‘You just drink lots and lots of water’

For 32 hours straight, Dave Layzell lay in his sleeping bag, listening to the rain.

For 32 hours straight, Dave Layzell lay in his sleeping bag, listening to the rain.

“I had nothing to eat, so I had no reason to get up and cook, so I just laid there,” the 67-year-old Whitehorse man recalled in an interview with the Star this morning.

Layzell was rescued by a helicopter crew last Friday afternoon, 21 days after his truck became stuck on a wilderness mining road between Dawson City and Mayo on Aug. 9.

He stretched out what food he had with him for eight days, knowing it could be a very long time before anybody had any reason to be worried - a very long time.

“One day, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and little fruitcup,” he said.

There were two cups of coffee on another day, and the day after, a can of stew.

“After eight days, there was nothing left.”

Layzell was on the Clear Creek Road, pursuing a dream of someday moving an old gold dredge - the last gold dredge to ever work in the world, as he understands it - into the site of the Copperbelt Railway and Mining Museum in the Kopper King area of Whitehorse.

Somebody had told him it was located about 50 kilometres up the Clear Creek Road. At kilometre 48, his truck sank in a section of the wilderness that likely wouldn’t have presented a problem, but for this summer’s damp and soggy conditions.

Layzell immediately ruled out walking out alone, risking eight or nine creek crossings in water that was swift and relatively deep.

The risk of being pushed over by the current, twisting an ankle and suffering any other injury was too great, and if it happened, he would be a lot worse off than he was staying where he was, he realized.

In any case, the former survival instructor has always taught that it’s always best to stay with the vehicle, because it’s always the vehicle - truck, ATV, boat - that provides the initial reference point for search and rescue efforts, he said.

“So I just told myself to ‘keep your mind positive, and keep your arse right where it is,’” he said.

Layzell said he did tell people that he planned to travel up the Clear Creek Road, but that he was also planning to do this while his wife, Jude, was away for most of August. He said he would hang around the house, go camping for a day with the dog.

There was no reason, he said, for anybody to miss him, and he knew it.

He knew that it wouldn’t likely be until his wife arrived home in a couple of weeks that authorities would be notified of his absence.

There was always the possibility he’d be found by coincidence, by an aircraft passing overhead that noticed his camp and distress signals, or by other traffic in what is a remote area. But those chances were slim.

Under daunting circumstances, it’s essential to remain positive, to keep pushing the negative thoughts from your head.

And he prayed.

“It’s not the first time in my life that it has been proven to me that somebody up there likes me, because they do take care of me,” he said.

In all seriousness, he said, he didn’t fight major hunger pains until the last two or three days before he was rescued.

“You just drink lots and lots of water, and keep your belly as full of water as you can.”

But it was in those last-week days that Layzell said he truly did acquire a real appreciation of the plight of so many of world’s starving.

Just as he suspected initially that he was in for along haul, he also believed he could expect some search and rescue activity to begin shortly after his wife arrived home on Aug. 25, or Monday of last week.

And indeed, the territory’s flight services office spread the word to keep an eye out for a stranded green truck, and the RCMP had activated a search and rescue effort, and a territory-wide call for anybody who might have seen Layzell travelling with his dog in his green truck.

Friends started a fund to help expand the search and rescue effort.

Fireweed Helicopters pilot Kit Brink and a fellow pilot Brent Van Sickle, who was catching a ride to Mayo, decided when they lifted off in Dawson to make a detour and check the Clear Creek area, as it has been suggested Layzell may have travelled through there.

Layzell had figured somebody would come by Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest.

When Thursday came and went, he was convinced he would be rescued between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. But 2 p.m. came and went.

At 2:25 came the whop-whop of the chopper, and Layzell put his boots on and got out of the tent to wave his arms.

Initially catching a glint off Layzell’s truck, Brink circled with his Bell 206 Longranger, and then landed.

“He said, ‘you’re Dave Layzell’, and I said, ‘I am Dave Layzell and you’re 25 minutes late.’”

With his arm around Van Sickle, and the young pilot propping him up, a weak Layzell crossed the the tricky bog to the Longranger, while Brink carried Layzell’s 14-year-old Labrador, Brandy.

Like his wife yesterday, Layzell offered thanks to so many who provided assistance in the search, and emotional support and kindness, particularly to his wife through the days of uncertainty.

When he arrived in Mayo, Dr. Majid Bakri even checked Brandy to make sure the dog was OK.

“I am very happy and pleased with the way everybody responded.”

Layzell recalled that while in the grips of hunger, he imagined the meals he would have with his wife, and with his friends.

“One of those meals was beef sausage and scrambled eggs,” he said. “And that’s what I had for supper last night.”

Layzell said he’ll be working with friends to make a plan for retrieving what is left at his campsite next to Clear Creek.

And if weather conditions permit, he plans to continue his initial pursuit.

“If it is at all possible, I am going to get pictures of that dredge and bring them out with me.”