Hovering 100 feet in the air above a hydraulic hazard called “The Shelf” on the crystalline North Fork Flathead River, the view from the Bell 429 helicopter is unrivaled, the river rock standing out as if on display under glass as one raft flotilla after another negotiates the churning rapids and emerges unscathed.
Wait long enough, though, and chances are one of the rafts will capsize, sending the boat and its occupants skittering into an aquatic centrifuge, locking them in the swirling eddy like a Gravitron amusement park ride.
“The Shelf has been eating rafts all month,” Jim Bob Pierce, chief pilot for Two Bear Air, said from the cockpit. “Just gobbling them up.”
It’s an easy feature to avoid by skirting to the left, but it’s been keeping the Flathead Valley’s diverse corps of search and rescue volunteers busy as unassuming floaters hit The Shelf head on, sucked in by its vortex.
In July, members of various search and rescue teams responded to 10 emergency rescue calls relating to floaters whose boats flipped on The Shelf. In one case a family of four, clinging desperately to a rock, had to be rescued.
“Fortunately this year we haven’t had anyone drown, but it’s been stranding a lot of people,” Scott Cheff, president of North Valley Search and Rescue, said.
Still, the calls became so frequent that Cheff decided to camp in the area; sure enough, rescuers were dispatched after receiving a call that a woman was trapped in The Shelf’s whirlpool, and Cheff arrived within minutes.
“I was there within five minutes, with all of my swiftwater rescue gear,” Cheff said.
Search and rescue responses are rising steadily in the region – Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said last year there were more than 400 calls – but the efficiency of the Flathead Valley’s suite of search and rescue responders is keeping pace, positioning the local network of resources at the vanguard of the Pacific Northwest.
“We’ve entered the big leagues,” Jordan White, executive director of Two Bear Air, said.
Graduating to the “big leagues” is, in large part, due to the addition of the Bell 429 at Two Bear Air – a philanthropic contribution to the community that is unrivaled in terms of public safety tools.
“It’s a complete game changer,” White said. “We are the first community of this size to have this technology available. Having access to these assets is just unheard of.”
The Bell 429 took more than a year to build and is equipped with highly advanced technology specifically selected to aid in the search for missing people, and to facilitate complex and efficient rescues in Northwest Montana’s mountainous terrain.
The twin-engine helicopter, acquired last October, features instruments not offered by Two Bear Air’s smaller MD 500 E, single-engine helicopter – features like specialized infrared cameras, 3D mapping systems and a rescue hoist, making it a world-class aircraft never seen before in Montana, let alone Flathead County.
The helicopter is equipped for most rescue situations, Pierce said, and with its 280-foot hoist, the aircraft is ideally equipped for rescues through the tree-covered valley, or from high, remote mountains.
Recently, Pierce piloted a crew to the top of a high ridge near Piegan Mountain, where a woman had been injured and couldn’t hike back down unassisted. Using the rescue hoist, the Two Bear Air crew scooped her up and ferried her to safety in a matter of minutes, whereas a ground crew with a litter would have spent all day retrieving the woman.
That same week, he helped locate the wreckage of a small plane downed in the Bitterroot Mountains, as well as the craft’s deceased pilot. Then he helped search for a missing wildland firefighter near Hamilton.
“My plan starts when I get out of bed and goes out the window about 10 minutes later,” Pierce said of his frenetic schedule. “But we have all the tools, the best of the best. And it’s just an incredible platform to do search and rescue from.”
The Bell’s infrared camera has aided crews in searches for missing rafters and hikers, as well as absconding murder suspects hiding in the mountains. It also picks up images of grizzly bears, elk and bighorn sheep, and a small campfire lights up on the display “like a small city,” Pierce said.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Two Bear operation is its cost – taxpayers will never see a bill.
That’s because Whitefish philanthropist Mike Goguen supports all costs of the operation, with zero cost to taxpayers, committed to the ultimate mission of saving lives.
With a rich history of search and rescue in the Flathead Valley, it remains the busiest in the state, and Goguen’s contribution places it in rarefied territory.
The addition of the Bell 429 and the expertise of the search and rescue members is a marked departure from the humble beginnings of the operation in the Flathead Valley. The inception of the organized effort dates back almost 70 years when a group of World War II veterans led by Sheriff Dick Walsh banded together after seeing a critical need, forming the Flathead County Rescue and Life Saving Association.
While a desperate young boy clung to a snag on the Flathead River, the search and rescue team began with a 20-meter rope and a lot of courage.
Sheriff Walsh tied one end of the rope to his belt and plunged into the swirling water, while Undersheriff Ernie Baker held the other end. The rescue attempt ended tragically, with Walsh nearly dying and the boy drowning. Two months later, 8-year-old Johnnie Vance fell from a dam near Whitefish; he didn’t have a chance of survival, but it was eight days before his body was recovered and the family could find closure, revealing the need for an organized team.
Today Dick’s son, Pat, is still involved in the efforts his father spearheaded in 1947 – one that has snowballed to include myriad teams, including Flathead County Search and Rescue, North Valley Search and Rescue, and specialty teams like the Mountain Rescue Team, Flathead Nordic Ski Patrol, K9 and equine teams.
“I’ve seen the program evolve to where it is today,” Walsh said. “Today, the different teams really work together.”
With its proximity to Glacier National Park, multiple wilderness areas, a network of public lands, rugged terrain, ski areas and scores of lakes and rivers, few other places pose as many perilous factors as the Flathead Valley. Add to that the harsh weather and constant arrival of visitors drawn to peak-studded ridges, the wilderness of the Bob Marshall or the whitewater forks of the Flathead River, and it’s easy to see how search and rescue resources could be stretched thin.
With the abundance of recreational opportunities and aesthetic qualities, Flathead County is the among the fastest-growing and one of the most populated counties in Montana.
Two Bear Air search and rescue covers an area that encompasses 3,262,720 acres, or 5,098 square miles. Approximately 94 percent of the land mass is national or state forest land, wilderness, agricultural and corporate timber land, confining development to the remaining 6 percent of the area.
White said Goguen’s company is in charge of all maintenance and operational expenses, and because of Goguen’s philanthropic work, no local person or entity will ever have to pay for the helicopter’s aid.
“Just getting one rescuer hoist-certified is $25,000, or about half the county’s entire training budget for the sheriff’s office,” White said. “None of this would be possible without Mike Goguen.”
And while the Bell 429 is an amazing tool, it’s the dedication of the more than 150, boots-on-the-ground volunteers – born of a recognition in 1947 that the community needed a fleet of guardian angels – that make the valley’s search-and-rescue efforts special.
“It’s an amazing tool, this helicopter. But the volunteers are the soul of search and rescue,” Pierce said.