A well-known Alaska hunting guide and a teen employee from Michigan died in last week’s crash of a small plane near the Wrangell Mountains.
Alaska State Troopers identified the pilot and passenger as 42-year-old Cabot Pitts, of Palmer, and 18-year-old Connor Helsel, of Michigan.
The fatal crash on Sept. 17 was the second last week involving an Alaska hunting trip. Pilot Nicholas Peters and Missouri resident John “Jack” Ervin died on Sept. 15 when the Cessna 185 Peters flew crashed after taking off from a moose camp near Aniak in Western Alaska.
The crash involving Pitts and Helsel occurred during the evening. The Piper Cub went down shortly after taking off from a dirt airstrip in the Snag Creek area, authorities said.
The crash occurred within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and about 15 miles from the Canadian border.
The crash occurred on what seemed to be a routine flight, officials say.
Pitts and Helsel were moving from one camp to another when the plane went down, according to Millicent Hill, an aviation safety investigator and acting Alaska region chief for the National Transportation Safety Board.
The crash was about 50 miles east-southeast of Nabesna and 50 miles south-southeast of Northway, she said.
Hill will be investigating the crash. She said she hopes to get to the site on Wednesday.
Pitts, who owned Alaska Wild Wind Adventures, was president of the Alaska Professional Hunters Association, according to a remembrance the group posted this week. He was a husband and father, the group said.
Helsel was working for Pitts this summer. The son of a church pastor, he left for Alaska in late July, according to social media posts by family members.
Since last month, 16 people have died in four plane crashes in Alaska including the two hunt-related flights.
On Aug. 20, eight people died in the crash of a government-chartered plane at a remote radar site on the Bering Sea coast. Six days later, four people were killed when their plane crashed into a slough just after an aborted landing attempt at Seldovia’s airport on the Kenai Peninsula.
