Dateline NBC - Into the Wild

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

In this Dateline classic, McKenzie Morgan wants more than anything to learn how to fly. So in August 2013 she takes off on her final solo flight before getting her pilot’s license. All seems well, ��until her Cessna 172 vanishes. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on August 24, 2014.

Our daughter chose to go up and fly in an airplane. She was always just driven to be perfect. My dad pulled up and said, Mackenzie's missing. And you think, I am not ready to plan a funeral. A teenage girl out to earn her pilot's license sets off on a solo flight. She was well trained. She's capable.

But something went wrong. I started thinking she should be there by now. Hours stretched on without any word. Her parents, frantic. I had that eerie feeling, the kind that you don't entertain as a parent. Something wasn't right. Mackenzie had vanished, leaving behind empty skies and a terrible fear. Had her plane gone down some of the country's most dangerous terrain. There's mountain

lions, there's coyotes, it's not where you'd want to see yourself let alone a young girl. A search becomes a race against time. If it got dark it would really add to the chance that she would end up dying out there. Had a girl's dream turned deadly? A treacherous journey leading to an astounding discovery. What was that like to see? It was a shock. I'm Lester Holt and this is Day Blind. Here's Keith Morrison with Into the Wild. There are places in the American West that quite rightly inspire fear along with awe. Like the wild haunts of grizzlies in Wyoming's Absaroka Mountains.

Like the overconfident heart of a precocious teenage girl. Like the terrified love of a parent when the girl is gone. You have no control. You're in God's hands, so to speak. I mean, it was miserable. But her? Nobody thought it would happen to Mackenzie Morgan. You're just quiet,

because there's not a thing that we can do. To Mackenzie's parents, Steve and Christy, she was always exceptional. They're super girl. Mackenzie's the type of kid that started reading at two, two and a half, was speaking in sentences at a year and a half. She excelled in school, threw a wicked curveball, and had a sixth sense for the outdoors, developed elk hunting with her dad. She was a great kid. But she's always wanted to go off and do the next thing. The next thing. Do it as good as you can. More than anything, Mackenzie wanted to fly.

Frankly, that desire came packaged in her genes. Great-grandfather, grandfather, uncles, like Jared Hansen, all pilots. Mackenzie's uncle and grandpa got together. We talked and said that if she wants to do it, let's help her out. Her parents were fine with it, too. A lot of people would look at this and say, God, you really feel okay about letting your daughter go off and fly an airplane at that age? I see kids these days, and they don't even communicate.

They sit there and text. Our daughter chose to go up and fly in an airplane. I was more scared of her driving than flying. When Mackenzie was 17, her uncle loaned her his Cessna 172 and her grandfather paid for flying lessons. Bobby Powers was Mackenzie's teacher. I've been doing this very thing in and around Billings, Montana

since Mackenzie was born. That little thing behind you is your ticket to what? Anywhere I want to go. I fly it to Canada. I fly it to Mexico. You know, you get to see things that a lot of times that other people are never going to get to see. So when the girl showed up at her flight school in nearby Laurel in August 2013, brimming with confidence, Bobby jumped right in.

She could see right away that Mackenzie was a natural, like when she put her in frosted goggles and asked her to fly by instruments only. I put her in situations where she couldn't see out the window and I'd say, Mackenzie, where's the airport? And she just shocked me because she could point. I'm like, holy smokes. So when the time came for Mackenzie to fly solo, Bobbie didn't worry. How'd she do in that first solo fly? She did great. She did awesome. A second solo went just as well. And then, after three weeks of training, one last test flight, the big one, the cross-country solo. The FAA insists it be at least five hours over 150 nautical miles,

with stops in three different airports, followed by three landings at a towered airport. In this case, Billings, Montana. A challenge, of course, but if Mackenzie was confident, and she was, well, then so were her parents. And it's not that she just was sent up in an airplane. I mean, she was well-trained. She's capable.

She was ready. And so, August 20th, McKenzie left home early. And then at the airport, she encountered a little push from fate. A B-1 bomber crashed during a routine training mission. The day before, a military plane went down nearby, and the airspace over the vast flatlands to the east was temporarily closed. They could have put off the test.

They decided not to. Because the weather was good, the winds aren't too strong. All the conditions, you know, you want to make sure they're good. Yeah, we checked that very closely. So Bobby and Mackenzie plotted a modified trip, with stops at little airports over the state line in Wyoming. Around 10 a.m., checks complete. Mackenzie climbed into the cockpit. I wanted to give her a hug in the worst way. And then I thought, yeah, I'll give her a hug on the day we finish all of this, because she's going to go, oh, syrupy old people. But I was confident, totally confident.

30 minutes in, Mackenzie texted Bobby from Powell, Wyoming. First leg, complete. How did that go? That went well. She was headed to Cody. Cody, Wyoming. After about 25 minutes, she landed there, texted Bobby and her mother that all was well. And then a second little push from fate.

Though none of them knew it, a huge forest fire had erupted to the west. Smoke billowed toward Mackenzie's revised flight path. By now, Mackenzie was on her way to Gray Bull, Wyoming. Tiny airport, tucked behind a ridge, hard to see from the air, through the smoky haze. White knuckle landing. The message you got was that she wasn't, it wasn't as easy this time.

Right. She let me know, you know, that she got a little disoriented, but things went well and she was on Gray Bull and she was going to go ahead and taxi over, tie the plane down, take a little break. She texted that she ate lunch, refueled, and because one runway was closed for repairs, she used an alternate runway, heading in a different direction.

Still, the last leg was the easiest. The flight plan called for Mackenzie to follow the Bighorn River over the Yellowtail Dam, make her landings at the Billings Airport, and then a final short flight back to Laurel, where Bobby was waiting. Of course, I'm excited. Now we're, you know, we're really rolling. We don't have far to go here now. Closer to home.

It was mid-afternoon now. Mackenzie's mother hadn't heard from her for a while, and suddenly sensed something off. I had that eerie feeling, you know, the kind that you don't entertain as a parent. Her father driving to work felt it too. Something just wasn't right and it's an hour out of town. I turned around and came back. Bobby expected to hear from Mackenzie about three o'clock. Three came and went. She busied herself, stayed close to the phone. And that went on, tick, tick, tick. Yes.

When did you start to worry? About 3.15. I started thinking she should be there by now. Bobby called the Billings Tower. No one had heard from Mackenzie. You try to think the best. She's landed somewhere. She's safe. I'll hear from her. But nothing. And that's, what, 3.30, 3.40, 3.45?

And about 3.50, I get a phone call from flight service station. They said, your student is past due. I just want you to know, in five seconds, we will declare her missing. Ah, worst words in the whole world. Mackenzie Morgan seems to have disappeared. And for everyone who cares about her, it's the beginning of a heart-stopping odyssey. When we return, as a frantic search gets underway, there's more bad news. I asked her what the route was and my heart just sank. When Dateline continues. Bobby Powers was living a flight instructor's worst nightmare. 17-year-old Mackenzie Morgan, that natural young flyer and her special student, was just gone. Just start thinking, what did I do wrong?

Did I miss something? I didn't want to admit. This is real. But it was. No time for second guessing. I said, I have my airplane here. I'll be off the ground in 15 minutes. I'll be looking for her. She climbed into her plane, taxied to the gas pump for fuel. The manager hurried over.

And he said, we can't give you fuel. We are not allowing anyone to buy fuel right now. We need it for our operation. They were running low, said the manager. They had their own charter and a firefighting operation to fuel. What did you say? I just looked at him square in the eye and I said, I need fuel. And right now I'd kill you for fuel. My girl is down.

I will have fuel. And he got a big look on his face and he said, give her all the fuel she wants. Just get her her fuel. While they were fueling the plane, Bobby got on the phone and began to organize a search party. Friends, friends of friends. And in minutes, she and her husband were airborne. My husband said, you have to call the parents. Worst day of my life. And I did not want to do that. But I wasn't brave enough to call her mother, because I'm a mother.

So I did the next best thing. I called her grandfather. The pilot. Yes. And I said, McKenzie's missing. And he said, I will be in the airplane in 15 minutes. McKenzie's grandpa drove to where her uncle Jared was working. It was around four o'clock, 4.30, and my dad pulled up and said, Mackenzie's missing.

