“I was watching what was going on and I could see ice building up on the rotor blades, so I called out to the volcano guys,” Egli said. “They immediately changed gears to get everything put away so we could evacuate fast instead of finishing the job.

“I cranked up the helicopter and we were at that time in very low visibility in this freezing fog situation that had blown in on us, so I just had rotors spooled up ready for takeoff for the next instant when clearing would come, so we could dive off the mountain, but that clearing never came when that cloud came in on top of us it stayed and it continued to generate ice.”

Egli says he ran the helicopter for about 12 minutes at full RPM, but realized the too much ice was building up and the helicopter would not have enough power to perform a takeoff. He rolled the throttle back to idle and announced they were stuck.

“We shut down and spent the next hour probably getting the ice cleaned off of the rotor blades that had built up during that short ground run and we were ready to attempt another takeoff if it cleared up, but as we waited for it to clear up, the icing conditions continued to persist,” Egli said.