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The last thing Donald Evans remembered was shouting, "Pull up!" to the pilot seated beside him before the single-engine propeller plane slammed into a low mountain 37 miles west of McGrath, Alaska. One look now told him the pilot was dead. So was the woman sitting behind Donald, a popular schoolteacher named Julia Walker, who lived in Anvik, Alaska. Donald twisted in the six-seat Cessna 207 and looked behind him. The plane, hardly larger than a minivan, had snapped in half on the mountainside. He couldn't see or hear his two children, Mckenzie, eight, and Donnie, ten. His wife, Rosemarie, 32 and two months pregnant, was slumped motionless in her seat. Donald's mind filled with a single, horrifying thought: Everybody's gone.

TENDING TO THE WOUNDED
Still buckled in his seat, Donald, 32, tried to get his bearings. It was pouring rain. Some of his teeth were missing. Later he'd find out that the impact had broken his back, legs, feet, and jaw.

Then Donald heard Mckenzie crying somewhere outside the crumpled Cessna. She'd been sitting in the back row before the crash, and the impact had thrown her 20 feet from the plane. Although Donald didn't know it yet, his daughter's arm was broken and her intestines were severed, possibly by her seat belt.

Despite his injuries, Donald crawled out to Mckenzie, who lay soaking wet in the rain. Worried about hypothermia, Donald removed his daughter's wet clothing and wrapped her in a quilt the family had packed. Together father and daughter dragged themselves back to the plane, where Rosemarie was starting to regain consciousness.

Her back, feet, ankles, and right arm were broken. She was terrified that the baby she was carrying had been hurt. The only part of her body that she could move was her left arm, which she used to reach out the window, feeling behind her. Donnie was somewhere back there, alive; now they could hear him screaming.

After the crash, Donnie had rolled partially beneath the plane before the floorboards came to a rest on his legs and waist, trapping him. "There was no way I was going to be able to yank him up," Donald says. He heaved himself to the roof and crawled to Donnie, letting himself fall from the top of the Cessna to land beside his son.

Donald feared the boy might die if he wasn't stabilized and his head wasn't elevated. He noticed a splintered log nearby from a willow tree that had probably snapped in the crash. "I was able to take that and brace him," Donald says. Then he found the pruning tool he'd packed and used it to cut away the floorboards to stop them from crushing Donnie. "Give Daddy a couple more minutes," he reassured his son. "I'll cut you out of here."

Meanwhile, Rosemarie was slipping in and out of consciousness in the middle row, coughing up dark blood. "I can't breathe!" she yelled. Donald turned his attention to her.

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His adrenaline had ebbed, and now he was feeling the pain of his injuries. He forced himself to crawl back to the front of the plane and shift the pilot's body away from his wife.

AN ALASKAN ADVENTURE
Donald and Rosemarie had been headed to Anvik, the rural Yukon River village 350 miles northwest of Anchorage, to begin their first year of teaching. It was August 13, 2011.

They had grown up one county apart in upstate New York. They were 15 when they first met at a Poughkeepsie movie theater and started dating. At 17, Donald joined the U.S. Marine Corps.

During a 30-day leave, Donald told Rosemarie he wanted to visit someplace spectacular. He caught a flight to Fort Richardson, near Anchorage, Alaska, on a military plane. "Within the first four or five hours after landing, I knew this was it," Donald says. When he arrived back home, his truck had Alaska plates.

After four years in the Marines, Donald enlisted again, this time with the Army. The couple hoped to be stationed in Alaska, but Donald was sent to Iraq instead. When Donald's military service ended in 2007, he and Rosemarie settled in Wasilla, Alaska, and enrolled in Alaska Pacific University. After graduating with teaching degrees, they were hired to job-share a teaching position at the Blackwell School, a two-classroom elementary school in Anvik.

A village of fewer than 100 people, Anvik is where the southern route of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race meets the Yukon River. Snowmobiles outnumber pickup trucks. A head of lettuce sells for $5.50.

The family arrived in the village in June 2011, weeks before the start of school, eager to start their Alaska adventure. Their first flight in a small plane was smooth, and the weather was sunny. "As soon as we landed, a big black bear ran across the airstrip and stood up," Donald says.

