The rescue account described below involves two hunters in Alaska, who called for help by activating a Personal Locator Beacon

On a balmy summer afternoon on July 19th, Andy Stanton, 48, and his friend, Karl Hansen, were hunting 100 miles northwest of Anchorage, Alaska. They were about to top out on a mountain ridge to scout for game when Stanton’s ATV bogged down. He revved the throttle but it wouldn’t budge. When he let off the throttle, the bike jerked backwards, causing Stanton to fall back in the seat. It then rolled down the incline catching the back wheels. The front end came up and Stanton slid off the rear landing on his back with his head pointing downhill.

To his horror, Stanton saw the four-wheeler coming right over on top of him. He instinctively put up his arms and legs to deflect it but the vehicle weighed 750 pounds. His legs came up over his head and the machine fell on Stanton, completely compressing him. He heard and felt his back break. The bike continued down the mountain a short distance.

Unfortunately, Stanton’s ACR Electronics MicroFix™ 406 GPS Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) was strapped to his backpack on the ATV. His companion scrambled down the mountain and retrieved the beacon. Without hesitating, Stanton deployed the PLB at 1:37 p.m. He said he was in such excruciating pain he didn’t want to take any chances regardless of having a cell phone.

They had no cell phone signal where Stanton laid injured, so Hansen climbed the ridge in an attempt to get coverage. At 2:10 p.m., he was amazed when his 911call went through and state troopers informed him that the beacon’s satellite-detectable distress signal had already been identified and Search and Rescue (SAR) personnel were enroute. At 3:30 p.m., a hospital Life Flight helicopter arrived and airlifted Stanton to Providence Hospital in Anchorage. He was hospitalized for a week with a broken back but, luckily, he was not paralyzed. Several weeks later, he was able to return to his civilian Army job wearing a rigid body support.

Stanton and his wife, Jan, also a hunter, have decided to purchase a second MicroFix™ PLB. Then, if one beacon gets crushed or disabled, they’ll have a back-up unit. “I can’t tell you what peace of mind having that beacon gives you. No one thinks it’ll happen to them. In Alaska, things can turn bad in a blink of an eye. We’re not at the top of the food chain out here,” Stanton said, referring to brown bears that feast on nearby spawning salmon this time of year.

The big lesson Stanton said he learned that day was the necessity of keeping the beacon on your body at all times, not attached to something that you can be separated from. “If I had been alone, it would have been bad. I would’ve had to drag myself down the mountain to my ATV to activate the beacon,” he said.