A backcountry skier who’s a textbook example of preparedness tapped most of his expensive tools and training to survive an avalanche in northern Idaho.
Yet the ordeal came down to a free helicopter rescue service and a gutsy pilot to make the difference between life and death.
“No skiing is worth this type of injury,” said avalanche survivor Mike Brede at his Spokane home after surgery and rehabilitation treatment. Complete recovery is a challenging year away, he said.
Brede, 31, and Brandon Byquist, 35, were on backcountry skis on Jan. 13 and Jason Hershey, 41, was on a splitboard when they left the boundaries of Lookout Pass Ski Area.
The plan: Make a few runs at the ski area and leave around 10 a.m. if conditions were favorable.
“That would give us enough time to make a good backcountry run and ski back to catch the last ride up the east-side lift before the resort closed,” Brede said.
He’d left a map with a planned route on his computer screen at home for his wife.
Conditions seemed good as they attached skins on their skis to trek for more than two hours. All three men have years of backcountry experience and avalanche awareness and Wilderness First Responder or advanced medical training.
They were carrying iPhones, avalanche transceivers, probes and shovels plus food, water and clothing.
Brede also had a GPS device and an ACR personal satellite emergency locator.
“We did a few shovel tests along the way and the snow seemed fine,” he said. After more than two hours, they began angling for downhill lines.
“We were coming to a decision point,” Brede said, noting they had talked about the slope as being questionable. “When we broke out of the trees there was some wind, but not a lot. I was leading at that point and I went for it.”
Brede had skied the area previously.
“I made a couple of turns and fractured a wind slab about 6 inches deep,” Brede said. “I thought I could traverse out of trouble and get to a safe zone, but then a deeper layer cut loose and took me down.”
The preliminary report by the Idaho Panhandle Avalanche Center says Brede was about 100 feet from the top of the ridge when he triggered a wind slab that stepped down to a layer 30 inches deep and 300 to 500 feet wide.
Hershey said it was “numbing” to watch the torrent of snow sweep Brede out of sight. “We didn’t know about Mike or if we were going to be next,” he said
“Brandon was yelling ‘Pull your air bag! Pull your air bag!’ ” Brede said. “So much was going on, it’s hard to say what got me to pull the cord.”
Brede was wearing a helmet and a pack equipped with an ABS Vario Air Bag, a $1,000 item he reviewed this winter in Out There Monthly.
“If everything else goes wrong and you find yourself caught in an avalanche, an airbag is designed to keep you at the surface of the snow and visible to rescuers,” he wrote.
Everyone involved in the incident, from the skiers to avalanche investigators believe the airbag kept Brede from being buried.
The rampaging snow dragged Brede off a ridge and into an open bowl with rock outcroppings.
“I felt a free fall and then immense pain in my leg,” he said. “I held one arm up in the air; that’s what you do. Luckily, my air bag kept me above the surface almost the entire time. I came to rest sitting, facing uphill.
Hershey and Byquist responded by yelling and descending.
Brede’s lower leg injury was immediately obvious with the bleeding muscle filleted back to expose his tibia and fibula.
“We had complete first-aid kits and they applied QuikClot to stop the bleeding, and braced it with ski poles and straps,” Brede said.
But they didn’t know about his broken pelvis, and Hershey was digging snow away from Brede’s torso when he discovered the worst of the situation.
“Blood was pooling under his butt,” Hershey said. “That’s when we saw he had bone exposed: compound fracture of the femur.”
Their hopes slipped from stabilization and self reliance to the urgent need for assistance.
At 2:25 p.m., the group’s first 911 call was received by Shoshone County Sheriff’s dispatchers. At 2:47 p.m., