On Feb. 24, Goshorn flew to Anchorage without incident.

“Sunday the weather was above minimum so I left Merrill Field, crossing Turnagain Arm at 3,000 feet,” Goshorn, only a student pilot at the time, said of his 2:30 p.m. departure. “I shouldn’t have been flying without a check ride with an instructor.”

On board, he had emergency rations, but no sleeping bag. Neither was the plane equipped with a radio.

“I had taken it out to work on it,” Goshorn said.

Once he got across the arm, Goshorn found himself between layers of clouds, thinking to himself, “This is great.”

Reaching Tustumena Lake, Goshorn began descending so he could find and follow the Kasilof River as it runs from the lake to Cook Inlet, planning to then follow the shoreline to Homer. But as his altitude decreased, so did his visibility.

Returning to a higher altitude, Goshorn got a quick glimpse out the window and realized he was barely above the treetops on the side of a mountain. Eventually, however, he returned to his previous position, sandwiched between the layers of clouds.

“I flew in the direction of Homer and finally figured I should be over Homer so I began descending,” Goshorn said.

But again he lost visibility.

“The windshield iced over, the engine carburetor was icing and it was getting dark,” he said. “I decided to put my life in the lord’s hands.”

Keeping watch out the side windows, Goshorn looked for familiar territory and hoped for an open stretch where he could land the plane. At about 100 feet, he broke out of the clouds and found himself at Lookout Mountain.

“I throttled back, cut the engine and just let it coast,” he said.

What he coasted into was a mountain ravine, across which the plane bounced, coming to a sudden stop on the far side. With no shoulder harness and only a seatbelt to protect him, Goshorn broke ribs and cut his head in the landing. Worried about fire, he quickly jumped out of the plane, right into three feet of snow. Because of the darkness, he spent the night in the aircraft, wedging his clean laundry into holes in the windshield, trying to conserve heat inside the tiny passenger compartment.

A storm the next day hampered his efforts to get out the situation, and he spent a second night in the craft, with temperatures dropping below zero.

“It was getting cold and I tried to sleep. I guess I did sleep and probably would have died of hypothermia, but I started shaking and that woke me up,” he said.

On the second day, the weather cleared and, wearing snowshoes, Goshorn began making his way out of the ravine and toward the road he knew ran to Ohlson Mountain. The storm, however, had closed roads to the area so there was no chance of finding traffic. At one point, a plane flew overhead. Knowing people would be looking for him, Goshorn took off his snowshoes and waved them in the air, hoping to attract attention, but the people in the plane didn’t see him.

He finally made it to a cabin with smoke coming out the chimney. Given water by the cabin’s lone occupant, Goshorn continued on, trying to ignore the pain from the injuries to his ribs.

Next, he came to the house of someone who worked for Pacific Northern Airlines. The storm-closed roads had kept the PNA employee from making it home from work, but his wife welcomed Goshorn in and fed him breakfast.

Once fed, Goshorn continued toward Homer. As he made his way through the snow, another plane flew over and this time he didn’t take any chances.

“I tramped ‘I am the lost pilot’ in the snow and they spotted me,” Goshorn said.

Pilot Jack Lewis of Kenai spotted Goshorn. Homer pilot Gene Lawrence picked up Goshorn and flew to Homer, where Goshorn received medical treatment for his injuries.

Details of the search and Goshorn’s rescue were recorded in the Feb. 27 “Anchorage Daily Times,” the March 1 “Homer Herald” and the March 20 “Civil Air Patrol News.” Some nine Civil Air Patrol aircraft were involved in the search, including four planes from squadrons in Anchorage, four from Kenai and one from Homer.

According to the CAP, 113 inches of snow had fallen in the area in the three weeks prior to the search.

The incident left no bad memories for Goshorn. In fact, in the spring of 1979, making plans to retire from the FAA, Goshorn went home one evening and asked his family, “Who wants to move to Homer?”

The response was an enthusiastic, “Yay!”

“That pretty much decided it,” Goshorn said.

For the past 27 years, he and his wife, Maxine, with whom he will celebrate a 40th wedding anniversary this year, have lived in Homer. But first he celebrates another kind of anniversary: surviving a close encounter that happened 50 years ago.