Two Bear flies far for rescue work

About once per week, the helicopter pilots at Two Bear Air Rescue get called upon to assist in search-and-rescue missions far from the Flathead Valley, traveling hundreds of miles from their airport hangar near Kalispell.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Two Bear pilot Jim Bob Pierce was dispatched 230 miles away to a possible drowning on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, a popular rafting destination cutting through the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

“They sent their own helicopter out there, but that canyon is so deep and steep, so that’s why they called us,” Pierce said, adding that the recovery efforts were not successful that day. “At that point, it was a recovery, so we were there to hoist him out of the bottom of that canyon.”

By Thursday morning the body of the 46-year-old Wyoming man, identified by the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office as Mike Olsen, still had not been recovered.

Pierce said Olsen had fallen from a raft carrying multiple people, but he initially had been able to cling to a rock in the river. They attempted to rescue Olsen from the rock but were unsuccessful. Pierce said during that effort, the man was pulled under the rushing water.

The mission — about an hour-and-a half flight from Kalispell — came during the busy season for Two Bear Air, an emergency service funded by Whitefish businessman and philanthropist Michael Goguen.

“At this time of year we get a lot of calls out of the area,” Pierce said. “We don’t have any set area, but it seems like we go down and spend a lot of time down in McCall, the Sun Valley.”

He said Two Bear typically responds to assistance requests within a 280-mile radius of its Flathead Valley base.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.