Archer

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   Physician dies after raft flips

    Autopsy to determine cause


     By DANIELLE STANTON
     Daily News reporter

     A well-known Anchorage doctor and former travel mogul died after the
     raft in which he was riding flipped in a narrow, churning section of
     Sixmile Creek near Sunrise.

     Gary W. Archer, a 60-year-old cardiologist who once ran Alaska's
     largest travel agency, was pronounced dead after other rafters and paramedics
     performed CPR for an hour, trooper Sgt. Brandon Anderson said.

     Archer was riding in a raft with four other people on a commercial
     raft trip when they hit rough waters. The raft slammed into a canyon wall
     and overturned, throwing everyone into the water, troopers said. Other
     rafters dragged Archer from the river. He was unconscious and not
     breathing, Anderson said.

     Providence Alaska Medical Center sent a helicopter with paramedics
     aboard to the river. After an hour of trying to resuscitate him,
     paramedics pronounced Archer dead and flew his body to Anchorage. The
     medical examiner will perform an autopsy sometime this week to
     determine the cause of death.

     Archer had been white-water rafting with several family members,
     including a son, in Sixmile Creek, which runs parallel to the Hope
     cutoff road. He was in one of two rafts. Each raft carried four
     people, plus a river guide from Nova Riverunners Inc., said Jay Doyle, one of
     the company's owners.

     Doyle said the group launched at 10 a.m. near the cutoff for the 2 1/2
     hour trip. Group members were dressed in dry suits, helmets and life
     vests.

     The accident happened about two hours later on a part of the river
     classified as class IV. A rating of I indicates smooth water. A rating
     of XI is the most dangerous.

     Doyle said two portions of the river had class IV water. The two rafts
     made it through the first set of rapids without a hitch. On the second
     set of rapids, the lead raft went through and waited for Archer's
     raft, but a wave caught the second craft and turned it over, Doyle said.
     When Archer was pulled from the water unconscious, Doyle said he went to
     Hope and called 911.

     Doyle was shaken during an interview late Saturday. He said that in 22
     years of rafting, none of his clients has ever had an injury.

     "We take our safety precautions very seriously," he said.

     In addition to his work as a cardiologist, Archer ran what was once
     the state's largest travel agency. Under Archer, TravelCenter soared to
     the top of the Alaska travel industry through aggressive marketing of
     bargain-basement fares. By August 1985, the company claimed to write
     32 percent of all airline tickets written in Alaska, and was touted in
     Inc. magazine as one of the nation's fastest growing companies.

     But customers frequently complained to the state attorney general's
     office about the agency's inability to make timely refunds on unused
     tickets.

     In 1987, the company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.