"...Still farther south, mountain-girt Lituya Bay lay near the foot of
15,320-foot Mount Fairweather itself. Inside LaChausee Spit at the bay
entrance were two boats, the Badger, aboard which Bill and Vivian
Swanson, of Auburn, Wash., lay asleep, and the Sunmore, occupied by
Orville Wagner, of Idaho Inlet, and his young wife Mickey. Farther in,
near Lituya's south shore, were Howard Uhlrich and his 7-year-old son
Junior, in the 38-foot Edrie. Just in from a day of fishing, they all
sought a night's shelter before undertaking another day of labor in the
Alaskan Gulf.

....The Swansons and the Uhlrichs in Lituya Bay rose in alarm to gaze in
unbelieving wonder and terror. Swanson and his wife later insisted that
the terminal ice mass of Lituya Glacier rose into view from behind a
headland up the bay, with great masses falling from its face, and then
fell majestically into the water, creating a wave that went over the
whole headland. It then caromed down the bay, scouring the shores of
their trees, obliterating the mountaineer's campsite, overrunning
Cenotaph Island and its lone cabin, and killing the Wagners and all but
killing the Swansons in a surfboard kind of plunge of their two boats
across 40-foot high LaChausee Spit to destruction in the sea outside -
a wave of such improbability as to strain the credulity of later
investigators, and to remain a scientific puzzle.

....Eyewitness stories of the Lituya Bay events come from the Swansons
and from Howard Uhlrich. Bill and Vivian Swanson, occupants of the
Badger during her mad flight across LaChausee Spit in company with the
ill-fated Wagners, somehow managed to get clear of the wreck in an
8-foot punt, undergoing exposure and fright as well as loss of their
worldly possessions, before their rescue by a fisherman named Graham in
the trawler Luman. They were quickly flown to Juneau in a rescue plane
and, after a short hospital rest, were able to describe their
experience. They were sure they had seen the glacier riding high into
sight from behind the western mountain, followed by a great wave of
water washing over its steep face. During the following wild ride
across the spit they believed they were 100 feet high, for there had
been trees on the spit, and they were above them. They looked down on
rocks as big as houses. They were incredulous and deeply thankful to be
alive.

The story told by the other survivors, Howard Uhlrich and his son, will
probably be unmatched for a long time to come. In a vivid account
published in the Alaska Sportsman Uhlrich tells how they enetered the
bay on the last of the floodtide for rest after a day of poor fishing.
He anchored Edrie in a cove on the south side a mile or so inside the
entrance, and after supper he and Sonny went to sleep, only to be
awakened by violent motions soon after 10:15. Dashing to the deck,
Uhlrich beheld the writhing and twisting of the high peaks and the
clouds of dust and flying snow about their summits. Petrified, he
watched for 2 minutes or more until his attention was attracted to a
new sight. There was a gigantic wall of water which he thought to be
1800 feet high erupting against the western mountain, then coming down
the bay, cutting a swath through the trees on the summit of Cenotaph
Island, backlashing against the eastern shore up to a height of 500
feet, then heading for the Edrie, now a wall of water 50 feet high.

Suddenly he realized he had to move. Cursing himself for delaying, he
got a life jacket on Sonny, then somehow got the engine going, but he
was unable to heave the anchor in time. Just before the water struck he
veered the chain to its end, hoping to slip it, at the same time
maneuvering the Edrie to face the wave. As she lifted to the swell the
chain tightened and snapped, its short end whipping up and winding
around the pilothouse. The boat was swept, completely out of control
over what had been dry land a moment before. By now Uhlrich remembered
his radio. Shouting into it, he made the international voice-radio
distress call, "Mayday, Mayday - Edrie in Lituya Bay - all hell broke
loose - I think we've had it - goodby!" The wave, however, changed
course and bounced off the shore, allowing Uhlrich, with strenuous
efforts and certainly with superb seamanship, to get his boat under a
kind of control. He now began devoting himself to evading huge chunks
of churning ice, any one of which could have made kindling wood of the
Edrie."