I'm sorry. And then finally, they called Mackenzie's mom, Christy. What was that like to get that call? The bottom just kind of drops out. You know, you do, you go, you have that tendency to go dark for a second, and you think, I am not ready to plan a funeral. They tried to stay positive. After all, they told themselves, by now, a posse of private pilots was taking off,

making its way up in the air to look for her. One of Instructor Bobby's group of searches was Billings Gazette photographer Larry Mayer, a 30-year flight veteran. I asked her what the route was, and, you know, to be honest with you, my heart just sank because I knew the terrain along the route, and it's not very good terrain. Such bad terrain, in fact, that Larry was carrying an emergency kit he had packed in case he found her alive.

I put together a sleeping bag, some bottles of water, some granola bars, a handheld radio, and a large caliber handgun because it's grizzly country. There's mountain lions, there's, you know, coyotes. It's not where you'd want to see yourself, let alone a young girl. Brian Chesmo was in his Super Cub. He's a graduate of Bobby's flight school, and he and all the pilots knew what might be waiting out there. I think that every person that was in the air had worst-case scenarios playing through their minds.

5 p.m. Mackenzie had been missing over an hour, counting Bobby and her husband and Mackenzie's grandfather. There were nine small planes in the air scouring the ground. Over the radio, they agreed to divide the miles and miles of southern Montana and northern Wyoming into a grid. Everybody was looking everywhere. I mean, there was guys heading north and south, east and west. You know, someone would say, okay, I'm going to go look in the Garvin Basin. And someone else would say, okay, I'm going to go look, you know, along the north rim of the canyon. You know, your head's on a swivel. You're looking, looking, looking, and just hoping

and praying that you're going to find that person as quickly as you can. Most of these pilots have been on searches before. They'd found plain wrecks, but rarely survivors. The whole time up there in the search, thinking, in the back of your mind, thinking that, was always a concern. They raced the clock. Sundown was just a few hours away. The stakes went way up if it got dark, because if she had been injured, and had not been found, it would just really add to the chance that she would end up dying out there.

Coming up, phone records provide the first clue to Mackenzie's whereabouts. But will they help? I was like, well, that makes no sense. And then one of the search pilots catches sight of something on the ground. My first reaction was, oh my God. When Dateline continues. McKenzie Morgan's parents were frantic, waiting for word of their missing daughter. What could they do?

I was like, well, let's ping the cell phone to see where she last made her call. They asked the police to pull her phone record. Eventually learned she last used her phone at 2.30, half an hour before she was due back in Billings. After that, nothing. Then they looked at the GPS coordinates of the call and, oh no. It was four miles, four or five miles south of Cody. I was like, that makes no, I couldn't, in my head, fathom. I was like, well, that makes no sense. It's 180 degrees the wrong way.

Mackenzie was supposed to be in Billings Airspace. Instead, the phone pinged south of Cody, Wyoming. Up in the air, Bobby heard the news and was alarmed. Mackenzie was way too close to the mountains. How could she be here? You know, I'd watched her flying skills. I was totally confident that there was just no way she would become this confused. McKenzie's uncle and grandfather moved their search

to the area the ping came from. Still, no sign of McKenzie. All right, we're on 12675. Not a single searcher saw a clue anywhere. There's not an airplane sitting at Fort Smith. No, there's not an airplane sitting at Grable. No, she didn't go back to Cody. She hasn't arrived back in Laurel.

McKenzie's plane, like all such planes, was equipped with an emergency beacon, an ELT they call it, which should go off in a crash. But there was no signal from any ELT. So what did that make you think? That she's safe. If her ELT was going off, they'd pick up the signal and we could find her. So you're thinking, okay, this is a positive. Unless, unless it hadn't gone off because of something very, very bad. Not having it meant that the airplane had crashed very severely or was upside down

or possibly burned. Shadows lengthened in the deepening afternoon. The forest fire's smoky tail blurred the deepening afternoon. The forest fire's smoky tail blurred the ground beneath them. And McKenzie's family? All they had to hang onto was knowledge that the searchers wouldn't quit. Was there solace in that? No.

I mean, it was miserable. I'm not gonna lie. Up in the air, they kept looking. Suddenly, Larry Mayer spotted a crashed plane right beneath him. I guess I was just a little startled to be looking for an airplane and then see an airplane sitting there. Brian saw it too. My first reaction of seeing an airplane down below was, oh my God, I found her. But no, he hadn't.