They met Julia Walker, the only other teacher in the village. Donnie and Mckenzie made fast friends with the kids in town, and Donald spent the summer erecting the school's new playground set. At night, they played basketball in the school gymnasium.

A week before classes were scheduled to begin, the teachers flew to the district headquarters in McGrath for a series of meetings. On a hunch, Rosemarie bought a pregnancy test at the McGrath general store and confirmed her pregnancy. The prospect of another baby left her and Donald excited and nervous. Suddenly the decision to share a single teaching job, rather than moving to a district where they could each earn a full salary, made more sense. Donald would be able to teach during Rosemarie's maternity leave.

At the end of the week, the family packed groceries and school supplies in the little Cessna and waited for a break in the weather to fly back to Anvik. Pilot Ernie Chase, 66, had grown up in Anvik and flown the route countless times. Shortly after 7 p.m., he decided they had an opening.

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Plane Crash Survivors in the Alaskan Wilderness - Reader's Digest

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The last thing Donald Evans remembered was shouting, "Pull up!" to the pilot seated beside him before the single-engine propeller plane slammed into a low mountain 37 miles west of McGrath, Alaska. One look now told him the pilot was dead. So was the woman sitting behind Donald, a popular schoolteacher named Julia Walker, who lived in Anvik, Alaska.

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Hopelessly pinned by a boulder that rolled onto his arm in a remote canyon, adventurer Aron Ralston says he first took a dull pocketknife to his forearm after three days, but couldn't cut the skin.

In his first meeting with reporters since he walked, bloody and dehydrated, out of a remote Utah canyon, Ralston described Thursday what it took for him to eventually do the unthinkable - cutting off his own arm to save his life.

"I'm not sure how I handled it," the mechanical engineer-turned-adventurer said, the stump of his right arm in a sling. "I felt pain and I coped with it. I moved on."

A day after his first attempt to cut his arm, Ralston went through the motions of applying a tourniquet, laying out bike shorts to use for padding. He worked out how to get through the bone with the "multi-tool"-type knife he carried.

"Basically, I got my surgical table ready," the 27-year-old said.

On the fifth day, he summoned up all his technique and nerve.

"I was able to first snap the radius and then within another few minutes snap the ulna at the wrist and from there, I had the knife out and applied the tourniquet and went to task. It was a process that took about an hour," he said.

Slim and pale with short reddish-brown hair, Ralston made frequent references to prayer and spirituality in his news conference. He said he felt a surge of energy on the third day, which happened to be the National Day of Prayer.

"I may never fully understand the spiritual aspects of what I experienced, but I will try," he said. "The source of the power I felt was the thoughts and prayers of many people, most of whom I will never know."

Ralston's ordeal began April 26, during what was supposed to be a day trip near Canyonlands National Park, Ralston, 27, became hopelessly pinned as he scrambled over three boulders wedged into a narrow canyon. One of the boulders, weighing an estimated 800 pounds, rolled as he climbed over it, trapping his right arm against a cliff face.

He tried chipping away with his knife at the boulder and the cliff, and tried to rig a way to lift the boulder off himself with climbing gear. He decided to sacrifice his arm to save his life after going through most of his three liters of water and his food: two burritos and some crumbs clinging to candy bar wrappers.

Even after his excruciating operation, what Ralston had to do to survive required skills beyond the abilities of most.

On May 1, he crawled through a narrow, winding canyon, rappelled down a 60-foot cliff and walked some six miles down the southeastern Utah canyon.

By the time he encountered hikers and then rescuers, Ralston was just two miles from the nearest road.

For reasons he wouldn't explain, Ralston withheld some details of his story. A publicist told reporters there would be no follow-up interviews soon and no interviews whatsoever with the doctors who treated him.

Ralston gave a partial answer to one frequently asked question: What kind of knife did he use?

He described it as a cheap imitation of the Leatherman brand multi-tool, a folding device that typically has knife blades, pliers, screwdrivers and other gadgets. He didn't give the brand, calling it "what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multi-use tool."

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Hopelessly pinned by a boulder that rolled onto his arm in a remote canyon, adventurer Aron Ralston says he first took a dull pocketknife to his forearm after three days, but couldn't cut the skin.