Missing snowmobilers prompt widespread search during Christmas weekend

The four riders checked into Albany Lodge during their stay and enjoyed snow that lived up to the reports.

“The riding was phenomenal,” Miah said.

The first day and the first night

On Dec. 22, they loaded their Ski-Doo 850cc snowmobiles on a trailer and drove to the Green Rock Trailhead on Wyoming Highway 130. The trailhead is located as far west as the highway is open during the winter and is a popular jumping-off point for winter recreationists.

The Christensens have been serious snowmobilers for the last four years or so, with Miah returning to the sport as his sons got old enough to join him. They’d been to the Snowies several times before.

They spent all of Saturday riding, finding untracked powder and open meadows as they worked their way westward.

“It was all fresh snow that nobody had ever ridden on,” Miah said.

As they noticed the afternoon light shifting toward evening, they wanted to keep playing but decided to head in the direction of the truck. Zach stopped to check their location with a GPS device he was carrying, but it wasn’t working.

“He couldn’t get it to turn on long enough to get coordinates or see a trail or anything,” Miah said.

The group had a couple hours of daylight and a map, so they decided to head east and look for a trail that would lead them to the trailhead.

Darkness fell quickly, and the riders found themselves in a rocky area they couldn’t easily cross. The terrain pushed them lower in elevation and northward somewhere near Deep Creek. They still had half a tank of gas in their machines, but they were tired.

They decided to stop for the night, build a fire and wait for daylight. They could continue onward in the morning, load up their sleds and head home.

Though they had never been in a survival situation before, the group carried supplies that saved their lives — saws, shovels, knives, parachute cord, rope, towing straps, bottled water, granola bars, beef jerky, Ziplock bags and waterproof matches.

“We were still pretty confident at that time,” Miah said.

The second day and the second night

On the morning of Dec. 23, the riders were scheduled to check out of their room at Albany Lodge. According to owner David Wright, a housekeeper had entered the room the day before and left clean towels.

A different housekeeper entered on Sunday morning and noticed the towels were still there. She radioed to ask if they had scheduled a late check-out, but nothing was on the schedule.

“It’s not uncommon for riders on their last day out — they’ll take off early in the morning and go for a ride and then come back and load up and go away,” Wright said.

Meanwhile, the riders woke up to a gorgeous mountain morning and a fresh dusting of snow. They packed up and headed east.

Right away, two riders got stuck. Miah stopped his snowmobile to help, and then it wouldn’t start again. He hopped on Bruining’s sled and left his behind, so their mobility was hampered as the terrain continued to push them north and downhill.

“We drove down into an area we weren’t comfortable with, but it ended up being the crucial one,” he said. “It ended being a pretty good hill going downwards, and there was no going up it.”

They continued down a slope thick with trees, knowing that a sled with two riders wouldn’t make it up anything very easily. Ahead, they saw an opening in the trees they hoped was a meadow, which could allow them to change course.

“It was a dead end, which isn’t very common,” Miah said.

Then they found a hiking trail to follow, hoping it would lead them to a road as they continued downhill. As mid-afternoon approached, they lost the footpath and Cole, breaking trail in the front of the group, got stuck.

Making decisions together, the group decided to stop for the day once again as they reached another clearing. They cut pine boughs for shelter and bedding and placed rocks near their fire to absorb the heat. They shared granola bars and jerky for dinner.

“We were relatively comfortable,” Miah said.

Back at Albany Lodge, when the riders hadn’t shown up by mid-afternoon, Wright decided something was amiss and called the Albany County Sheriff’s Office to report the overdue snowmobilers. Then he sent two employees out to scour the trails looking for the missing riders.

His wife called the number they had left when registering and got in touch with Miah’s wife, Nicole, who gave them a description of their truck, their clothing and their sleds.

The truck, a 2015 Chevy Silverado and trailer with South Dakota plates, was soon located at Green Rock. It was now iced over and filled with snow after sitting for more than 30 hours.

“Usually it’s not a good sign when you find a vehicle sitting up there and nobody’s around it, and everybody else has gone home for the day,” said Undersheriff Josh DeBree.

