Lost skiers rescued from Hellroaring Basin

Two teenage girls were rescued from the lower slopes of Big Mountain late Saturday night after ducking an out-of-bounds rope at Whitefish Mountain Resort.

According to resort officials, two girls from the Seattle area skied into the closed Hellroaring Basin area on the west side of Big Mountain. Whitefish Mountain Resort opened for the winter season Saturday with limited terrain. The entire front side, including Hellroaring Basin, was roped off and marked as closed due to a thin snowpack and hazardous skiing conditions.

Whitefish Mountain Resort Ski Patrol received a call from one of the girls’ father after dark at about 6 p.m. Three patrollers were dispatched from the resort’s ski patrol.

They followed ski tracks into Hellroaring Basin and to the Chair 8 lift shed at the bottom of the Hell Fire slope. The girls weren’t at the shed but footprints led further downhill into the Hellroaring Creek drainage. The creek eventually crosses East Lakeshore Drive along Whitefish Lake. The area below the lift is beyond resort boundaries.

At that point Flathead Nordic Ski Patrol took over search efforts. The nonprofit group of volunteers are trained to respond to winter backcountry emergencies. They operate under the authority of the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office.

The Nordic patrol sent out a crew of six volunteers at about 7 p.m., Nordic patrol search leader Amy Moore said. The lost girls had called 911 from a cell phone, which the sheriff department used to generate global positioning system coordinates. Dispatchers told the girls to stay where they were so Nordic Patrol could follow the GPS signal.

It took Nordic patrol a few hours to locate the girls due to a lack of snow and rough terrain, Moore said. They found them about halfway between the bottom of Chair 8 and East Lakeshore Drive.

Patrollers provided the girls with food, warm clothes and sleeping bags, and built a fire. Low temperatures were in the teens Saturday and Sunday.

“They were chilled,” Moore said. “They weren’t dressed to sit outside doing nothing.”

After more than an hour around the fire patrol led the girls back up toward Chair 8 and the emergency egress route below the lift. They safely made it to the Elk Highlands area at about 2 a.m. on Sunday morning.

“The girls were in great shape and in good spirits,” Moore explained. “They were able to walk out on their own.”

The six volunteer Nordic patrol members involved in the rescue effort included Corey Ledbetter, Jerry Lundgren, Alice Ford, Greg Fortin, Connor O’Neil and Jason Keister. Another crew of six Nordic patrollers was being dispatched from East Lakeshore Drive minutes before the girls were found.

Whitefish Mountain Resort spokeswoman Riley Polumbus reminded skiers about the dangers of skiing into closed terrain.

“We’re all anxious to ski more terrain but there is a reason why things are not open yet,” Polumbus said. “Hazards exist and you can get into trouble quickly. Please observe our closures.”