The wreckage was from a fatal crash Larry covered for the paper years earlier. But... It just adds more fuel to the fire that, you know, you're running out of, number one, you're running out of time. It's getting dark. This is probably what I'm going to find someplace up here. They fought to focus through the evening shadows. Brian and his supercub, equipped to fly low and slow, skim the trees and rocky peaks. You get into a place called Black Canyon, which is, you know, vertical cliff walls and black

timber down in the bottom of it that, you know, it's like finding a needle in a haystack in there. By 8 p.m., McKenzie was five hours overdue. The rescue pilots were tired and running out of fuel in daylight. And then the authorities called. We have passed along the search and rescue process to the Air Force at this time. The military would take over, the man said, would send out a team in the morning, and in 30 minutes, Bobby and her friends would be ordered out of the air. Bobby had one last area to search, Shell Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains. Rough, rugged, horrid terrain. Out of all the wrong ways she could have gone, it would have been the worst.

She combed Shell Canyon back and forth in the growing dark. Nothing. And all that time I kept thinking, why didn't I give her that hug? Why didn't I give her that hug? I'd have given anything to give her just one hug. The settings out in Montana and Wyoming can be a glorious thing. But that evening, for nine discouraged pilots, it was terrifying. But of course, they were entirely unaware of the disaster and the drama they didn't see on the ground. Coming up, a forbidding backcountry rife with danger it puts that eerie feeling in your body makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck but this hunter sees something even more

troubling in the sky so the plane is flying right into a trap yep when dateline continues The line continues. Nine small planes were about to give up their search for a missing teenage pilot, hope dying with the setting sun. We all looked until the last light, you know, the absolute last light. So as the minutes tick by, the passage of time changes somehow, doesn't it? It does. Yeah, it felt like days. On the outskirts of a little place called Douglas, Wyoming,

an outdoorsman named Josh Alexander was about to get roped into the same story. If you were given your choice of some way to spend two weeks, you do whatever you want, what would it be? I'd be in the mountains hunting somewhere. That's what I live for. Josh's friend and colleague Nathan Coyle feels just the same way. I mean, there's places, yeah, you can go and not see people for days. Those are kind of the sweet spots for you.

Yeah, they're very relaxing, very calm, quiet. In August of 2013, Josh and Nate planned to spend a few days in one of those sweet spots, a place most of us will never see, the Absarokas in western Wyoming, some of the most remote and spectacular mountains in the country. The purpose of the trip? and spectacular mountains in the country. The purpose of the trip? To scout for bighorn sheep. Not easy. They live on jagged perches 10,000 feet up and more. They are like ghosts, there for a fleeting moment, then gone again. Inhospitable country. It's steep, it's rugged, it's all rock.

Base camp was 9,000 feet up in an abandoned mining town called Kirwan. On the first day, August 19, they saw five grizzly bears. Puts that eerie feeling in your body makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, you know. Josh brought his horses, Duke, the Palomino, and Dirty Devil, or Double D, the stubborn one. The next day was August 20th, the very same day Mackenzie Morgan set off from Laurel, Montana, on her first solo cross-country flight. Nate and Josh were picking their way up a rocky pathway to Grey Bull Pass, elevation 12,500. Double D didn't like it, tried to turn and go home, and in his thrashing slipped and tumbled down the rocky slope,

dragging Josh with him. I couldn't get kicked out of the stirrups fast enough. He went over and smashed my ankle and tore up his front leg also. The horse cut its leg. Josh sprained his ankle. But give up, go home? No, way too tough for that. Even though you're hurt like crazy and your horse is injured, why?

Had to see what's on the other side. Didn't ride all that way for nothing. So they pushed on, about 300 yards to the top, miles and miles of vast isolation around them. In an average year, said park rangers, only one or two human beings ever set foot up here. It was very windy. When we got on the top of that pass,

it was probably 35, 40 mile an hour wind. Just howling around, just screaming. But oh, the sights. Like a herd of elk. 200 of them. I was standing up there, looking through my binoculars, watching them elk in the bottom. And I looked at them for maybe two minutes.

The sound of an airplane broke his concentration. It was a little plane. A Cessna 172. It just kept getting louder and louder and louder. The first thing you thought was, why are they down that low? The second thought was alarm. That plane was surrounded by sheer mountain walls on all sides. So the plane is flying right into a trap.