By then it was dark and the Sheriff’s Office had no leads on their whereabouts. Searchers geared up to start looking for them at first light the next morning.

At 9:23 p.m., a message was posted to the Facebook page of Albany County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue that operations would begin at 7:30 a.m. Dec. 24.

“At this point our search area was the entire Snowy Range mountains, to include possibly over into the backside toward Ryan Park, which would be in Carbon County,” DeBree said.

Wright has a contract with the state of Wyoming to groom about 170 miles of the 225-mile Snowy Range trail system seven nights a week. On the night of Dec. 23, as he and his employees groomed the trails, they stopped every half mile, honked the horn, shut the flood lights off and listened and looked for any sign of the missing riders.

“We did that the entire night,” he said.

The third day and the third night

By the morning of the 24th, the missing group had been in the mountains for two nights. To begin the search, four teams rode into areas where people get turned around or disoriented, especially when it’s windy and visibility is poor.

With help from the U.S. Air Force, the Sheriff’s Office tried to connect with the group’s cell phones. Searchers posted an alert to the Snowy Range Snowmobile Club’s Facebook page for its members to keep their eyes open. Carbon County Search and Rescue began a search on the western side of the mountains.

“We had no idea where they were at, so we broke it down into areas and teams, looking for signs of anybody walking around,” said Dan Hutchison, president of Albany County Search and Rescue.

Jerry Haman, another member of Search and Rescue, rode as far as Brush Creek and then to Sand Lake and back that day. Mike Olsen logged 186 miles on his snowmobile during two long days of looking.

Multiple social media accounts of the search racked up thousands of comments and shares. DeBree said he was impressed by the dozens of volunteers who turned out to search, not only from Laramie but from surrounding areas and even Colorado.

“That was pretty amazing,” he said.

Meanwhile, Miah, Zach, Cole and James decided to leave their sleds and hike as high as they could up the side of a ridge they had come up against the day before.

The tore a T-shirt into strips, which they soaked with gasoline and stored in a plastic bag. They packed their gear into two backpacks. Using shovels for assistance, they spent three hours hiking up the steep hillside.

“It was pretty brutal going,” Miah said.

When they found a sheltered spot, they made another camp. They strung rope between the trees and laid pine boughs over the top to make a shelter. They built a fire pit lined with rocks and cut down a big pile of firewood, and by the end of the day they were resting by the fire and drying their shoes, socks and gloves.

Morale was good, Miah said, and they were confident they’d be found.

Searchers came up empty on the Dec. 24 as darkness fell, except for a report that the group had been spotted Dec. 22 at the Quealy Safety Hut, which sits a mile or so west of Medicine Bow Peak. The hut has a wood stove, and the Snowy Range Snowmobile Club stocks it with firewood for winter visitors.

The night of the Dec. 24, a helicopter from the 37th Helicopter Squadron based at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne attempted to search using forward-looking infrared and night vision goggles, but clouds were low and visibility was minimal. The chopper couldn’t reach the group’s last known location and returned to base.

The fourth day and the fourth night

On Christmas Day, searchers reconvened at the Green Rock Trailhead to continue the search, just as others continued searching from the Saratoga side of the range.

Searchers didn’t know how prepared the riders were for winter survival, having received mixed reports about the gear they carried.

“That contributes to the urgency when you don’t have any idea, and it’s three nights out for them,” said Liberty Boyer, who ran the operation base at Green Rock.

Hutchison said it’s very uncommon for four people to totally disappear.

“They have to be in a deep, dark hole,” he said. “We had this sense that something went really wrong somewhere along the way because they are not where we think they are.”

Naturally, they considered the worst-case scenarios. An avalanche could have swallowed the entire group. There were cliffs in the area, plus numerous bodies of water that weren’t completely frozen.

“You’re not very optimistic that far into it when no one has seen anything,” Haman said.

Family members of the missing riders had convened at Albany Lodge, trying to remain calm and optimistic. Nicole Christensen declined to be interviewed for this story.

By then, searchers had discovered that three of the four phones belonging to the riders had been left in their room at the lodge.

