Coram teen endures ordeal in the dark

Coram teenager Lindsey Landell came away from a Sunday hunting outing with a few regrets and a sense of gratitude so strong that she hopes to “pay it forward” someday.

Landell, 17, went out the second day of the hunting season with her  brother, Cody, 23, on Hungry Horse Mountain just as a strong storm was blowing from the north.

They planned to hunt for the last few hours of the day, and Cody gave his sister a 10-minute head start with instructions to return at about 6:30 p.m.

But Landell’s watch was set behind an hour and there was less daylight ahead of her than she believed.

When she started her descent, she realized darkness was setting in rapidly.

“The mountains I had looked back at to make sure I wouldn’t lose my way were covered with clouds so I couldn’t see them,” said Landell, who quickly found herself entirely disoriented in the dark.

The Columbia Falls High School student started to panic.

She hadn’t eaten much during the day, she didn’t have any water and her legs were getting weak. She recalled her father telling her to stay in one place if she ever found herself lost, so she did.

And the cold began to take a toll. “As bad as [the weather] was in town, it was worse up there,” said Landell, who found herself crying and screaming for her brother. She had a fire starter but no matches or lighter to put it to use, one of her biggest regrets.

After nearly two hours, she began to hear sirens and saw flashing lights far below her, and she got up the gumption to walk in that direction, using a flashlight that was running out of batteries to guide her way.

“I think the main thing that made me go was my brother,” she said. “I wanted to see him again.”

Landell found herself in steep, timbered terrain with a wet, heavy snow coming down. She slipped and stumbled, at one point catching her rifle strap on something.

“It snapped off and I broke my scope a couple of times on the way down,,” she said. “It was definitely steep, oh gosh. Everywhere I stepped I would fall 10 to 20 feet down the slope until I was stopped by a tree. Every time I had to take a break.”

Landell estimates she veered about a mile off course from her intended return route, but she kept going toward the sirens that seemed to be sounding off about every 10 minutes.

As she approached the glow of distant lights, she started to run with her flickering flashlight. Just as her rescuers shined a light on her, she fell to the ground and couldn’t get back up.

She was carried to a warm truck, covered with wool blankets and given water and food. A paramedic told Landell that she traveled from Eureka to assist with the search along with personnel from the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, Flathead Valley Search and Rescue and the U.S. Forest Service. By 2 a.m., Landell was reunited with her family at home.

“There isn’t a scarier feeling than being alone in the dark of the woods without food and water, not knowing what will happen to you or if you’ll make it out alive to see your loved ones again,” Landell wrote in a letter to the Daily Inter Lake. “There isn’t a better feeling than being reunited with all of them and feeling the warmth of people’s hearts — seeing how much they cared for just a random lost girl.”

Although she has no idea who they were, Landell desperately wanted to thank the people who helped her, and she says she wants to be involved with helping someone in the same situation some day.

“Knowing the feeling of being alone and scared on a mountaintop like that  ... I want to help that person so much,” Landell said. “It is the worst feeling in the world.”