Sixty years ago, a Going-to-the-Sun Road tragedy

This year marks the 60th anniversary of tragedy on Glacier National Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road when two men on the Park plow crew were killed in an avalanche, another was seriously injured and a fourth was buried and later rescued alive.

On May 26, 1953, the crew was plowing about five miles below Logan Pass. About 11:30 a.m., a massive avalanche slid over the highway and ran nearly a mile below the road, killing road crew foreman George Beaton and William Whitford. Frederick Klein was seriously injured. Eight hours later, road superintendent Jean Sullivan was rescued.

Foreman Ray Price at the time was working at the end of the road above the slide. He started back to Road Camp and thought it “looked fishy.” Sitting there was Sullivan’s pickup truck, but the rotary plow was gone. Then Price saw the 300-foot wide slide.

Men went to work looking for the victims. Klein was found about 400 yards below the road with a badly injured leg. About 150 yards further down, Joe Derringer found a boot sticking out of the snow. It was Whitford, dead from a broken neck.

About 1:30 p.m., a stretcher was brought to recover Klein. Meanwhile, men began digging while others kept watch for more avalanches. The rotary plow had been ground to pieces by the avalanche.

“It looked like it had gone through a food grinder,” Hungry Horse News editor Mel Ruder wrote.

Crews didn’t give up. Dimon Apgar kept digging, figuring that if Sullivan was alive, he was close to the bank. Apgar’s shovel struck a hole in the snow at 7 p.m. In it was Sullivan, alive. They rushed the wiry Sullivan to Road Camp by stretcher and gave him oxygen.

Beaton was still missing. Two search dogs brought in at 3:17 a.m. found Beaton’s battered body at 6 a.m. under a slight snow cover nearly a half-mile from the road.

Sullivan later told his tale. The crew was removing a slide that had run over the road the night before. Avalanche conditions were ripe, as it had snowed about 10 inches over the weekend on the Divide.

The men decided to use dynamite and to break the slide into chunks for the rotary plow to clear. The four men didn’t think another slide would come down the same chute after it had slid a few days earlier.

When the avalanche came down, Sullivan jumped into the cut made by the plow. He knew he would be buried, but at least he wouldn’t be swept down the mountain. He moved his head back and forth to create a pocket to breathe. He said he saw Beaton and Whitford, who were in the plow, swept away. They didn’t have a chance.

“I was covered. I worked my head back and forth, and my hands a little,” Sullivan recalled at the time. “The snow was heavy. I thought of May (his wife) but I wasn’t cold or afraid for myself. I knew they would dig me out. I was worried about what happened to Whitford and Beaton.”

It was the first and last fatal accident for plow crews on the Sun Road. An overlook is built there now, and a display tells its story.

Today, crews work one shift, and avalanche spotters ski the slopes from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above watching for slides. Still, there is plenty of danger, and there have been close calls.

A few years ago, a bulldozer pioneering a route slid off the road, but the operator was able to point the plow straight down the slope and drop the blade, which slowed his descent.

When avalanche conditions are high, crews stay off the highway altogether, especially when it’s cloudy and they can’t see the peaks above.

Because the mountains can let loose their snow in an instant, as Jean Sullivan knew all too well.