An Alaska man who was pinned facedown in an icy creek by a 700-pound boulder for three hours survived the ordeal with only minor injuries, thanks in part to his wife’s quick thinking and lots of luck.

Kell Morris’ wife held his head above water to prevent him from drowning while waiting for rescuers to arrive after Morris was pinned by the boulder, which crashed onto him during a hike near a remote glacier south of Anchorage.

His second stroke of luck came when a sled dog tourism company that operates on the glacier overheard the 911 dispatch and offered up its helicopter to ferry rescuers to the scene, which was inaccessible to all-terrain vehicles.

Once rescuers arrived, it took seven men and inflatable airbags to lift the boulder off as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

Morris, 61, said he realizes he is probably the luckiest man alive. “And luckier that I have such a great wife,” he said Thursday.

His wife, Jo Roop, is a retired Alaska State Trooper. They moved to Seward, about 120 miles south of Anchorage, from Idaho last fall when she took a job with the local police department.

On Saturday, they wanted to avoid the big crowds that converge on the Kenai Peninsula community during holidays and decided to hike near Godwin Glacier on an isolated and undeveloped trail behind a state prison, Seward Fire Chief Clinton Crites said.

Their trail was actually 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 and avoided them the best he could, until he ran into an area he couldn’t pass.

“I was coming back and everything, the whole side slid out from under me,” he said.

He said things became a blur as he tumbled down the embankment about 20 feet, landing face down in the water.

Then he immediately felt the boulder hit his back in what Crites described as “basically an avalanche of boulders.”

The way Morris landed, there were rocks under him, in between his legs and around him that caught the weight of the boulder, preventing him from being crushed, Crites said. But the massive rock still had him pinned, and Morris felt intense pain in his left leg and waited for his femur to snap.

“When it first happened, I was doubtful that there was going to be a good outcome,” Morris said.

His wife tried to free him for about 30 minutes, putting rocks under the boulder and trying to roll it off him, before she left to find a cell signal.

Amazingly, she only had to walk about 300 yards to connect with 911 and relied on her law enforcement experience to send exact GPS coordinates to dispatch.

A volunteer at the neighboring Bear Creek Fire Department heard the call while working at the sled dog tourism operation and diverted the helicopter used to ferry tourists to the scene. Ultimately, firefighters who couldn’t navigate their all-terrain vehicles over the boulder field jumped out of the helicopter.

“The patient was in a boulder field and the helicopter could only hover while firefighters had to jump from the helicopter to the ground as the helicopter could not land safely,” the Seward Fire Department said in a statement posted to Facebook.

By this time, Morris was hypothermic from the cold water running off the glacier, Crites said, and his wife was holding his head out of the water.

“I think if we hadn’t had that private helicopter assist us, it would have taken us at least another 45 minutes to get to him, and I’m not sure he had that much time,” Crites said.

The Bear Creek Fire Department said it assisted the Seward Fire Department. “After dispatch one of our volunteers who was working with Seward Helicopter Tours contacted us and offered assistance by helicopter,” the Bear Creek Fire Department wrote on Facebook. “The pilot of the helicopter immediately jumped into action and helped haul gear and rescuers up to the patient aiding in quick response to the patient.”

The firefighters used two airbags normally reserved to extract people from wrecked vehicles to slightly lift the boulder.

“But then it just became an all-hands brute force of ‘one, two, three, push,’” Crites said. “And seven guys were able to lift it enough to pull the victim out.”

An Alaska National Guard helicopter lifted them out of the creek bed with a rescue basket.

Morris spent two nights at the local hospital for observation but walked away unscathed.

“I fully anticipated a body recovery, not him walking away without a scratch on him,” Crites said.

Morris, who is now reflecting on his ordeal at home, acknowledged it might have been a little wake-up call to stop doing things like this at his age.

“I was very lucky. God was looking out for me,” he said.

When he and his wife go hiking this weekend, they are going to stick to established trails.

“We’re going to stop the trailblazing,” he said.

“We are grateful we could support our first responders and help someone in need. So glad this story had a positive ending,” Seward Helicopter Tours wrote on Facebook.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Nearly a year after the U.S. Coast Guard suspended the search for a family of four missing after the boat they were on capsized in waters off south-central Alaska, the vessel along with human remains have been found, officials said Wednesday.

The discovery came after three private Alaska companies, including one that uses sonar equipment to search underwater, offered in April to help look for the family, who are from Texas, according to a statement released by the Alaska Department of Public Safety.

Earlier this month, they found the missing boat along with human remains in 180 feet (55 meters) of water in Kachemak Bay near Homer, the department said.

Divers from the state were then able to recover three sets of remains from the sunken vessel during dives on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The remains have been taken to the State Medical Examiner’s Office to perform autopsies and identify them, according to the public safety department. It did not say how long identifying the remains would take.

The missing family from Troy, Texas, includes Mary Maynard, 37, and David Maynard, 42, along with sons Colton, 11, and Brantley, 8, according to the statement.

