Two four-wheelers carrying five men leaving Bethel broke through needle ice on the upper end of Church Slough on Sunday night. Two of the men died, while three others were treated for hypothermia in Bethel.

The tragedy came after several days of dire warnings about the dangers of river travel due to an unusually early warm-up. Search and rescuers crawled onto weak ice, open water all around, to help retrieve the survivors.

The ice highway that residents are used to driving this time of year has yet to fully freeze. Bethel Search and Rescue calls the number of open holes on

A father’s body has been recovered from the Kuskokwim River after he and his family fell through a marked, open hole the night of New Year’s Eve. Bethel

The warm winter has made traveling on the river ice more hazardous than Bethel Search and Rescue ever remembers.