Two men died in separate boating accidents in Southcentral Alaska on Monday.
According to State Trooper reports, at around 5 p.m. on Monday three men were boating up Twenty Mile River when the prop hit a log and the aluminum boat was pushed into a log jam. The boat sank. Nathan and Ronald Cone were able to swim to safety. Sixty-nine year old Harold Moore of Seward died in the water, and his body was retrieved. He was wearing a PFD.
On Monday afternoon, two brothers from Sterling canoed to a hiking spot on Portage Lake. When they finished their hike, they found that their canoe had floated away. Fifty-year-old Larry Dobson jumped into the frigid lake to try to retrieve the canoe. Trooper reports say that while swimming he began to struggle and eventually disappeared below the surface. His brother, Dave, tried to swim to him but returned shortly afterwards. The terrain around the lake made walking back to the parking lot impossible. Fifty-one year old Dave Dobson spent the night at the trailhead. By morning, the canoe had drifted back to shore. Dobson canoed back to the parking lot and was taken to the hospital to be treated for hypothermia. The search for Larry Dobson is ongoing, and he is presumed dead.
Anne Hillman is the healthy communities editor at Alaska Public Media and a host of Hometown, Alaska. Reach her at ahillman@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Anne here.
