Americana Outdoors E-Magazine - May 2022

SOS: Snowmobiler Seriously Injured After Fall Off Ledge Gabe Kitter, a 31-year-old lifelong Alaskan, has been riding snowmobiles since nearly as long as he could walk. He considers himself a very experienced rider and shared with Garmin the story that he said would be “unbelievable if you would have told it to me previous to my accident.” swamp, picking our way around the open water caused by the beaver dam. We started to work our way into the base of the valley, where we had high hopes of finding fresh animal signs.

On our way into the valley, we stopped to look at some massive tracks. As we continued to carefully pick our way down fairly steep hills, we finally made it to the valley floor. Once we had reached the bottom of the valley, we decided to make our way up the left side the valley. After a half-mile or so, we came across a bear den that looked to be a couple of days old. The dirt was pulled out, and bear tracks there were crusted over and old, which meant the bear probably wasn’t going to be milling around nearby. We decided to split up and look for fresh tracks. I decided to cover the left hillside, and Steve stuck to the valley floor. We continued our way into the valley searching for signs. We soon worked our way out of sight of each other.

The accident happened on a spring hunt in the mountains just south of the small town of Cantwell. It was me and my hunting partner’s second weekend in a row chasing tracks and covering as much country as possible early in the morning — before the heat of the sun caused the snow to become mashed potatoes and impassable. Due to the great concrete-like snow conditions, it made it easy to cover ground early in the morning. The story startswith the typical Pop-Tarts breakfast in the enclosed trailer on the side of the highway around 7 a.m. My partner, Steve, and I set out around 8 a.m. to a predetermined location we had scoped out the night before. We crossed a large

As I made my way along the left side of the valley