Two teenages found after two nights

Two sets of parents held their sons close Friday afternoon, tears and laughter and questions jumbling in ecstasy after Jack Landers of Fargo, N.D., and Charlie Gruys of Maple Lake, Minn., were rescued from the Jewel Basin east of Kalispell.

A grateful father wanted to know what an intensive 48-hour backcountry search for two lost teenagers is going to cost him.

"The minute I saw your face when we told you they were found, that paid us," responded Sheriff Jim Dupont.

The 19-year-old students from Montana State University in Bozeman had come to Whitefish with four other friends for spring break. They went to the Jewel Basin to try out the snow on Wednesday afternoon. Landers was giving his snowboard a workout; Gruys was on skis, as he's been since he was 2, his mother said.

The two friends decided to take another run as their other friends moved on. They should have called it a day. The next run they took left them disoriented and a dire change of circumstances began.

They were almost immediately lost.

"We thought we could ski to the parking lot," Landers said. Instead, they had to hike. There were tracks they followed, thinking they were made by their friends. Before long, Gruys and Landers were at a lake. There was no parking lot.

They had a cell phone and called their friends, who reported them lost. The teens were traveling light, with almost no gear.

"That weather changed really quick," Gruys said.

For months, there has been no snow in the Flathead. Once Gruys and Landers were lost in unfamiliar woods, the skies released their load of precipitation. Still, the friends didn't panic.

They called 911. A recording of the call captures how calm they were.

"Hi, this is Charlie again," Gruys says on one recording, sounding like he might be ordering pizza. "The sun's coming out," he told the 911 dispatcher.

So was a team of team of rescuers that would eventually number about 80 over the course of two days, according to Dupont. First, Nordic Ski Patrol and North Valley Search and Rescue began. The trouble was, they didn't know where the men had gone, and Gruys and Landers didn't know how to describe their location. There was snow. Trees. Maybe the sound of snowmobiles, but they weren't sure about that. And descending darkness.

Sheriff's deputy Tom Snyder who coordinates search and rescue for the county mobilized the willing and hardy volunteers.

Gruys and Landers had skied over the ridge and traversed the valley to the east of where they began.

"That night, we had no shelter," Landers said. "I decided we had to keep moving." Later, at a lake, probably Black Lake, they made a snow shelter and slept for an hour or two, he said. They called 911 again.

At about 5:30 a.m., Snyder had suspended the search for the safety of rescuers. The weather was getting worse. There was no visibility and so, no point in endangering rescuers. Tired searchers came down from the Jewel and tried to do what the two Midwestern teens couldn't do - rest.

On Thursday morning, the teens did something unexpected. They went back up the ridge, traveling through snow that was at times waist-deep. The reason?

"We went back up because I knew I couldn't get cell-phone service," Gruys said.

They were soaked, tired and cold, going on the limited energy of a sandwich they shared the day before. They had a little water.

"We ate some snow," Landers said.

In his office, Dupont was chastising himself for not telling them that eating snow would further chill them. But the cell connection between the teens and their rescuers had gone as cold as Gruys' feet and there were a lot of things Dupont and others wanted to say, but couldn't.

The men knew that they should stay where they were, they said. But the ridge was windy and snowy and "it was really cold up there," Landers said. They stayed still for about two hours and started moving again.

"I knew I was going to be fine as long as we staying moving," he said.

They moved west. The trees were thick. There were rivers, Landers said. While searchers intensified their efforts, the two teens worried about their families worrying about them. They wished their lighter worked. They kept moving. It was soon dark again.

As they huddled, grounded, beneath a bush for warmth, activity was happening in the sky. Their families were making arrangements to fly to Montana. And a Blackhawk helicopter, equipped with night vision and infrared imaging, was flying above, trying to find evidence of warmth and life below in wilderness during one the brief clearing in the weather.

The teens heard it in the darkness.

"It was reassuring" to know someone was still looking, Landers said. Their confidence on the first day that they'd be quickly found was shaken.

"We had no idea where we were," he said.

Snyder hoped that the helicopter crew could find them and the ground corps could scoop them up. At about 11 p.m., the Blackhawk began its search. The cloud ceiling was right about where the pilot was flying.

"Don't call it," Snyder urged the pilot, under his breath. The pilot stuck with it, finding tracks that could be searchers' tracks or the missing men's tracks. Snyder agonized while the helicopter refueled and continued its search. Finally, just before 3 a.m., the pilot said he had to return to Helena.

"I don't want to call the parents," Snyder said wearily. At about 34 hours into the search, he started working on plans for searching at daybreak. Dupont sent him home at about 8 a.m.

Another brief break came in the weather Friday afternoon as searchers put more miles on their snowmobiles, skis, and snowshoes. Dupont asked for a search plane from Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane. When the response wasn't fast enough, he decided not to squander about 15 minutes of anticipated clear sky and asked Dave Hoerner of Red Eagle Aviation if he would fly, instead. Hoerner agreed, taking sheriff's deputy Sgt. Jim Browder up as spotter.

In Noisy Creek Drainage, on a remote road, two men waved at the plane. They were Gruys and Landers. Soaked and on their feet, they were alive.

Hoerner called in their location and within 20 minutes, Scott Rhodes of Flathead Search and Rescue arrived.

"Could you help us? We're kind of lost," they told Rhodes.

"We've been looking for you," he said. "They were pretty astonished to find out how many people were looking for them."

Uninjured, the teens got a ride to the sheriff's office, where their families were waiting for them. Dupont was able to tell the families as they arrived in the Flathead that their sons had just been found.

"I always had a good feeling about it. They were keeping their cool. They're in good physical condition," Dupont said.

It was in the justice center parking lot that the Gruyses and Landerses reunited.

"Hi, Mom," Jack Landers told his mother, Debbie. "I didn't expect you to be here."

"He looks great. He's acting like our normal Jack," she said. Jack Landers' father, Doug, and 17-year-old sister, Libby, agreed.

"He looks tired," Kathy Gruys said of her son, Charlie.

"He looks too good to be true," Bob Gruys said.

Their gratitude overwhelmed rescuers, deputies, dispatchers, and others who witnessed the reunion. Teenage boys moved to tears had only to watch the faces of the adults around them to know they weren't alone in their emotion.

Kathy Gruys couldn't say enough about the kindness and accessibility of the people who rescued her son for her.

Landers family friend, Gary Thrasher agreed. He held up his cell phone to snap a picture of Snyder "so everybody in Fargo know how you look."

In a day or two, all those people in Maple Lake and Fargo who worried about two teenage boys lost in the Montana wilderness will be able to see for themselves how they look when the families return home. And the Flathead Valley will have another glimpse at what an exhausted envoy of rescuers is willing to do for complete strangers in trouble.