin Stolfich. The ranking officer aboard was pilot Major Robert A. Butler, then 41 years of age. Other officers aboard were Capt. Edward Valiant, Captain Oliver Johnson, and Capt. Richard Seaman.

The cockpit broke off in the impact and ascended 500 feet up the glacier from the rest of the plane. In the background a peachy apparition of Denali floats in the sky.

In a telephone interview in 2000, Campbell, then 77, described what happened next.
“We were descending toward Elmendorf at full speed, when we hit real hard with no warning. Everything went black…I mean real black. Then we hit again and it felt so cold. It felt like the wings tore off and when I crawled out, I saw that the fuselage was broken into two. We were on a snowy field—I didn’t know at the time it was a glacier. It was so quiet.
“Staff Sergeant Bob McMurray was right below me, pinned between the fuselage and the observation post. I pulled him out of there. Navigator Lt. Claire Johnson had dragged himself out of the plane and collapsed in the snow nearby. I wrapped them both in parachutes and put Johnson in a sleeping bag that I found in the cargo hold.

“I could hear Sgt. Samuel Garza, the flight engineer, yelling from farther up the slope. He was still inside the nose section. It had sheared off and gone up the hill about 500 feet.”
“When I got up to Garza I soon realized he was the only other survivor—it was just the four of us. The pilot, co-pilot and three other officers perished instantly—I believe the sixth officer, Major Butler, survived the crash but died later that night.”

One of the wings, a good dry place to sit and eat a sandwhich. I found out that crampons work horribly on aircraft grade aluminum.

This area had piles of what looked like christmas tree tinsel along with random clothing and console equipment.

“Garza weighed about 140 lbs…it was hard pulling him out. I placed him on a piece of canvas and dragged him down the slope to the others. He had a broken arm and broken leg. I went back to the cargo hold and got more sleeping bags and then got us into the wreckage out of the wind—it felt very cold, but I had extra flight clothing to help cover us up.”
According to the Air Force’s accident report, the aircraft broke apart on impact, but there was no fire or explosion—a key factor in the four airmen’s survival.

Another of the survivors, Claire Johnson, provided more details about the accident.
“I was back with Campbell and McMurray having some coffee,” said Johnson. “When we hit it bounced me around the cargo netting pretty good. I was flying all over the place.”
Johnson affirms that that Calvin Campbell’s quick actions saved him and his fellow crew mates.

“He was scurrying around in the dark taking care of us like a mother hen,” Johnson recalls. “He wrapped us up, got us out of the wind. We owe our lives to him.”

The tail wing gunnery station. A lot more cramped looking than i would have imagined.

Air Rescue at Elmendorf assembled a search effort that evening, immediately after the B-29 disappeared from radar–but weather turned that first effort back. A helicopter search at daybreak the following morning zeroed in on the B-29’s last known position. By 9:30 they found the crash site—on a broad glacial slope at fifty six hundred feet —about a mile northeast of upper Reed Lake. Thanks to Campbell’s decisive actions, the injured men survived the night. They were taken to the hospital at Elmendorf.

“I think we were about 17 degrees off course.” Campbell says. “Too far to the east—put us right into those high mountains.”

Radar data would later indicate that the aircraft was about 27 miles east of its planned course into Elmendorf. A report indicated that the aircraft had strayed off course due to a combination of factors including deteriorating weather and pilot error.

Campbell said that except for a scratch over his eye, he was unharmed. He later would suffer complications from frostbitten feet, however, and lose the use of several toes.
Not long after the accident Calvin K. Campbell received a special commendation from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Soldier’s Medal, a decoration for valor in a non-combat situation. He retired from the Air Force in 1968.

“I didn’t feel like a hero or anything,” says Campbell. “I just did what I had to do. “The other guys would have done the same thing for me.”

Today, the broken bomber sits on the glacier as a quiet memorial to the six men who died there half a century ago.

It looked like some of the wheels had melted out of the ice, rolled down to a flatter area and melted halfway back into the ice. I didn't see any other wheels so i wonder if the others are even farther down.

A panoramic view looking over both edges of the ridge. The basin the glacier is a fantastic area and it was obvious that i should have made it an overnight trip to check out other hiking opportunities on the neighboring glaciers .

This is a cool area where the stream gets squeezed and starts to flow under the rocks. For a while you walk over it, listening to the bass heavy roar of tumbling water under your feet.