[AlaskaRC] news article mentioning ARCS Doug Franklin

[Mark Bendersky]

  State NewsAnchorage man was near Everest when fatal avalanche hitBy DEVIN 
KELLY
  dkelly at adn.comApril 19, 2014 Updated 12 hours ago
  2014-04-20T15:12:01Z
  By DEVIN KELLY Anchorage_Daily_News
   On the day an avalanche struck Mount Everest and claimed the lives of at 
least 13 Nepalese guides, an Anchorage traveler was on a nearby peak.Just 
before sunrise on Friday, Douglas Franklin was climbing up the slope of a 
neighboring mountain called Kala Patthar when his group "heard a couple of 
tremendous cracks," he wrote later on Facebook. As he soon learned, that was 
the sound of a chunk of ice breaking off Everest's south face, sending a 
slide of ice and snow tumbling down into a section of the mountain known as 
the Khumbu icefall.After snapping photos of the sunrise, the group trekked 
back down to Everest base camp, where a grim scene was unfolding."It was 
really tragic. Helis running up and down the mountain slinging bodies," 
Franklin, 53, wrote in a text to his wife, Joyce Mayer."Huge slab broke off 
and took them," he said in another text. "You could see the scar on the 
mountain and it is a big mountain."Under the shadow of the tragedy, which 
experts described as the deadliest single day on the world's tallest peak, 
Franklin's group broke camp and headed back down to the village of Gorak 
Shep. Franklin, who works for the GCI subsidiary Cycle30 and is also a 
writer, was on a three-week trekking trip around base camp and was not 
planning to summit Everest, Mayer said.Mayer first heard about the avalanche 
from a high school friend Thursday night. She texted her husband but saw 
from online news reports that the victims appeared to be mostly Sherpa 
guides."That's a tragedy," she said.As of Saturday night, three guides were 
still missing.

  Read more here: 
http://www.adn.com/2014/04/19/3433088/anchorage-man-was-near-everest.html?sp=/99/188/189/#storylink=cpy