Yep. Flying right into a rock wall. They heard the plane throttle up, then watched it try to accelerate up and over the lowest peak. But as soon as that plane cleared the top, the wind caught it and just jerked the right wing of that airplane straight up in the air and basically turned it straight around and sent it crashing to the ground. What's it like to see that? The first thing in your head was, man, I just watched a plane crash. And then it sinks in and hits. Oh, I just watched a plane crash. And then thoughts

start running through your head. What are you going to do? Who's in there? You know, who's in there? How many are in there? Are they alive? Are they dead? Can I safely get myself in there to find out or not? There's a cardinal rule of survival in the wilderness. Stick together. They broke it. Josh, new first aid, decided he should look for survivors. Nate was good with GPS coordinates. So I gave Nate the GPS and the best horse I got and said, you ride down to camp and get in the truck and go down to where you can call some help.

But separating and then hurrying on that terrain was dangerous. The horses fought to stay together. Fear was having that horse go down with Nate, and then nobody would be able to make it to get down and call for help. They slipped and slid. It took Nate more than an hour to get to the top of the road. He got in his truck and began a frantic drive down the mountain to reach an area with cell service. You know, as I was coming out, I come around this corner,

and there was a guy standing in the road waving his hands. I was like, what in the world? The road was blocked by a smashed the road, waving his hands. I was like, what in the world? The road was blocked by a smashed truck hanging halfway over the edge. Nate helped the driver move his truck and went hurtling back down the mountain to get help. Meanwhile, back at 12,000 feet, Josh was a long half mile from the crash. I sat there and glassed that plane for probably five minutes waiting to see if I could see movement in it or if anybody was going to crawl out of it or anything else and nobody got out of it. So I assumed the worst. And then as he kept looking at it something

surprising happened. Then I could see some movement at the plane. Was it a person? An animal? Too far away to see. He couldn't just hurry over. He had a sprained ankle, an injured horse, and to get to that crumpled plane, he'd have to go down first, a steep, slippery slope. I had to walk the horse all the way down to the bottom, sinking in up to its knees in the dirt and rock. Carefully, he coaxed the limping Double D toward the plane. Down all the switchbacks, and then bail off the trail and go down to the creek. He followed the creek bed. And then, as he worked his way toward the plane, something caught his eye, and he looked up and saw in the distance...

A girl walking in the creek. What was that like to see? It was a surprise. It was a shock. Coming up... Mackenzie alive and telling us her story. I knew the odds that I would survive that were very unlikely. When Dateline continues.

Mackenzie Morgan was alive, though stumbling along near a mountaintop in God-knew-where. She didn't expect to be for long. She was very, very alone, very cold, and very scared. Certain her life was over, she made a video to tell her parents goodbye. And yet, here she is to tell the astonishing story of the day she crashed on the mountaintop in one of America's most isolated places and lived. Oh, yeah, even just thinking about it, this brings me back. At first she knew nothing, and then, in a dazed recognition that she was alive, and in terrible trouble.

She had little food, no warm clothes, no blanket for the frigid night, and no idea where she was, only that she must have messed up somehow. Earlier in the day, when she first set out, everything had seemed so promising. I took off and I was just so excited. I didn't have any hitches going to Powell or Cody Airport. Her problems started in Gray Bull, Wyoming, when she had a hard time finding the airport, tucked away behind a mountain range.

I used my GPS and pulled up Google Earth on my phone, just trying to look for the airport. And I did find it, but it was about 10 minutes just of looking for it. She landed, ate lunch, refueled. So I was kind of rushing myself after I fueled up to get out of there because I was like, well, I wasted about 45 minutes here just eating and gassing up and everything. refuel. So I was kind of rushing myself after I fueled up to get out of there because I was like, well, I wasted about 45 minutes here just eating and gassing up and everything. Mackenzie texted her instructor, Bobby Pars, to let her know she was ready for takeoff, heading home. I was actually super excited for this leg of the trip because I was going to be over water the whole way. I had something to follow the whole way there. But somehow, just after takeoff, she transposed a zero in her GPS directional heading.

