Recovery efforts for a small plane that crashed in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park last month have been called off.
Clint Johnson with the National Transportation Safety Board said it’s rare that a wreck is this inaccessible.
“It’s not often we see this where we can’t get to an accident site or recover the victims or the wreckage,” Johnson said.
Alaska State Troopers reported on Aug. 28 that a Beechcraft Bonanza carrying two people had gone missing after leaving Glennallen the day before on the way to Ketchikan.
Officials say Clayton McMartin and Melissa McMartin from Roanoke, Texas, were on the plane.
The plane was last heard from 18 miles inland of Cape Yakataga, near Yakutat.
A U.S. Coast Guard aircraft spotted wreckage in a glaciated area with deep crevasses near Mt. Leeper in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park on Aug. 28.
National Park staff, Alaska State Troopers and the National Transportation Safety Board have been attempting to recover the wreckage since then, but poor weather conditions hampered early efforts.
Now, officials say that the wreckage location, in an area with deep crevasses, is permanently inaccessible.
The NTSB preliminary report does not give a clear reason for the crash, but Johnson said that based on the information they have and photos of the crash site, it was a high-speed crash.
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