Alaska State Troopers say an 18-year-old Michigan native and the veteran pilot flying him died Thursday evening when their plane crashed shortly after takeoff from a remote dirt airstrip near Snag Creek in the Wrangell Mountains, roughly 50 miles southeast of Nabesna. The passenger, Connor Helsel, graduated high school in May and moved to Alaska to work as a packer, earn an assistant guide license, and eventually go into youth ministry. The pilot, 42-year-old Cabot Pitts of Palmer, owned Alaska Wild Wind Adventures and served as president of the Alaska Professional Hunters Association.
Friends and former clients remembered Pitts as a consummate professional who treated strangers like lifelong friends. One retired Kentucky game warden learned within minutes of two separate fatal crashes that he had lost two pilots who had flown him on Alaska hunts. Pitts died just days after pilot Nicholas Peters was killed in a separate crash near Aniak.
The losses land hard in a state where small planes are often the only way in or out of the backcountry. For a family in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and for a guiding community that runs on trust, the grief is just beginning. If you have spent time in remote country, or know someone who has, you understand the weight of a story like this one. What would you want people to know about the guides and pilots who make that world possible?
