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The strength within
By TIM MOWRY, Staff Writer
When Vernon Stickman saw Tommy Kriska trapped beneath the back of the boat they had been racing down Manley Hot Springs Slough at 70 mph just a few seconds earlier, it didn't look good.
"Tommy was underneath the motor and fuel tank and gas was dumping all over him," Stickman said. "I tried lifting the boat but I couldn't."
But when Stickman looked over and saw Kriska's wife, Sherri, lying on a sandbar with a twisted leg, screaming to get the boat off her husband, a surge of adrenaline hit him.
"I knew from the look of her leg it was broken," Stickman said of Sherri Kriska. "She kept screaming to get the motor off Tommy.
"I tried again and I was able to lift it up off of him for him to crawl out," Stickman said.
Tommy Kriska, who suffered a broken arm in the wreck, still can't fathom how the 5-foot 4-inch, 140-pound Stickman managed to lift the back of the boat, which probably weighed more than 500 pounds with the motor and fuel tanks.
"I don't know how the hell he picked up the whole end of the boat," Kriska said, shaking his head. "He must have got an adrenaline rush or something."
Stickman, though, said it was just natural reaction.
"It happened so fast I didn't have time to get scared," the 49-year-old Stickman said. "It all happened within seconds."
The two Kriskas and Stickman were in one of five boats competing in a 140-mile boat race from Manley Hot Springs to Tanana and back on Monday. They were the third boat out and were only about 5 miles from the starting line when things went bad.
One second Tommy Kriska was guiding his boat, the Miss Nay Nay Rose, down Manley Hot Springs Slough at approximately 70 mph and the next second the boat was spiraling through the air.
"We were making a good, clean turn and something must have caught the air trap underneath the boat," Sherri Kriska said Wednesday from her bed at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, where she is recovering from her injuries. "The next thing I know, we were spiraling in the air."
The narrow 24-foot-long wooden boat flipped three times, she said.
"I just tried to hang on; I knew we were going to be landing on the ground," said Sherri Kriska, a 39-year-old mother of five. "I could feel Vernon get thrown from the boat."
All Stickman remembers is the boat leaving the water when it hit the sand bar.
"We hit and went airborne," he said. "All I seen was the sky and the sand bar. I flew out of the boat after the first spin."
Stickman landed 15 feet from the boat and neither Tommy nor Sherri Kriska were in sight.
"I thought they were in the water," he said.
When he didn't find them in the water, Stickman went to the other side of the boat and found Sherri Kriska under the front of the boat and Tommy Kriska pinned beneath the back. Stickman picked the front of the boat up enough to allow Sherri Kriska to crawl out onto the sand bar and then focused on getting Tommy Kriska loose.
Sherri Kriska saw her husband trapped and her first instinct was to help him.
"I started crawling over there and that's when I realized there was something wrong with my leg," she said.
She could see Tommy, 44, struggling to get out from under the boat.
"Then he quit talking and his legs went limp," Sherri Kriska said, tears welling in her eyes. "I thought he was gone and I started screaming.
"I think that's what Vernon needed, that extra adrenaline rush," she said.
This time, Stickman managed to give Kriska enough room to squeeze out.
"Then he hopped up like nothing was wrong," said Sherri Kriska. "I was amazed."
Fellow racer Tyler Huntington, who was following two minutes behind Kriska, was first to arrive at the crash scene and Sherri Kriska told him to go back to Manley for help, which he did.
A couple of unknown canoeists that Kriska had passed in the slough were the next to arrive and another boat captained by Milton Moses Jr. stopped and helped attend to the injured boaters until help arrived.
Race officials called Alaska State Troopers, who then alerted the 68th Medical Company Air Ambulance from Fort Wainwright at around 12:30 p.m. Four hours later, all three racers were being treated at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.
While Sherri Kriska dislocated her hip and Tommy Kriska broke his arm, Stickman walked away with only bumps and bruises, though doctors told him to wait a few days before going back to work as a laborer for the Interior Regional Housing Authority.
