'I know what I saw'

By NICHOLAS LEDDEN/The Daily Inter Lake

Witnesses to Sunday's tragedy on Fiberglass Hill still insist at least two more skiers lie buried under snowslide

It began with what sounded like the echo of a gunshot.

Then there was a popping noise followed by a roar that Marty Olson likened to the breaking of an enormous wave.

When the snow from Sunday's avalanche in the Canyon Creek drainage stopped moving, Olson estimated it had come within 40 yards of where he and his friend, Maynard Denna, parked their snowmobiles.

"It's something I'd never like to see again," Olson said.

Olson and Denna are two of just a handful of eyewitnesses to the avalanche that killed skiers David Gogolak, 36, of Whitefish, and Anthony Kollmann, 19, of Kalispell.

But they are also the only ones to see two additional skiers in the canyon bottom overtaken by the slide - skiers for whom authorities officially stopped searching Wednesday.

"I know what I saw, and I know those guys got clobbered in there," Olson said.

Olson and Denna said they were riding a network of groomed snowmobile trails that run along the Canyon Creek drainage. They reached the Fiberglass Hill area about 11 a.m. after an already full morning of snowmobiling.

Skiers making backcountry powder runs off the north-facing slope of Big Mountain often use the trail network to re-enter Whitefish Mountain Resort's boundaries.

Olson and Denna encountered three such skiers that morning, pausing to give them a ride up the trail to Big Mountain. After their trips up the slope, they parked their sleds to rest and wait for some friends.

Olson and Denna, who had been parked for mere minutes, then observed two cross-country skiers duck-footing their way up a hill near the canyon bottom and contemplated giving them a ride too.

The skiers, in their late 40s or early 50s, were dressed head to foot in black or dark blue ski gear. One had a pair of white and fluorescent orange skis, Olson recalled.

They stopped to remove their skis, presumably to make the going a little easier.

Thirty seconds later there was a crack and the snow went roaring down.

"We could hear them talking the whole time until it happened," Olson said. "Then we could see them running."

Olson watched the avalanche the whole way down, he said. Denna kept his eyes on the two skiers in the canyon bottom as they were caught up and swept along by the torrent of moving snow.

"It looks so different now after my landmarks got wiped out," Denna said. "I saw snow coming through the trees and it just pounded them into the ground."

According to avalanche experts, Kollmann had triggered the slide while on the south-facing slope of Fiberglass Hill. The mass of snow - estimated to be 800 feet wide, 1,100 feet long and 25 feet deep at its leading edge - crashed down Fiberglass Hill and partially up the wooded slope of Big Mountain.

"There were a lot of debris in the slide, for sure," Olson said.

As Olson and Denna raced toward the trapped people, they came across two other skiers with avalanche beacons also wanting to join the search. They gave the skiers a ride to the scene and then went for help.

"If we had beacons, we would have stayed and helped look too," Olson said.

But when they returned from calling 911 at the trailhead parking lot on the North Fork Road, roughly 12 miles west of the avalanche site, Olson and Denna found rescuers searching too high on the slope, they said.

"I know when I marked them they were low in the avalanche," said Denna of the two cross-country skiers.

The slide had also trapped Gogolak and his brother-in-law farther up the trail system as they were hiking to Big Mountain.

That was the first time Olson and Denna even knew the brothers-in-law were in the area, they said.

After directing rescuers to also search farther down the slope, Olson and Denna joined a probe line. While on it, Olson recognized one of the skiers they had ferried up Big Mountain before the slide. He was very thankful, Olson said.

Kollmann was found near Fiberglass Hill within minutes after the 12:10 p.m. avalanche, but died from severe traumatic injuries almost immediately after the slide. Gogolak's body was eventually recovered nearer Big Mountain at about 4:30 p.m. under 3 feet of snow. Gogolak's brother-in-law, who was only buried up to his chest, was not injured.

According to Olson and Denna, the two cross-country skiers at the very bottom of the canyon were swallowed up by at least 20 feet of snow.

They have not been found, and the search for their bodies has been suspended by authorities.

"Everything happened so fast," Denna said. "It shook me up pretty good. I don't want to see anything like that again."

Olson and Denna, who said they had been snowmobiling in the area every weekend for the past two months, themselves barely escaped the avalanche's path.

"We were way too close," Denna said, adding that he has replayed the scene in his head countless times trying to remember more details to aid searchers.

"It wasn't something that's easy to take," he said.

Kollmann, a graduate of Flathead High School, was a member of the Big Mountain Race Team and the Big Mountain Bike Team. He was also an avid camper.

Gogolak spent several years in the restaurant business in San Francisco and had recently moved to Whitefish. His father, former NFL kicker Peter Gogolak, played for the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League in 1964 and 1965 and for the New York Giants of the NFL from 1966 to 1974. He was the first "soccer-style" kicker in professional football and is the Giants' all-time leading scorer, according to Associated Press reports.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com