Avalanche Search Effort Lambasted Victim’s Friends Want Answers; County Says It Did All It Could

When an avalanche buried snowmobiler Troy Douglas in the frozen northernmost reaches of Bonner County, his friends banded together.

They called authorities.

They rallied the town of Priest River, forming a search party of friends and neighbors.

And a few sat on a ridge in the cold darkness Saturday night, waiting for a search and rescue team that dispatchers said was on the way.

Help never came.

Now family, friends and neighbors of the 28-year-old Oldtown man, whose body was recovered by friends Sunday morning, want answers.

“They lied to us,” said Tracy O’Brien, a friend of Douglas’ who was there when the avalanche engulfed him. “They told us they had crews up there, which was a lie.”

But Bonner County sheriff’s Cpl. Bob Howard said his rescue team tried twice but couldn’t get through.

O’Brien wondered if things would have been different if Douglas had been found earlier. “We could have had him above the snow and possibly alive,” he said. “I don’t know.”

It all began about noon Saturday, a bright, beautiful day. Douglas and some friends were snowmobiling in the Lost Creek area not far from the Bonner-Boundary county line.

“We were hill-climbing,” O’Brien said - seeing how high their machines could go before stalling.

A man who wasn’t in their party was climbing a hill using a high-powered snow machine. Douglas followed.

Douglas’ machine got stuck, and Douglas tried to turn it around.

The snowmobile that was higher up triggered the avalanche. O’Brien watched from below.

“I tried watching Troy as long as I could,” O’Brien said. “He was swimming in the avalanche.”

The man whose snowmobile had caused the slide also was overtaken by the frozen torrent. “It caught up to him and shot him up in the air,” said witness Tom Shanholtzer. The man survived.

The slide - 10 feet deep in places, a quarter-mile wide, sheriff’s reports said - completely buried Douglas and his snowmobile.

His friends grabbed sticks, probing the snow. A call for help was placed by 12:40 p.m., witnesses said.

The friends waited for search and rescue teams to arrive. O’Brien then went down the mountain to Coolin to call for help again.

“One of the dispatchers told me they already had crews on the scene and more crews were being dispatched,” he said.

When O’Brien returned to the top about 4 p.m., there were no trained rescuers there, he said. But 30 or 40 people - some snowmobilers, some neighbors living in Priest River - had pitched in to help. And by this time, someone had a cellular telephone.

But by dark, many had left. O’Brien and the others remaining started a fire so the search team could spot them.

Still, no rescuers. No equipment.

By 8 p.m., O’Brien and the others had given up. “Search and Rescue called us and told us they weren’t coming up because of the weather,” O’Brien said.

Sheriff’s officer Howard said volunteers trained for avalanche rescues gathered below the area late Saturday afternoon. “They were told they could not be transferred up to the scene,” Howard said. They needed one rider per snowmobile, he said, and there weren’t enough machines.

According to releases issued by the Bonner County Sheriff’s Department, deputies couldn’t determine where the slide had occurred. It was reported to Bonner County first. Later Saturday afternoon, officials thought the avalanche had occurred in Boundary County; Boundary deputies were notified shortly after 4. By Sunday, they decided that no, it actually had occurred in Bonner County after all.

“What the hell difference does it make?” asked an angry Mike Sackett, who helped relay Saturday’s pleas for help from his snowmobile shop at Priest Lake.

“They’re just trying to pass the buck. … Why does it take three hours for them to figure out what’s going on? By then, there’s not even a chance the guy could be alive.”

A dispatcher promised that a search and rescue team would be out first thing Sunday, O’Brien said.

“We headed up the trail (Sunday), never passed a search and rescue (team), no Forest Service people, no one,” he said. Saturday’s sunshine was gone. Sunday was gray with fog blown by severe winds.

Howard said 51 rescuers were on their way at 6 a.m. - but only “between two and six snowmobiles got through.”

His group started out from another access, he said - one that was only eight miles from the snowslide. The party of friends headed out Sunday from a spot 14 miles away. “We felt it would be closer,” Howard said.

Most in the search and rescue team didn’t have machines powerful enough to get them across the extreme terrain, Howard said. “These volunteers use their own snowmobiles.”

Meanwhile, the army of about 70 friends and neighbors headed out on its own. They brought shovels and tubing donated by a Priest River hardware store to use as probes.

“The conditions were terrible. You couldn’t see two feet in front of your face,” O’Brien said.

An off-duty state police officer, Chris Yount, had joined the group. They entered the wilderness near Priest Lake, mounting snowmobiles. When the terrain got too tough, the friends dismounted and hiked the last quarter-mile.

“That’s when we found his sled,” Shanholtzer said. “Five or ten minutes after that, we finally found Troy.”

“There were enough people up there as far as family and friends,” said friend Rod Troudt, but no one knew how to mount a rescue except Yount. The promised tracking dogs never showed up either, witnesses said.

Some of those who found Douglas at 9:22 a.m. Sunday believe he died instantly.

Because of his job, Yount is hesitant about commenting on the Bonner rescue team’s performance. But he said “the facts given in the press release were not the facts” and said he agrees with O’Brien’s account.

But Bonner County Commissioner Bud Mueller said the county team did a very good job and was on the scene. “They just weren’t wearing uniforms,” he said.

Howard also said Douglas’ friends wouldn’t have recognized search and rescue members by their dress.

But O’Brien claimed “there wasn’t a strange face there. And there were no search and rescue people.”

Douglas’ widow is angry no trained searchers showed up, especially on Saturday. Fonda Douglas said she shouldn’t have had to have endured hours of not knowing if her husband was alive or dead.

The couple has a preschool-age daughter.

“I shouldn’t have had to sit through the night like that. … We went through torture just wondering,” she said.

“I can only thank all of our friends and families for doing what (deputies) were supposed to.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Formula for an avalanche