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With darkness falling in the Rocky Mountains and fresh snow on the ground, two Canadian Forces search-and-rescue workers scrambled through the brush and ran down an icy creek toward the badly twisted body of a small aircraft.

When they looked inside the upturned wreckage they saw an incredible sight – two bodies rested in the front seats, but in the rear, alive and hanging upside down in a car safety seat, was a three-year-old girl.

“What's your name?” Master Corporal Bruno Lapointe asked, while he and his partner, Sergeant Scott Elliston, manoeuvred into position to pull the girl out.

“Kate,” she answered.

And a moment later she asked for her teddy bear.

“I'm not going to go into details, but she was conscious,” Sgt. Elliston said Monday, the day after a military search effort unfolded with blinding speed in treacherous mountain terrain in southeastern British Columbia.

“Bruno asked her her name. She was able to answer. He asked her age. She actually asked for her teddy bear,” Sgt. Elliston said.

Searching in the wreckage he found the little girl's toy.

“I picked up her teddy bear and went to hand it to her and she didn't want the teddy bear because it was covered in snow. I had to brush off the teddy bear before she would take it,” Sgt. Elliston said.

While they were talking to the girl, they were checking her vital signs and carefully extracting her from the car seat.

It was getting dark. It was cold. They were in a valley nearly 1,500 metres up a mountain side and the Alpine Helicopters Ltd. chopper that had brought them in – landing on a narrow logging road 200 metres away – could stand by only minutes longer before darkness made flying impossible.

“She wasn't too hard to extract. She was in her car seat. We basically immobilized her as best we could and then removed her from her seat. And then Bruno cradled her and carried her up to the helicopter,” Sgt. Elliston said.

He estimated that between the time the helicopter touched down and MCpl. Lapointe was back with the child was about 15 minutes – and darkness was only 30 minutes away.

Had the rescue operation not happened so quickly, Kate Williams might have spent a freezing night alone, hanging in her car seat, in a Cessna 172 that had crashed into a creek bed, nose first.

Instead, Kate was assessed and discharged from hospital Monday evening and driven home to Edmonton with her family.

The little girl's grandfather, pilot Allen Williams, 65, and passenger Steven Sutton, 49, were killed in the crash.

Mr. Williams was founder and chief executive officer of A.D. Williams Engineering, an Edmonton-based company. Mr. Sutton was his chief financial officer.

Mr. Williams had a summer home in Golden to which he routinely commuted in his plane.

A company statement described him as “a visionary and a leader in the consulting engineering industry throughout Alberta and across the country.”

Mr. Sutton was called “a trusted adviser to our firm and in our community … an honest man who lived what he believed.”

That race for life began at about 2 p.m., when Search and Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria picked up the signal from the aircraft's emergency locator transmitter, or ELT, from the Golden area. A few hours later, despite bad weather, 442 Transport and Rescue Squadron managed to narrow the search to the mountains between Glacier and Yoho national parks.

A Buffalo fixed-wing aircraft from CFB Comox pinpointed the site while flying overhead at 5,000 metres, but couldn't get closer because of clouds. After a Cormorant rescue helicopter en route to Golden had to turn back because of bad weather, rescue officials put the Buffalo down in Golden.

The search for the Cessna 172 entered its final stage when Sgt. Elliston and MCpl. Lapointe transferred to a chopper piloted by Don McTighe, base manager for Alpine Helicopters Ltd. in Golden.

Remarkably, they found the crashed aircraft in 15 minutes, just before darkness fell in the mountains.

Ian Foss, a volunteer with Golden Search and Rescue, who had a hand-held ELT device, also joined the team.

Using the ELT signal as a guide, Mr. McTighe flew into the mountains.

“They pinned down the location,” he said, praising the military for the solid groundwork they laid for the rescue effort.

“We had bad weather but it was acceptable for flight … a lot of fog in the main valley, fog and rain, snowing, light snow on the aircraft location,” Mr. McTighe said.

As they approached the crash site, the clouds lifted and they had good visibility. But the plane had nearly flipped over, resting at a steep angle, exposing its white belly in a bleak, snow-swept landscape.

“The aircraft, a white-and-dark-blue aircraft, was upside down in a creek. The belly was white and that was all that was visible to us. So you can see the scene: the white snow, the white aircraft. It was very hard to see.”

But Mr. McTighe spotted it and found a logging road nearby on which to land.

Mr. McTighe waited while the search-and-rescue technicians disappeared into the bush, then his radio crackled.

“They said, ‘We're coming up with a survivor.'”

Minutes later, MCpl. Lapointe emerged from the bush with a child in his arms.

“She was just crying and screaming. If you have kids it's quite a good sign. If they are making noise they are probably okay. Any sound is welcome,” he said. “That was a tremendous high point in our day.”

Mr. McTighe said he hates to think what might have happened had they not been able to find the aircraft before darkness fell.

“She had been hanging upside down for about five hours,” he said. “We shudder at what could have happened if we didn't get dispatched when we did. If we didn't find the aircraft when we did she may have been overnight, upside down in the aircraft and in the cold air at that altitude, at 4,700 feet [1,430 metres], in the snow, she may not have survived the night.”

At about 6:30, with less than half an hour of flying time left, Mr. McTighe took off from the logging road, headed for the Golden hospital. He got there with 15 minutes of daylight left.

Meanwhile, Golden Search and Rescue volunteers joined the others at the crash site where they stood in the ice-cold creek, working until 11 p.m., recovering the bodies of Mr. Williams and Mr. Sutton.

The little girl was airlifted from Golden's hospital to Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary Monday afternoon.

Mr. Williams, a married father of three grown children, was a well-known businessman in Edmonton. The former Saskatchewan farm boy graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in 1965 with a mechanical engineering degree. The consulting engineering firm he founded now operates five offices, including its headquarters in Edmonton, and employees more than 150 people.

In 2005, Mr. Williams named his son, Reagan, 40, president of the company.

Mr. Williams, the former chairman of the Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada, told the Edmonton Journal he planned to “slowly phase” himself out of the business he'd started in 1978 so he could spend more time flying, sailing, canoeing, hiking and riding his motorcycle.

Mr. Williams earned his pilot's licence when he was a teenager growing up in Neilburg, Sask.

Golden RCMP Sergeant Marko Shehovac said Monday it was a “miracle” little Kate survived the crash. She suffered no broken bones and had only a small mark on her face, he said.

Mr. Williams likely saved his granddaughter's life by “buckling her in real good,” Sgt. Shehovac said, adding that the investigation is continuing and the coroner will perform an autopsy “to make sure it wasn't a health reason” that caused the crash.

Sgt. Shehovac said Kate's parents were at home in Edmonton at the time of the crash. They drove to Golden with relatives after being notified about the crash. He said Mr. Williams had been acting as host to a business retreat over the weekend at his house in the Golden area.