It was just after 9 p.m. Monday and Fred Lind was walking his dog along the shore of Kluane Lake in Destruction Bay.

Lind, who is on his way to Alaska from Vancouver Island, looked up to see a small Maule 5 float plane coming in toward the community's floating dock.

"It was a perfectly clear night; the water was completely calm," Lind recalled in an interview this morning.

"The pilot made almost a perfect landing coming into the sun. Then somehow, he hit the water with one wing down and the plane just flipped."

Lind was stunned. He watched as the pilot crawled from his single-engine float plane, which was now upside down in the lake.

"He didn't come right out," Lind said. "He must have stayed in there trying to get his wife out. When he came out, he was holding his head either in grief or in pain and yelling for help."

The pilot, a 69-year-old man who had been flying with his wife through the Yukon on their way to the Lower 48, clung to one of the floats as locals mobilized.

"They had three boats in the water within minutes," Loren Maluorno, owner of the Destruction Bay Lodge, told the Star.

"We had just finished up dinner, and we saw the plane come in low over the water.

"We never heard it taxi in."

Instead, Maluorno received the first of several calls alerting him to what had happened.

"Telephones were ringing all across the communities, here and in Burwash (Landing)," he said.

"Everyone moved. Within minutes, there were three boats in the water and about 15 people out there. Within half an hour, there were 30 or 40 people at the lake responding to the crash."

One of the first people on the scene was Sam White, who runs a fishing charter out of the tiny Alaska Highway community.

"I was in the restaurant when my uncle came running in and told me a plane had gone down," he said.

White rushed to the dock and was the second man to have his boat in the water.

"When I got to the plane, the pilot was hanging onto the float and he told me his wife was inside," White said.

"I put a floater coat in and I jumped in. The front door was underwater already, and you couldn't get it open because of the pressure of the water.

"I could get to the back door, and I started pulling stuff out of the back - luggage and everything, trying to get to the woman."

White finally got the bags out of the way, but the 63-year-old woman was strapped in tight. By this time, she was unconscious and White was battling the freezing water, now generously mixed with plane fuel.

"We just couldn't get her out," he said. "I pulled and pulled for about 10 minutes, but with the cold and the (aviation) gas, I couldn't stay in there any longer."

With the passenger door sealed shut and the safety harness holding the woman underwater, there was nothing the rescuers could do to get her out.

"I think he knew his wife wasn't going to make it," White said of the pilot. "He was calm, but very disturbed."

Back on shore, the town's tow truck driver had his vehicle waiting. With ropes and chains, the rescuers slowly winched the plane in from where it had crashed, about 100 metres out from the breakwater.

The pilot was taken to the community's nursing station, where the resident nurse and a vacationing doctor treated him for shock and got him warmed up.

The Yukon's RCMP said today they will be investigating the fatal crash along with the coroner's office and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Officials are not releasing the names of the couple until their family has been notified. Their flight had originated in Alaska.