PROLOGUE
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Skagway Herald, July 27, 1960
AVALANCHE NEAR GLACIER BAY
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH TEAM
FEARED LOST
Four scientists are believed dead in an avalanche near the foot of Johns Hopkins Inlet in the northeastern arm of Glacier Bay, Alaska. The avalanche, apparently triggered by yesterday's earthquake tremors, is believed to have ended the lives of all four members of a botanical survey team from the University of Washington headed by Professor Melvin A. Tremaine, chairman of the Department of Botany. The team was making its way across a spur of low-lying Tirku Glacier when the earthquake struck. They had been studying periglacial vegetation in the Glacier Bay region.
In addition to Professor Tremaine, 40, the other missing members are graduate students James Pratt, 24, Jocelyn Yount, 25, and Miss Yount's fiance, Steven Fisk, also 25.
A fifth member of the project, Assistant Professor Walter Judd, is uninjured. Judd, 30, accompanied the others on the flight to Johns Hopkins Inlet from Gustavus, but became ill shortly after landing and remained at the shoreline, a mile from the path of the avalanche.
Three other members, including the assistant director, Dr. Anna Henckel, 31, a research associate at the university, had remained behind at the project's headquarters in Gustavus.
Aerial search missions for the missing scientists are continuing, but little hope of finding them exists, according to Glacier Bay National Monument Superintendent Albert Stutfield.
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Skagway Herald, July 28, 1960
SCIENTIST FOUND ALIVE
BURIED IN ICE FOR 21 HOURS
In what was termed a “miracle stroke of luck,” Melvin A. Tremaine, leader of the botanical survey team believed lost in Tuesday's avalanche at Glacier Bay, was discovered alive late this morning. Tremaine, who had survived for over 21 hours trapped in a glacial crevasse, was found when a search plane pilot spotted his red parka from the air.
The scientist, who was unconscious when rescuers reached him at 11:00 A.M., was wedged into a shallow 90-foot-long cleft in the ice. He was flown to Bartlett Memorial Hospital in Juneau, where his condition is listed as critical. According to a hospital spokesman, Tremaine's injuries include lacerations, frostbite, internal injuries, and fractures of the skull, leg, and both arms.
The search for other survivors is continuing.
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Skagway Herald, July 30, 1960
GLACIER BAY SEARCH ENDS
Glacier Bay Monument Superintendent A. D. Stutfield announced late yesterday that the search for survivors of last Tuesday's avalanche has been called off after three days.
'We've done our best,” Stutfield said in commenting on the termination of the search. “There is absolutely no chance of anyone still being alive.'
The sole survivor, expedition director Melvin A. Tremaine, remains at Juneau's Bartlett Memorial Hospital. His condition is listed as serious but stable. According to hospital spokesman Raymond Stouby, Tremaine is now intermittently conscious. He is expected to regain full use of his faculties.
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Anchorage Daily News, September 8, 1964
HUMAN REMAINS IDENTIFIED
