By Jim Hutchison, December 2006

A father must rely on his nine-year-old son in the face of an unforgiving wilderness.

"Kevin, get in the truck. We're going flying!" Brian 'Gus' Geiger said.
"Where, Dad?" whooped his nine-year-old son as they left their wilderness cabin on August 2, 2003, and headed for the dock at Jan Lake, some 450 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, Canada. In the driver's seat, Geiger's close friend and pilot Dr Harvey Christiansen explained they were headed for Pelican Narrows to fuel up his four-seater de Havilland Beaver float-aeroplane.

Kevin, the third of Geiger's four boys, loved flying out on fishing expeditions with Christiansen and his dad. Geiger, a tall, burly truck driver of 45, had only recently decided Kevin was old enough to join them on these flights to remote northern lakes. He had taken his two older boys to hunting and boating safety courses and Boy Scouts before allowing them into the back country.
"They have to be able to look after themselves if things go wrong," he told his wife, Donna.

A registered nurse, Donna and their youngest boy, Sean, had waved goodbye to the pair the day before as they drove off from the family's home in Saskatoon. Donna and Sean would join them the following day.

Filled with excitement, Kevin climbed aboard Christiansen's half-century-old Beaver and settled into the rear seat behind his father. At 7pm Christiansen throttled up the aircraft's powerful radial engine and roared down Jan Lake, lifting the canary- yellow float-aeroplane into a perfect evening sky.

About 12 minutes later they touched down. After refuelling and talking to Kelly Stevenson of Pelican Narrows Air Service, one of the most experienced Beaver pilots in the province and Christiansen's lifelong friend, they took off on the return hop to Jan Lake.

Kevin peered out at the wilderness passing below. Shortly after they reached 600 feet, however, three loud bangs startled him. The aeroplane began to lose power and altitude, and Kevin saw dark smoke billowing from the engine. Christiansen steered for a small, nameless lake that looked no bigger than a pond.

"Hunker down, Kevin!" his father ordered. "We're going to hit hard!"
Wrapping his arms around his legs, Kevin braced against the back of his father's seat.

The aeroplane crashed into the lake at a steep angle, the impact shearing off the right wing. Kevin's face smashed into the seat before Christiansen's and Geiger's seats were ripped from their bolts, slamming their bodies into the control panel.

An eerie quiet descended as the shattered aircraft finally came to rest right side up.

Stunned, Kevin looked around the mangled cabin. His father and Christiansen lay motionless. The youngster yanked off his seat belt and shook his father's shoulder.
"Dad, are you OK?" There was no response. He shouted and shook him repeatedly, but Geiger did not stir. Beneath Kevin's trainers, water poured into the cockpit. The plane is sinking! he thought.

His father had drummed into him never to panic in an emergency. Frightened, with blood pouring from his mouth and searing pain in his back, the nine-year-old forced himself to think. There was no way to get his father or Christiansen out. And if he waited too long, he might not be able to open the door as water flooded in. Turning the handle on the buckled rear door, Kevin shoved it open. He wriggled through, then jumped into the water, swam to the pontoons and hopped onto one that had broken away from the fuselage. He straddled it surfboard style, shivering from shock and pain. He scanned the tree-lined shore about 45 metres away. He could easily make it, but he would not leave his father and Christiansen. They might need help when they surfaced.

He watched helplessly as the aircraft's cabin slipped underwater.
"Come on, Dad, come on, Harvey!" he pleaded. These were the longest minutes of his young life.

Cold water creeping over his nostrils brought Geiger around. The impact had knocked him unconscious, fracturing his skull and three vertebrae in his neck. Bones in his face were fractured, three ribs and his right wrist were broken, and blood streamed from a scalp wound so deep that it exposed the bone across his right brow. Groggy and disorientated, Geiger knew he was in danger of drowning. Then he remembered his friend. I've got to get Harvey out, he thought. Releasing his seat belt, he grasped Christiansen by the shoulders, twisted him around and recoiled in horror at the sight of a large hole above his friend's left eyebrow. (He later found out that Christiansen had been impaled by a sharp object and killed instantly.)

With the cabin now filled with water, Geiger clawed his way to the rear and shouldered through the door left open by his son.

Waiting on the pontoon, Kevin fought rising panic. It was unthinkable that his father and Christiansen might be drowning beneath his feet. Only the aeroplane's tail remained above water.

Suddenly, a head broke the surface.
"Dad! Are you OK?"
Kevin's elation evaporated when he saw blood oozing from his father's gruesome head and face wounds.
Geiger moaned as he grasped the pontoon and looked up in dumb disbelief at his son sitting astride it. His mind fogged by shock, he had no memory of Kevin being with them. "Kevin, what are you doing here?" he mumbled.

"What are you saying, Dad?" Kevin whimpered. "Your head is bleeding bad!"
Geiger ran his hand over his face. Blood trickled through his fingers. I've got to pull myself together – I'm scaring Kevin, he thought. Pulling off his T-shirt, he rolled it into a compress to stop the bleeding.

"What about Harvey?" Kevin asked.
"Harvey didn't make it," Geiger replied.

Worried about his father's injuries, Kevin knew he had to get him out of the water.
"Let's swim to land, Dad. It's not far," he said.

"OK. We'll use the pontoon," said Geiger, trying to push it away from the aeroplane.
It didn't budge. Geiger reached down and lifted a tangle of cables from the water; one restrained the pontoon. He remembered the multitool he always carried on his belt. Withdrawing it, he opened the pliers. "I'm going to cut the cable," he said. He squeezed the pliers, but his broken right wrist flopped uselessly. With Kevin holding the cable taut, he tried again and again, but the aircraft-grade cable was too tough. Suddenly, he froze. If he dropped the tool from his trembling hands, they would have nothing to help them survive on land. Carefully, he slid it back into its pouch.

