Skier rescued from back of Big Mountain

A cold, wet skier from Fergus Falls, Minn., was rescued from the back of Big Mountain late Monday night.

About 40 people participated in rescuing Jeff Sturgin, 22, after he and others skied out of bounds, said Tom Snyder. Snyder is the coordinator of search and rescue through Flathead County Sheriff's Office.

The skiers went off the back side of the mountain between 11 a.m. and noon Monday, Snyder said. The four skied down to the west of the Gray Wolf Ski Run on the north side of the mountain's Chair 7 area.

"The rest of the group came back; he didn't," Snyder said.

They skied down several more times, looking for Sturgin, and notified Big Mountain Ski Patrol at 3 p.m. that they couldn't find him, according to Big Mountain's Brian Schott. The ski patrol searched for Sturgin and then called the Flathead County Sheriff's Office, search-and-rescue teams and the Flathead Valley Nordic Ski Patrol.

A command post was set up at the mountain's fire station, Snyder said.

Nordic Ski Patrol searched the top of the mountain. North Valley Search and Rescue sent snowmobiles up the Canyon Creek area at the back of the mountain. Flathead County Search and Rescue sent snowmobilers into Hellroaring Basin.

After about 10:30 p.m., the North Valley team found ski tracks and shut off their snowmobiles so Sturgin could hear them yelling for him.

"They got a verbal response," Snyder said, but they were still a ways from finding and rescuing Sturgin.

Nordic Ski Patrol had also found tracks.

At about 11:20 p.m., rescuers found Sturgin, "very, very cold" and wet, in a gully west of the survival cabin near the snowmobile trails in the Canyon Creek drainage. Nordic Ski Patrol and the North Valley team got him into dry clothing and took him by snowmobile to the bottom of Chair 7, where groomers worked to get him to the command center.

Snyder said he was just minutes away from breaking a window in Sturgin's car and cutting out part of the seat for a search dog to scent when Sturgin was found. ALERT helicopter flew a few circuits around the area, but was stymied by low clouds, Snyder said.

In all, he found a lot to praise in Sturgin's rescue.

"It was a really good team effort, following the clues, getting the guy, checking him out, bringing him out," Snyder said.

One of the clues was provided by the mountain's ski-pass scanning. It records skier's entrances onto chair lifts. In this case, the system verified what Sturgin's friends had said about where and when he was last seen.

"That technology helped us reaffirm our primary search area," Snyder said.

Sturgin didn't need hospital attention. A doctor with Nordic Ski Patrol found him to be cold, but unhurt.

Snyder said the incident is a good lesson on minding the boundaries on Big Mountain.

"This was not an accident," he said.

"Don't ski out of bounds. Those ropes are there for a reason."