TALKEETNA, Alaska _ A National Park Service ranger hanging from a helicopter on Monday found the bodies of four people in the wreckage of a flightseeing plane that crashed Saturday near Denali.
A fifth person aboard the K2 Aviation de Havilland Beaver was not found but is presumed dead, the park service said.
It is the deadliest flightseeing crash for a Denali air service in at least 20 years.
K2 announced Monday it is suspending flightseeing tours until further notice "as we give our staff time to grieve this loss."
The park service on Monday afternoon identified the pilot as Craig Layson of Saline, Mich. The Saline Post newspaper said Monday that Layson and his wife had spent the past two summers in Alaska.
The passengers are from Poland but their names have not been released. The park service is in contact with the Polish Consulate in Los Angeles.
Layson was able to make two calls by satellite phone after the crash and reported injuries before communication with the plane ended. It wasn't immediately clear how many people survived the initial crash.
Rescuers took advantage of a brief window of clearing weather Monday morning to spot the wreckage for the first time since the plane went down at about 6 p.m. Saturday. Then a ranger was lowered to the scene.
The ranger who got to the plane Monday said it appeared highly unlikely people had moved around after the crash.
The plane crashed in steep terrain in a crevasse on the side of a mountain, according to Steve Erickson, the climbing ranger who confirmed that none of people in the plane survived.
Erickson, wearing a climbing harness, hung from a fixed rope attached to a helicopter. The search lasted less than 5 minutes because clouds were moving in again quickly.
Describing the mission at the Talkeetna ranger station Monday afternoon, Erickson said "quite a bit of snow" had drifted into the plane.
He found the bodies of four of the five people and detected no signs of life, Erickson said. It's possible the fifth was inside but he just couldn't see that person because the incoming weather limited his time in the nose of the aircraft.
No footprints or disturbances led away from the site and there were no other signs to indicate any of the occupants made it out of the plane, officials said.
The weather closed back in, making additional efforts to find the fifth person impossible for now, park service spokeswoman Katherine Belcher said.
The plane crashed at about 10,500 feet near the summit of what's known locally as Thunder Mountain, a feature roughly 14 miles southwest of the summit of Denali in extremely technical terrain on a hanging glacier.
The National Transportation Safety Board is assigning two investigators to look into the crash "because of the issues here," said Clint Johnson, the agency's Alaska chief.
The investigators will head to Talkeetna from Anchorage in the next few days, Johnson said.
"Whether we're going to the site or not, that's to be determined," he said. "This apparently is in a very, very precarious location."
K2 is working with all responding agencies to cooperate fully with the investigation, the company said in a statement emailed by public relations firm Thompson & Co.
The company, family owned and operated for 55 years, is owned by Suzanne and Todd Rust.
"The first responders from the National Park Service, FAA, NTSB and Alaska Air National Guard have our utmost thanks and appreciation for their tireless efforts," the company statement said. "It is imperative we understand the factors surrounding this incident to help prevent any further tragedies. We would also like to thank the community of Talkeetna and our tour partners across the state for its support in the recent days."
The pilot called the K2 office at Talkeetna's airport twice Saturday night, once right after the crash and again about an hour later, according to the National Park Service.
The plane's emergency transponder continued to emit a signal.
The ridge where the plane crashed was described by searchers as "a mix of near-vertical rock, ice and snow."
A park service helicopter launched two hours after the crash was reported Saturday evening and got within a mile of the plane's GPS coordinates but couldn't spot the crash or make radio contact, officials said. An Air National Guard helicopter and two K2 planes flew the area Saturday night but also couldn't see anything or communicate with the downed plane.
The search resumed Sunday at about 5 a.m. but a heavy cloud cover blocked efforts to find the plane and the search was suspended again.
The National Park Service's high-altitude helicopter, along with an Air National Guard C-130 and two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters, departed early Monday morning. A U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook from Fort Wainwright was also sent to Talkeetna. There were plans to insert a ground crew into a glacier staging area to assist with operations.
The plane was found Monday morning _ a little over 36 hours after it crashed.
It's been years since a Denali air taxi company experienced a fatal crash in the Alaska Range.
Pilot Keli Mahoney and three passengers died in May 2003 when the Cessna 185 she flew crashed at the 8,200-foot level of South Hunter Pass.
Well-known pilot and dog musher Don Bowers died, along with three rangers, in a 2000 crash along the Yentna Glacier after Bowers reported a wall of clouds blocking his normal route to Talkeetna.
The K2 crash, especially with the time to hope for rescue before the bad news emerged, cast a shadow over Talkeetna on Monday.
"It's just really tough," said Phillip Manning, a reporter for community radio station KTNA who once worked for an air taxi operator here and knows people at K2 personally.
Most people in town have been on air taxi flights or personally know pilots, rampers or office staff, Manning said.
"Everybody was so invested in finding out what happened," he said.