The search for the family was launched in August after a report came in that a 28-foot (8.5-meter) aluminum boat carrying eight people had begun taking on water, the U.S. Coast Guard said at the time. The Coast Guard notified other ships in the area of the situation, and a boat nearby rescued four people.

The Coast Guard scoured Kachemak Bay and Alaska search and rescue crews tried to use sonar equipment to find the family, according to the state’s public safety department. But they were not successful and by the next evening, the search was suspended.

Christi Wells, who provided a statement on behalf of Mary Maynard’s parents at the time, said the family enjoyed spending time with friends and relatives, and traveling, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Mary Maynard was a traveling nurse and David Maynard stayed at home with the children and had a lawn care business, she said.

Before he worked for what he allegedly called “the cartel,” Justin Facey’s law career was unremarkable.

Facey’s modest solo practice was based in a gray Anchorage office building, where he shared space with personal injury attorneys, a chiropractor and a financial advisor. His website advertised expertise in defending run-of-the-mill cases: DUI, domestic violence, theft, assault.

But in 2023, Facey took on a client who changed his firm’s fortunes — and brought him under the eye of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Agents were monitoring the phone of a California inmate who was suspected of trafficking huge amounts of drugs to Alaska when they read a text message that Facey allegedly sent to a fellow lawyer.

“Come to the dark side,” he wrote in the message, which was cited in court documents. “I just signed a lease on a HUGE new office space. Three attorney offices, plus a paralegal bullpen, reception area, etc.”

Prosecutors say Facey broke the law working for Heraclio Sanchez Rodriguez, who has been serving a life sentence in California since 1998. Last week, Facey, 44, was charged with maintaining a “drug-involved premises,” as well as possessing a shotgun, rifle and two handguns while selling meth and fentanyl.

A lawyer for Facey, who has pleaded not guilty, didn’t immediately provide a comment.

From his prison cell in Monterey County, Sanchez, 58, used contraband cellphones to direct one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in Alaska history, federal authorities say. More than 60 people are accused of colluding with Sanchez to smuggle fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin from Southern California to Alaska, where the narcotics were sold at staggering markups.

Sanchez has pleaded not guilty to charges that he trafficked drugs, laundered money and had two women kidnapped, murdered and buried in the Alaskan wilderness.

Facey acted as consigliere to Sanchez and, after his law license was suspended in February, became a drug dealer himself, prosecutors wrote in a motion seeking to jail the attorney pending a trial.

According to prosecutors, Facey began working for Sanchez in June 2023, around the time that the DEA tapped the prisoner’s cellphone.

Agents intercepted text messages in which Facey and Sanchez talked about using a private plane to spirit away an underling who had narrowly avoided arrest in Anchorage, prosecutors wrote in the bail motion.

Facey said he knew a pilot who could fly her to Montana. “Let me contact my people to be ready to take her out the country,” Sanchez replied.

The attorney later thanked Sanchez for having a package of fentanyl delivered to his home, prosecutors wrote. “I feel funny not paying — we can credit it for when you need some legal work done, if you want?” Facey wrote in a text message.

The lawyer and prisoner also allegedly discussed using laundering drug profits. In a text message cited by prosecutors, Facey complimented Sanchez for using “girls” as a “little revenue laundromat.”

Sanchez is accused of ordering the murder of Sunday Powers, an Alaskan woman who was caught at an airport carrying $20,000 of Sanchez’s money.

With Sanchez as a client, Facey bragged about his newfound wealth to “anyone in the Anchorage community who might listen,” prosecutors said in the bail motion.

In a text message, Facey allegedly wrote: “The cartel has retained my office for all their Alaska needs. So there’s guaranteed revenue, in cash, at the full hourly rate for the forseeable future.”

Facey said after he got a member of “the cartel” acquitted, “There was a knock on my door. Package sitting right there when I opened it. Inside was a watch manufactured by a very reputable purveyor of timepieces, two ounces of legit Bolivian flake and a brochure for the suite level at the Venetian.”

Despite the boasts, Facey’s practice was collapsing. Clients filed 13 “grievances” and six payment disputes with the Alaska state bar about Facey, who had an ounce-a-day meth habit, prosecutors wrote in the motion to keep Facey jailed.

Facey also engaged in “compulsive sexual misconduct,” prosecutors wrote. An unnamed witness told authorities the lawyer was a “pig” and “disgusting slob” who extorted sex from her in exchange for legal representation, according to the motion to prevent his release.

After his license was suspended, Facey turned to selling drugs, according to prosecutors. By April, he told associates in text messages he was facing eviction. He posted in a public Facebook group for R.V. owners, writing, “Heya! I’m right in the middle of an unexpected, abrupt major life and career implosion, and I’ve decided to embrace the silver lining.”

He was thinking of selling everything he owned but his R.V., he wrote. Accompanied by his daughter and granddaughter, he’d leave Alaska “with no specific plan in mind but to roam the earth for a bit,” he wrote, “until something or somewhere grabs our attention.”

Facey is now in jail after a judge tentatively denied him bail. His lawyer will argue for his release in a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.