Man lives three-hour nightmare after getting stuck face-down in a glacier creek under 700-pound boulder

An Alaskan man was stuck face-down in a glacier creek for three hours under a 700-pound boulder and managed to come away relatively unscathed.

For Kell Morris, it was a combination of sheer luck and quick thinking from his wife that led to a positive outcome.

As they waited for rescuers to arrive, Morris's wife, retired Alaska State Trooper Jo Roop, stopped him from drowning by holding up his head. Kell was pinned by the boulder that crashed onto him during a hike near a remote glacier south of Anchorage, Associated Pressreported.

The couple had been hiking near Godwin Glacier on an isolated and undeveloped trail where there were large boulders (weighing up to 1,000 pounds) from the glacier.

Morris made sure to avoid these, but there was a part of the trail he couldn't get by.

Kell Morris, left, and his wife Jo Roop, in Sandpoint, Idaho Kell Morris via AP

“I was coming back and everything, the whole side slid out from under me,” he recalled, leading him to fall about 20 feet (6 meters) and land face down in the water.

That's when he felt the boulder on his back, as detailed by Seward Fire Chief Clinton Crites as “basically an avalanche of boulders”.

So, how wasn't Morris immediately crushed?

Crites detailed how the position he landed in meant that there were rocks all around and under him that managed to catch the boulder's weight and ultimately stopped him from being crushed.

However, that's not to say Morris wasn't in pain, as he felt this intense pain in his left leg from where the rock had him pinned.

After half an hour of his wife trying to get him out, she luckily only had to move 300 yards (274 meters) to get a signal to call emergency services, and thanks to her previous job experience, she knew to give dispatch their GPS coordinates.

This call was heard by a Bear Creek Fire Department volunteer working a sled dog tourism operation, who responded by diverting a helicopter to the scene where the firefighters jumped out to reach Morris, who at this point was hypothermic from the cold water running off the glacier.

“I think if we hadn’t had that private helicopter assist us, it would have taken us at least another 45 minutes to get to him, and I’m not sure he had that much time,” Crites said.

Luckily for the couple, a sled dog tourism company just so happened to overhear the 911 dispatch and diverted the helicopter used to ferry tourists to help rescuers get to the scene, as it was inaccessible to all-terrain vehicles.

Firefighters were able to lift the boulder a little by using two airbags, typically used to remove people from wrecked vehicles.

“But then it just became an all-hands brute force of ‘one, two, three, push,’ ” Crites said. “And seven guys were able to lift it enough to pull the victim out.”

In the end, seven rescuers were able to lift the boulder off the 61-year-old with inflatable airbags - a process during which Moriss fell in and out of consciousness.

He was then lifted out by an Alaska National Guard helicopter with a rescue basket, and sent to a local hospital where he spent two nights and was ultimately left unscathed from it all.

After the ordeal, Morris noted he's perhaps the luckiest man alive, adding: “And luckier that I have such a great wife."

“We’re going to stop the trailblazing,” he concluded from his nightmare experience.

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