70 years ago, A Sun Road tragedy, a Sun Road miracle

Seventy years ago this month, Glacier National Park saw one of its greatest tragedies on the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

It also saw a miracle.

“Tulips and fruit trees were in bloom in the Flathead Valley, but up on the continental divide, thousands of tons of snow moved off the Garden Wall,” wrote Hungry Horse News editor Mel Ruder in the May 29, 1953 edition of the Hungry Horse News.

The slide, on May 26, 1953 was five miles from Logan Pass and about 8/10-tenths of a mile above what is called Road Camp — a massive avalanche that rocketed off the mountainside onto crews plowing the highway below.

Killed were crew foreman George H. Beaton and William A. Whitford, both 45.

Seriously injured was Frederick E. Klein, 31.

Miraculously, Jean Sullivan survived, buried under the snow from about 11 a.m., when the slide occurred, to 7 p.m. when rescuers found him.

The push was on to get the road open by June 15. Crews worked in two shifts — 4 a.m. to noon and then the other until evening.

There were eyewitnesses to the slide, though they didn’t know the tragedy beneath it.

Herman Berg was tending the gate at Logan Creek, when the avalanche let loose.

Ray Price was working about a mile above accident on another section of the road to the east. When he turned around he saw the slide covering 300 feet of the highway.

It extended down the slope a mile. The scene was quiet.

“It looked fishy,” Price told the newspaper at the time.

He could see Sullivan’s pickup truck. But the rotary plow was nowhere in sight.

Price ran to the telephone at Road Camp and called for help. (There were no cell phones back then, obviously.)

“Four men and the sno-go missing,” he reported.

A dozen men from the crew arrived and started swinging shovels into action, clawing away at the slide as rain fell.

It was 12:45 p.m.

That spring had been colder and snowier than usual. The crew the year before had the road opened by Memorial Day. But a slide had already gone over the road the day before and then more wet snow fell on top of that.

It was a recipe for an avalanche.

As crews went to work digging, others went down the slide.

Claude Tesmer, Joe Derringer and John Street, the camp cook, found Klein. His left leg was broken and buried in the snow. They made him as comfortable as they could and went further down the slope.

Another 150 yards down the slope Derringer saw a boot sticking out the snow.

It was Whitford. He had a broken neck.

Meanwhile, Dimon Apgar, one of the crew and a longtime friend of Sullivan, kept digging close to the bank.

He figured that if Sullivan had managed to survive, he would be close to the inside edge of the plow cut, where an air pocket may have formed.

At 7 p.m. he came upon Sullivan, 59. He was unconscious, but alive. They took his body to camp and gave him oxygen and wrapped him in warm towels. They didn’t have hot water, but they did have hot coffee, so they used bottles of it to warm the man’s frigid body.

Meanwhile, a bloodhound was brought up. They had found a shoe belonging to Beaton.

The dog marked the scent and as it began to get light out after an all-night search, the dog found Beaton’s body, “under a slight cover of snow.”

He was nearly a half mile below the road.

Sullivan recalled being buried alive.

He said he was getting ready to blast a slide that had already gone over the road with 50 pounds of dynamite. Klein brought him up the explosives and Sullivan had the detonator.

At the time, they thought there was little chance of another slide crossing the road.

But before he could set the charge, Sullivan saw the avalanche barreling toward him. He had five seconds, tops.

“All I had time to do was jump into the cut made my the plow,” he told the newspaper. “I knew the snow would bury me … I didn’t want to be carried down the mountain.”

He watched as Beaton was swept away by the snow down the slope. He also saw Whitford go over as well, as the snow caught the plow he was operating and blasted him down the slope.

Sullivan said he thought of his wife, May, as he was buried. He was able to work an opening in the snow and was able to breath. He said he wasn’t cold or afraid. He knew they would dig him out.

He was more worried about Beaton and Whitford.

Then he blacked out.

Sullivan had been working in Glacier since 1926 and had been on the plow crew virtually since the road first opened in 1933.

His desire, after recovering in a hospital, was to get back to work on the road.

That year it opened June 24 — the latest opening at the time since 1933.

Today, Glacier does things quite differently. For one, there are no two shifts of crews working to plow the road. The park also uses avalanche spotters above the road to look for any avalanche danger and to warn crews below. There’s also remote weather stations and avalanche beacons that help find anyone who might get buried in the snow.

Communications are much better as well, with advanced radio systems and relays.

Still, the job is a dangerous one, as the mountains are still very much unpredictable. Just this year a rock fell off the cliffs above and smashed down into a fuel truck.

A few feet farther and it could have killed or severely injured the driver.