PLANE ON FIRE: Suffering from major burns, McGregor still able to walk out.

Anchorage Daily News

By RICHARD MAUER

Published: 10/16/09

As wildlife advocates mourned the plane-crash death of Gordon Haber, the biologist who spent 40 years documenting the lives and societies of Denali’s wolves, his pilot was recovering Friday in a burn center in Seattle after hiking 20 miles back to civilization.

Details of the crash and rescue operation in the heart of Denali National Park emerged Friday, two days after the Cessna 185 used by Haber crashed in spruce trees near the East Fork of the Toklat River, the locale of one of the wolf packs Haber was studying.

The pilot, Daniel McGregor, 35, told a park ranger that he was able to free himself from the wreckage, according to Clint Johnson, senior investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

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