Deadly Squall

ON FEBRUARY 21, 1959, a single-engine plane operated by two physicians, Ralph Miller '24 and Robert Quinn, crashed during a sudden snow squall en route from Berlin to Lebanon, New Hampshire, setting off the largest—and longest —search in state history. More than 500 of the searchers were organized by the Dartmouth Outing Club, many of them students who withdrew from the College to aid the cause. Long after hope ran out of finding the two men alive, rescuers working in conjunction with a massive army air search discovered the plane on May 5 near the Thoreau Falls trail in the heart of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. A diary left behind showed that the two doctors had survived the crash and, using a bone saw and medical tape, had even fashioned crude snowshoes out of hemlock boughs and attempted to find their way to civilization. Turned back by the storm and lack of food, however, they returned to the plane and waited for help to reach them. As the men moved closer to death, they recorded their observations in the diary. Nighttime temperatures as low as minus-ten were entered. "Survival instinct fights pain," was Miller's final message.

The "Quinn-Miller Memorial Air Strip" was later built in the vast wooded area of the Second College Grant as a memorial-and to help prevent a similar tragedy.

Miller (right) suruiued the cradh and, with Quinn, fashioned primitive snowshoes (left)-all in vain.