"I didn't fracture any ribs but they sure feel like it," he said. "I think if I had stayed in the boat I would have been busted up, too."
The Kriskas are thinking about hosting an appreciation dinner for all those who helped them during the ordeal, said Sherri Kriska.
As for the cause of the crash, the best Tommy Kriska can figure is that one of the boat's air traps, which are strips of 2-inch aluminum angle iron attached to the bottom for speed, must have hit something that caused the boat to veer toward the bank.
"It just hooked us like a fish," he said. "It was a freak accident."
A veteran boat and snowmachine racer, Tommy Kriska won the Yukon 800 from Fairbanks to Galena and back in 1996 with Stickman as a crew member and just two weeks ago finished second in the same race with his wife and oldest daughter, 21-year-old Charlisa, as his crew members.
Though he has "kited," a term boat racers use to describe what happens when air picks up the front of a boat and spins it around, a few times in his 15-year boat racing career, Tommy Kriska had never crashed.
"I've flipped in the Iron Dog a few times at 100 mph but it seems like the boats are more dangerous," said Tommy Kriska, who has raced several times in the 2,000-mile Tesoro Iron Dog snowmachine race. "Either way, you've got a lot of sharp objects flying around you."
Both he and his wife were thankful Charlisa wasn't on board. She had to work on Monday and Stickman, who hadn't raced with the Kriskas for 10 years, filled in for her.
"If it were my daughter in the boat I don't know if she would have had the strength to get that motor off Tommy," said Sherri Kriska, a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines. "It could have turned out a lot worse; it could have been fatal."
Even so, after hitting almost 73 mph on Manley Slough, Tommy Kriska can't help but wonder what kind of speed he might have attained on the wide-open Tanana River.
"We had had some serious speed," he said with a gleam in his eye.
Sherri Kriska wonders too. One thing is sure, the accident hasn't scared her away from boat racing.
"I still want to race," she said.
By TIM MOWRY, Staff Writer
When Vernon Stickman saw Tommy Kriska trapped beneath the back of the boat they had been racing down Manley Hot Springs Slough at 70 mph just a few seconds earlier, it didn't look good.
"Tommy was underneath the motor and fuel tank and gas was dumping all over him," Stickman said. "I tried lifting the boat but I couldn't."
But when Stickman looked over and saw Kriska's wife, Sherri, lying on a sandbar with a twisted leg, screaming to get the boat off her husband, a surge of adrenaline hit him.
"I knew from the look of her leg it was broken," Stickman said of Sherri Kriska. "She kept screaming to get the motor off Tommy.
"I tried again and I was able to lift it up off of him for him to crawl out," Stickman said.
Tommy Kriska, who suffered a broken arm in the wreck, still can't fathom how the 5-foot 4-inch, 140-pound Stickman managed to lift the back of the boat, which probably weighed more than 500 pounds with the motor and fuel tanks.
"I don't know how the hell he picked up the whole end of the boat," Kriska said, shaking his head. "He must have got an adrenaline rush or something."
Stickman, though, said it was just natural reaction.
"It happened so fast I didn't have time to get scared," the 49-year-old Stickman said. "It all happened within seconds."
The two Kriskas and Stickman were in one of five boats competing in a 140-mile boat race from Manley Hot Springs to Tanana and back on Monday. They were the third boat out and were only about 5 miles from the starting line when things went bad.
One second Tommy Kriska was guiding his boat, the Miss Nay Nay Rose, down Manley Hot Springs Slough at approximately 70 mph and the next second the boat was spiraling through the air.
"We were making a good, clean turn and something must have caught the air trap underneath the boat," Sherri Kriska said Wednesday from her bed at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, where she is recovering from her injuries. "The next thing I know, we were spiraling in the air."
The narrow 24-foot-long wooden boat flipped three times, she said.