So instead of going northeast toward home, she flew southwest and strayed into some of the tallest peaks in the country, the Absaroka Mountains in Wyoming. That one simple zero made a huge difference. But at first, it looked okay. She followed a river, as the plan said she should. I was like, I'm over water. I've got to be going the right way. She was supposed to skirt a small mountain next,

and sure enough, there was a peak, its top obscured by smoke from the forest fire. And then it dawned on her, with a thump of anxiety. She was flying too high. I was supposed to be flying at a height of 7,500 feet, and it got to the point where I was flying at 8,500. And the mountains were still up there. Still above me.

Mackenzie knew Bobby wouldn't have sent her there, into the mountains. That's just not something she would do. Something has to be wrong here, so I go to try to call her. There's no service. She flew on, alone. No way to call for help, forcing down the rising panic. She barely missed some very tall trees. And then... Finally, it started to open up around me.

There's more space, and it's like, oh, thank goodness. You're in relief now. I'm almost to the airport. After I get out of this curve, I'll be right on my left side. I can just land and calm down, and then I'll be able to go home and relax. Not quite. Round that curve, and it's a dead end with mountains on all sides of me. And my heart dropped.

Mackenzie had flown straight into a box canyon. Mountains towering on all sides. She was trapped. And then, weirdly, her desperate eye caught something otherworldly. Out of my peripheral vision, I see all this movement. And I look over there, and there's this huge herd of elk. Like about 200 head of them. I saw you come along.

They heard me, and they got scared. And then a warning blared. She was about to stall. Her only chance was to accelerate straight down, then pull up and make it over the peak. And the ground is rushing at you. Exactly. At this point, I know that I could possibly overcome this mountain that's in front of me. And then a huge blast of wind caught a wing. And I know I'm going down. And while in my head I was thinking calmly, like, okay, I've just got to land this like a typical landing. And I hear this screaming, just loud screaming, and then I realize, oh my gosh, that's me. Like, I didn't realize I was doing it, and in my head I'm totally calm, but I'm just screaming uncontrollably. She'd have to pull off a perfect landing on a steep slope in a field of rocks.

Impossible, but no choice. Back wheels down first. And then as I brought my nose down, the front wheel got caught in the rocks, and it flipped the plane upside down. Just like that? Yep, like, hit, touch, and then just flip me. How long she was out, she isn't sure. But when she came to? And I'm hanging upside down.

I'm like, why am I not dead right now? I'm not going to die in here. Like I said that out loud, I was so determined. That she was not killed in her upside down and total plane was little short of miraculous. That she was virtually unin in her upside-down and total plane was little short of miraculous. That she was virtually uninjured even more so. She unbuckled herself, smashed through the front window, took pictures, tried to text them. Maybe the GPS coordinates embedded in the photos would help someone find her, but she could get no signal.

They weren't going anywhere. So she tried to radio for help. It's like a Great Falls radio, 516 Mike Alpha, my plane is down. I'm in the mountains somewhere. Can you find me? And there was no reply. And I tried twice. She smelled gas near the plane.

So she made a risky decision. She would follow the creek and try to walk out. I was like, well, i've got to get out of here before this catches on fire it seems to me you had a pretty lousy chance of being found but the only the only one chance really was if you were beside that plane exactly i knew i wasn't going the odds that i would make it and survive that trek were very unlikely. 12,000 feet above sea level, hundreds of miles from nowhere, utterly alone, she started walking. When she set out that morning, it had been a hot summer day. She was wearing jeans and a light windbreaker.

But in the mountains, night would be bitter cold. She didn't know it, but she was heading down the creek bed right to the spot the hunters had seen five grizzly bears just the day before. So at this point, I'd walked about 20 minutes and I made a video to my parents. It was awful. Like I'm crying and screaming and I just, I felt so bad. Mackenzie Morgan understood with an awful clarity. This was very likely the end after all. Coming up, a mind-boggling coincidence becomes Mackenzie's only shot at rescue.

As soon as I saw him I started screaming, I was like, help me, help me, help me. And then her flight instructor starts to worry all over again. I heard one of my friends say, has anybody let Bobby know yet? I'm like, oh my God. When Dateline Continues. Mackenzie Morgan had just made a goodbye video on her phone to tell her parents one last time as she faced her death that she loved them. My plan was just walk until I couldn't walk anymore,

and maybe if I got low enough I could climb a tree and sleep in that, or just make a spot on the ground for myself. She kept walking. She had sprained her knee in the crash. It slowed her down. It was starting to swell. I was just limping a lot. There were rocks everywhere, and I kept stumbling over those.

