Search continues for missing Kalispell man

The search for a man missing since Sunday in the South Fork of the Flathead River was concentrated Wednesday in a narrower section of the water.

Gabriel Brown, 21, of Kalispell disappeared after entering the river at Devil's Elbow, below Hungry Horse Dam and about a mile from where the South Fork converges with the main stem of the Flathead River.

After days of searches that followed the river for miles downstream to the Costco area, on Wednesday, searchers concentrated on the area between Hungry Horse bridge and Devil's Elbow. Helicopters, divers, boats, ground crews and search dogs have been used to try to find Brown.

He is presumed to have drowned.

On Tuesday night, search dogs alerted on an area, indicating something beneath the water, but it turned out be a deer, said sheriff's deputy Tom Snyder, coordinator for search and rescue in Flathead County.

A dog alerted again Wednesday in the area of a trough below Devil's Elbow.

Snyder has considered that area to be a place where Brown's body might be found. It also is an extremely treacherous stretch of water, he said.

"There are huge boulders underwater, there's a bad current. It's not safe," he said, and he won't send divers in to search there for Brown. The water is said to be more than 40 feet deep in the trough.

Brown and some friends were fishing at Devil's Elbow, when he told his friends he was going for a swim. They saw him go downstream and around a corner, and he didn't return.

The search was to be scaled back today, with the ground search considered complete.