Ski champ gets aerial rescue

For Stella Holt, breaking a leg on Glacier National Park's Mount Gould was definitely painful, but her subsequent short-haul helicopter rescue was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

"It was really cool, actually," said Holt, a 15-year-old from Whitefish who was last year's national Nordic skate-skiing champion.

Saturday was a busy day for Holt, starting with a run in the Boogie to the Bank Heritage Days race in Columbia Falls with her friends, Ian Mallam, Jack Steele and Helen Mann.

Afterwards, the four drove to Glacier for a climb up Mount Gould, starting from the Haystack Creek parking area on Going-to-the-Sun Road and a hike straight uphill to the Highline Trail. From there, the group started climbing up the sheer west ridge approach to the summit of Mount Gould.

"We had been going for about an hour and a half when I slipped," Holt said. "We were maybe two-thirds of the way up."

Holt said she thought immediately that she had broken her ankle after the fall.

"The sole of my shoe was parallel with my leg … so I knew it was broken," she said.

"Actually, I only fell about three feet, which was really lucky because I could have easily fallen 500 to 600 feet."

Holt said she calmly called to her friends for help, not wanting them to rush in their climb back down to the ledge where she was sitting. The decision was made for Steele, 16, and Mann, 18, to stay with Holt.

"We sent Ian to get help because we knew he would be the quickest," Holt said, referring to Mallam, a former high school cross-country running champion. "He was our most experienced climber."

Mallam scrambled back down to the Haystack parking area and drove to Logan Pass for help. Holt said she fell at about 1 p.m. and it took about four hours for the helicopter to arrive from Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park.

"The first hour and a half, it hurt the most," Holt said. "Jack and Helen did a really good job of helping me out. I couldn't have asked for a better group."

The helicopter flew over and surveyed the scene, left and returned two times to lower two medical technicians onto the ledge. On the helicopter's third return, a chair-like sling was lowered.

Holt's leg was fitted with vacuum splints and she was secured in the sling for a short flight down to the Haystack parking area.

"They had stopped all traffic to and from Logan Pass. They had an ambulance waiting there," she said.

Holt's mother, Chris Holt, had been keeping track of the entire rescue with regular calls from Michael Ober, a veteran ranger stationed at Lake McDonald.

"It's the worst phone call a parent can get," she said. But Ober quickly informed her that her daughter was OK but unable to climb down.

"He explained the whole thing in detail," she said. "He was very confident in the Canadian detail that was coming down."

Chris Holt said she was relieved to be informed that her daughter was in the ambulance and on her way to North Valley Hospital.

It turned out that Stella did not break her ankle; she actually fractured her lower tibia and fibula. She is scheduled for surgery today, and she expects to be in a cast for six to eight weeks. That puts an end to this year's cross-country running season.

"I won't be running this year," she said. "That's already been decided. But it's still my goal to be skiing this year."

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com