Alaska man jumped between ice floes before helicopter rescue

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – A man rescued from a drifting sheet of floating ice in northwest Alaska says he had to jump from floe to floe as the ice started breaking into smaller pieces.

The Anchorage Daily News reports Phillip Rode, John Culp Jr. and James Gibson were rescued by a helicopter Sunday after they became stranded miles off the coast of Nome.

Rode says the group was recovering gold mining equipment from an ice shelf that was beginning to detach from a beach.

The ice broke loose as they were moving equipment, but they didn’t immediately realize they had drifted into the Bering Sea.

Rode says the ice started cracking under them, and the floes became farther apart.

He says he ended up on an ice floe no bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle.
—
Information from: Anchorage Daily News, http://www.adn.com