"I just tried to hang on; I knew we were going to be landing on the ground," said Sherri Kriska, a 39-year-old mother of five. "I could feel Vernon get thrown from the boat."
All Stickman remembers is the boat leaving the water when it hit the sand bar.
"We hit and went airborne," he said. "All I seen was the sky and the sand bar. I flew out of the boat after the first spin."
Stickman landed 15 feet from the boat and neither Tommy nor Sherri Kriska were in sight.
"I thought they were in the water," he said.
When he didn't find them in the water, Stickman went to the other side of the boat and found Sherri Kriska under the front of the boat and Tommy Kriska pinned beneath the back. Stickman picked the front of the boat up enough to allow Sherri Kriska to crawl out onto the sand bar and then focused on getting Tommy Kriska loose.
Sherri Kriska saw her husband trapped and her first instinct was to help him.
"I started crawling over there and that's when I realized there was something wrong with my leg," she said.
She could see Tommy, 44, struggling to get out from under the boat.
"Then he quit talking and his legs went limp," Sherri Kriska said, tears welling in her eyes. "I thought he was gone and I started screaming.
"I think that's what Vernon needed, that extra adrenaline rush," she said.
This time, Stickman managed to give Kriska enough room to squeeze out.
"Then he hopped up like nothing was wrong," said Sherri Kriska. "I was amazed."
Fellow racer Tyler Huntington, who was following two minutes behind Kriska, was first to arrive at the crash scene and Sherri Kriska told him to go back to Manley for help, which he did.
A couple of unknown canoeists that Kriska had passed in the slough were the next to arrive and another boat captained by Milton Moses Jr. stopped and helped attend to the injured boaters until help arrived.
Race officials called Alaska State Troopers, who then alerted the 68th Medical Company Air Ambulance from Fort Wainwright at around 12:30 p.m. Four hours later, all three racers were being treated at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.
While Sherri Kriska dislocated her hip and Tommy Kriska broke his arm, Stickman walked away with only bumps and bruises, though doctors told him to wait a few days before going back to work as a laborer for the Interior Regional Housing Authority.
"I didn't fracture any ribs but they sure feel like it," he said. "I think if I had stayed in the boat I would have been busted up, too."
The Kriskas are thinking about hosting an appreciation dinner for all those who helped them during the ordeal, said Sherri Kriska.
As for the cause of the crash, the best Tommy Kriska can figure is that one of the boat's air traps, which are strips of 2-inch aluminum angle iron attached to the bottom for speed, must have hit something that caused the boat to veer toward the bank.
"It just hooked us like a fish," he said. "It was a freak accident."
A veteran boat and snowmachine racer, Tommy Kriska won the Yukon 800 from Fairbanks to Galena and back in 1996 with Stickman as a crew member and just two weeks ago finished second in the same race with his wife and oldest daughter, 21-year-old Charlisa, as his crew members.
Though he has "kited," a term boat racers use to describe what happens when air picks up the front of a boat and spins it around, a few times in his 15-year boat racing career, Tommy Kriska had never crashed.
"I've flipped in the Iron Dog a few times at 100 mph but it seems like the boats are more dangerous," said Tommy Kriska, who has raced several times in the 2,000-mile Tesoro Iron Dog snowmachine race. "Either way, you've got a lot of sharp objects flying around you."
Both he and his wife were thankful Charlisa wasn't on board. She had to work on Monday and Stickman, who hadn't raced with the Kriskas for 10 years, filled in for her.
"If it were my daughter in the boat I don't know if she would have had the strength to get that motor off Tommy," said Sherri Kriska, a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines. "It could have turned out a lot worse; it could have been fatal."
Even so, after hitting almost 73 mph on Manley Slough, Tommy Kriska can't help but wonder what kind of speed he might have attained on the wide-open Tanana River.
"We had had some serious speed," he said with a gleam in his eye.
Sherri Kriska wonders too. One thing is sure, the accident hasn't scared her away from boat racing.
"I still want to race," she said.