By now even the slightest movement of his head brought Geiger pounding pain and nausea. Overwhelmed, he barely found the strength to cling to the pontoon. Kevin could see his father, ashen-faced and losing blood, was slipping away. "Come on, Dad, we can make it!" he begged.
"No, we stay here," Geiger ordered.

Just then, the blue cool bag Donna had bought them for the trip popped to the surface, right into Geiger's arms.
Geiger stared at it in amazement. "Mum wants us to swim," he said slowly, thinking, Thanks, Donna.

Kevin slipped into the water alongside his father. "You use the cool bag," Geiger told him. They set off, Kevin pushing the cool bag in front of him, his father swimming weakly alongside.

Geiger felt as if he were swimming through treacle, every stroke was agony. Halfway to shore he felt himself going under. Kevin swam to him. "Take hold of the cool bag," he said, pushing it to his father's chest. Geiger clung to it, panting, his face contorted in pain.
"You can make it, Dad," Kevin encouraged. "Keep swimming."
I can't let Kevin down, Geiger thought. He reached down, pulled off his shoes to make swimming easier and struck out again. Kevin was keeping him alive; without him, he would succumb. He marvelled at his boy's pluck. Trained in first aid, Geiger knew they were both suffering from shock, but his nine-year-old refused to give in.

As they reached shore, they dragged themselves, shivering, up a gently sloping bank. Geiger's watch had been lost in the crash, but he knew darkness would fall in about an hour. Even if someone had raised the alarm, no rescue aeroplanes could fly until dawn, and the chill northern night would bring the threat of hypothermia. Geiger made a ball of dry moss and bark shavings and, striking a rock with the multitool, tried to spark a fire, without success. Just then, overhead, Kevin and Geiger saw an aeroplane. They waved frantically but it flew on, without spotting the stranded pair, leaving them dispirited.

Geiger's heart went out to his son, who, despite the pain in his back and without complaint, helped him cut spruce boughs. They laid them down for a bed to keep them warm and to cover them from mosquitoes and deer flies. As darkness fell, Kevin shivered with cold as he tucked himself against his father.

His T-shirt lost in the water, Geiger was soon feasted upon by hordes of biting insects attracted by his wounds. Now and again he drifted into unconsciousness; each time Kevin let him rest a while, fanning the bugs away with a bough. Around midnight, Kevin began vomiting violently. Geiger feared internal injuries. "God, don't let my son die out here," he prayed.

Dawn arrived with leaden skies that threatened rain. Geiger knew that would make it harder for searchers to find them. "Someone will come," he reassured his son. But minutes turned into hours with no sign of rescue.

As darkness had fallen the previous evening, Tina Pomeroy came out of her cabin near the Jan Lake dock and noticed Christiansen's plane was not there. At 8am the next morning, she called pilot Kelly Stevenson at Pelican Narrows Air Service. He fired up his Beaver and soared skywards, flying directly towards Jan Lake. Six minutes later, his heart sank as he saw the canary yellow plane, its tail fin sticking out of the water on a small lake.

Stevenson circled low for a better look and saw two people emerge at the lakeside.

"Dad, I hear an aeroplane!" Kevin shouted.
They waved as Stevenson swooped over. Then, it seemed to Geiger that Stevenson was flying away.
"He's leaving us!" Kevin cried out, horrified.
"Don't worry – he's going to get a chopper," said Geiger. "This lake is too small for him to land."
Suddenly, the aeroplane reappeared, rapidly losing altitude. "My God, he is going to try to land!" said Geiger.

Stevenson carefully sized up the lake. From ripples in the water he could tell a light wind was blowing down the longest part. It would be tight, but experience – well over 5000 hours of flying in Beavers – told him he could make it.

Geiger and Kevin watched the Beaver skim the tree line and land hard in a cloud of spray. Stevenson then turned the aeroplane around and taxied towards the father and son.

As the pilot leapt out, he saw how badly injured Geiger was. And by the look in Geiger's eyes, Stevenson knew his friend Christiansen was dead.
"I'm sorry," said Geiger. Stevenson swallowed his grief and turned to Kevin.
"I'm afraid you have to get in the back of the aeroplane again," he said.
Stevenson knew it would be terrifying for the boy to board the same kind of aircraft as the one that had crashed.
He turned to Geiger. "I need your weight up front."

The men turned. Kevin had already clambered into the backseat. "Let's go!" he shouted. As Stevenson strapped him in, he said to Geiger, "That's one tough kid you've got there."

Stevenson taxied to the very last inch of the tiny lake, lined up into the wind and went to full power. As the aeroplane surged forward, he seesawed the control yoke back and forth to get maximum planing speed.
"God, don't let this rescue turn into another crash," Geiger muttered to himself as he watched Stevenson haul back on the yoke. The aeroplane climbed over the tree tops and they were clear.

Apart from strained back muscles and bruises, Kevin escaped serious injuries. Gus Geiger was flown to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon and was released in time to attend Harvey Christiansen's funeral. As they stood around the graveside, Kelly Stevenson flew over in his canary-yellow Beaver in tribute to his flying friend. Overcome, tears streamed down Geiger's face. Kevin looked up at him. "It's OK, Dad," he said.

Today, Geiger sees Kevin as a hero. "If it were not for him, I would have died."