“By day three we were saying these guys probably got caught in an avalanche somewhere. Nobody has seen hide nor hair of them,” Wright said.

That morning, five volunteers with the 37th Helicopter Squadron prepared to resume the air search. Cpt. Isaac Fifield, the aircraft commander, gathered all the information he could about the group and their whereabouts while the engineers readied their craft. Then, they waited all morning for the weather to clear.

According to Olsen, ground searchers in Albany County continued checking places they hadn’t searched yet, working their way around Brown’s Peak toward mid-day. Then the clouds lifted and the helicopter joined the search.

“The bird came in, and it didn’t take them real long after that,” Olsen said.

Back at the camp, the riders sent Cole, the youngest, to continue climbing higher up the mountain in hopes of finding a signal for their single phone. By placing their phone and GPS device near the fire, they had revived the batteries of both and were hopeful they could contact someone.

The helicopter arrived at the group’s last known location at Quealy Hut and began searching in a slow zig-zag pattern, working its way slowly north. Crew members used gyroscopic-stabilized binoculars to scan the ground. According to TSgt. Ronnie Gentile, one of the flight engineers, they spotted tracks leading north that looked to be at least a couple days old. The trail was partially blown-over by the wind and snow of the previous day.

“We decided to follow those,” he said.

As Cole climbed, his group heard a copter off in the distance. The sound grew fainter and then louder. Zach spotted sunlight reflecting off the blades against the horizon.

The helicopter followed the trail along a steep valley thick with trees. Ahead, the valley appeared to end against a mountain, and the crew prepared to take a left turn and return to their previous search location.

As they turned, looking across the aircraft and through the opposite windshield, Fifield saw a person waving at them from a ridge. They saw footprints and a camp that appeared to be several days old. They saw four people wearing the clothing they were looking for, and they spotted the missing sleds.

It was about 2 p.m. on Christmas day, and they circled the camp a few times to indicate they’d seen the group.

“It was absolutely amazing,” Miah said. “It’s hard to really say what the feeling is.”

There was nowhere to land on the steep, wooded terrain, but the helicopter crew took a few approaches to test whether they could safely lower their flight surgeon to the group or hoist anyone from the group into the aircraft.

At 10,000 feet in elevation, they were operating at the edge of the craft’s capabilities.

“We tested four different times to try to go into that spot to hover, but we had to apply all our power that our helicopter had and we were still falling out of the air,” Fifield said. “We were absolutely incapable of getting them out at that point.”

They flew 10 miles back to the hub of the ground search to relay the group’s coordinates, which required landing in three feet of snow at 11,000 feet, about a mile above their normal operating altitude.

As the helicopter approached the ground, it was enveloped in blowing snow from the rotors, which Fifield said was like “flying inside a ping-pong ball,” as his engineers guided him to the landing.

“That is one of the most challenging/scariest things that I have done as a pilot,” he said.

After meeting with searchers and mapping the spot, the helicopter crew returned to the missing-now-located group. They pooled their personal food supplies into Gentile’s lunch box, tied a streamer to it, executed a moving hover at 60 feet and dropped the box inside a set of footprints at the edge of the ridge.

On the ground, Cole retrieved the box.

“We sat there for a good 15-20 minutes eating the snacks,” Miah said. “We were all pretty happy.”

Then Cole noticed the streamer had a note written on it. It read: “Sorry boys, we are not going to be able to take you out today. Our helicopter is really old. Milk the fire, stay put, help is on the way. I’ve passed your location to the ground team. Merry Christmas.”

The riders had already doused the fire and packed up their gear, anticipating an imminent rescue. Now they faced another cold night in the mountains.

After refueling and making sure ground searchers were heading the right direction, the helicopter returned to base in Cheyenne amid lowering clouds. Crew members said they hated leaving the riders still stranded.

Fifield said the gut-wrenching decision to return to base rested on him as the aircraft commander, and he lost sleep that night.

“We were second-guessing ourselves the whole way home,” he said. “Did we turn around to early?”

Fifield became a helicopter pilot because he wanted to make a difference in search and rescue situations like this one, when they were able to put their training to use.