She stumbled on for nearly an hour, and then in the depths of her despair... I get on the top of one of these hills, and I see this horse. And I was like, there's a horse out here. And then she saw there was a man with the horse, a kind of scary man, big, bloodied from his fall, wearing a gun. The hunter, Josh Alexander. As soon as I saw him, I started screaming. I was like, help me, help me, help me. And I immediately, you know, made her sit down and gather her thoughts and everything

because her adrenaline was rushing big time. Was she clearly upset? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I started asking her name, her age, where she's from, where she was flying to, where she'd come from, just mainly trying to check for a head injury, make sure everything was okay.

What were the chances? In all that empty space, so rarely visited by humans, it was almost beyond mathematical calculation, like two needles finding each other in a very big haystack. I asked him where I was. He's like, well, you're in Matizzi, Wyoming. I was like, well, I don't know where that is. They looked at her map.

Matizzi wasn't even on it. And so this unlikely trio, a banged-up hunter, a banged-up pilot, and a banged-up horse, limped down the treacherous mountainside in the gathering dark, not knowing what would be waiting for them at the bottom, when finally... And it was right gathering dark, not knowing what would be waiting for them at the bottom, when finally...

Then it was right at dark, but I could still see through my binoculars, so I looked in the trailhead parking lot and spotted a sheriff's deputy's pickup and Nate standing there, and they were looking back at us. After his long interrupted trip down the mountain to get help, Josh's buddy Nate had made it. And I told her, I said, we'll be all right. Right there's help. Then she got real emotional again and started to cry. Then, yeah, I think it was tears of relief. And Nate, watching them, had trouble understanding what he was seeing. This young girl was the pilot? I couldn't believe it. And most people her age

don't even drive yet. I mean, let alone fly a plane. The sheriff brought Mackenzie down to an ambulance that hadn't been able to make it up the mountain. As soon as there was cell service, the sheriff called Mackenzie's parents, Steve and Christy, sick with worry at home. Thank goodness for that call. He said, we found your daughter and she's alive. And then I lost service with them or it broke out. I said, all right, get your stuff, Christy. We're going to Cody. Mackenzie's flight instructor, Bobby, was at that moment about to give up and turn toward home, heartbroken, when on her radio, she heard something rather terrifying. I heard one of my friends say, has anybody let Bobby know yet? I'm like, oh my God.

Let Bobby know what? And I said, I'm on. What's going on? And they said, they found on. What's going on? And they said, they found her. She's safe. What a relief. I just started crying. Bobby, too, headed straight to Cody.

I couldn't get there fast enough. Mackenzie's uncle and grandfather flew there, too. That was the best moment we could have had that she was found and healthy. And then, roughly 12 hours after she took off that morning, Mackenzie, her family and her flight instructor were all at the hospital, together and safe. I think until you lay eyes on her and you see that she's just fine. I mean, it was beautiful. Bobby got to give Mackenzie that hug after all.

I call her my miracle child. A lot of people said to her she should go buy a lottery ticket. Her grateful parents were able to drive Mackenzie home later that night. On the way, she showed them the goodbye video she made on the mountain. I was like, don't play that again. I mean, I almost went off the road. The next day, the hunters headed home and encountered yet another person who needed help. A man who had slipped on wet rocks and broken his leg badly. And so they made a third rescue in just two days.

Just angels of mercy on that trip. Mad turn of events there. We'd never seen one bighorn sheep that entire trip. But we decided we were there for a reason. It was there to help people. Why? I don't know. But everything turned out good. You must be a person with a sense of gratitude these days.

Yeah, definitely am. Because everyone's like, well, somebody's got a plan for you. It's like, you know what, you're right, you're right, so I'll make the most of it. Mackenzie, by the way, finished high school and the softball season, got into college, went to prom. And in December 2013... All right, honey. Bye. Bye, babe.

Okay. She climbed into a little airplane to finish that solo cross-country flight. Mackenzie Morgan, survivor and licensed pilot. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.