“It was really rewarding and cool to be able to have the opportunity to help bring these four people back to their families on Christmas,” he said.

After receiving the group’s location via GPS coordinates on the afternoon of Dec. 25, rescuers immediately headed that direction. The group was at the bottom of a canyon in the Deep Creek drainage about eight miles across the county line in Carbon County, in the vicinity of the Crater Lake Trailhead. The nearest road was in Arlington. As the crow flies, they were a dozen miles from Green Rock.

This wasn’t a place for snowmobiles, and certainly not a place where ground teams would have looked. Olsen, who’s been riding in the Snowies since the 1990s, didn’t even have a map for that section of the range.

“You just don’t go there,” he said.

As Hutchison’s team approached at sunset, he used a topographic map to calculate that the missing riders were located about a thousand feet below them and a mile away.

“All we can see are trees tapering off into the distance,” he said.

Around midnight, a trail groomer plowed a new path toward Crater Lake to get rescuers as close as possible the next morning.

The fifth day and the fifth night

Knowing that the missing riders were in Carbon County, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office transferred the rescue to that office on Dec. 26 while continuing to assist with the operation.

Albany County supplied a team of three snowmobilers, plus a Snowcat, and rescuers convened at the Crater Lake Trailhead in the morning.

They weren’t sure if the missing riders would be able to walk out under their own power, so they tried to get machines as close as possible.

Sgt. Christian Handley, one of the Albany County rescuers, said the terrain was too steep and the trees too thick for a snowmobile to travel to the rescue site without getting stuck itself. Even radio contact with their camp was difficult.

Rescuers got within about a half-mile on their machines before hiking the rest of the way through thigh-deep snow.

“We ended up walking in on snowshoes,” he said.

Handley said he was impressed by the campsite he encountered, with a sizeable shelter and fire.

“They were excited to see everybody in the search party, and it was a weight lifted off our shoulders to see they were still alive,” he said.

After waiting for extra snowshoes for the missing riders, everyone walked out under their own power to waiting snowmobiles, which hauled the group to the top. It took until sunset to reach their camp and get back out. The riders declined any medical attention.

Hutchison said a successful rescue of a group that was missing for that long is unprecedented in his experience.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anybody staying out four nights, five days and coming out in the shape they did,” he said.

Miah was amazed to see how many people were waiting for him and his family as they arrived at the trailhead. Later, a crowd of friends and family greeted the missing riders when they returned to Green Rock to collect their vehicle at about 6:30 p.m.

As he began to comprehend the magnitude of the search, he felt a little embarrassed. Fellow riders put him at ease, though, and a deep appreciation for their efforts set in.

“It was overwhelming for quite a while,” he said.

DeBree said the missing riders did the right thing while awaiting rescue when they stayed put and stayed together. They also carried the right equipment and enough food to see them through several days on their own.

However, no one in the group told anyone where they were going or when they expected to return, which delayed the search and hindered rescuers.

“Initially, when we had that entire mountain as a search area, it’s very overwhelming,” he said. “Obviously, it’s going to take multiple days for us to start narrowing things down, and it’s tough conditions for them to be trying to survive in while we’re trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Hutchison suggested that snowmobilers carry a GPS device such as a Garmin inReach that can trigger emergency help and communicate its location.

“It makes our life easier as people who are searching,” he said.

Miah said the group he rides with usually includes someone with an inReach, but they overlooked that detail on this trip. Now he’s hoping other riders will learn the same lesson they had to learn the hard way. The sporting goods store near their home in South Dakota has since sold out of its supply of GPS devices.

Back at Albany Lodge, after hot showers, the riders and their families and friends gathered in the lodge’s dining room for dinner and stories. Wright gave them a couple bottles of champagne on the house, and friends bought them T-shirts with the lodge logo that read “Get lost.”

A few days later, a group of eight volunteers retrieved the four stuck sleds, which were eventually ferried back to South Dakota on a flatbed truck — the final piece of the rescue was complete.

“The snowmobile community in the state of Wyoming is a very strong one, built of a lot of good people,” DeBree said.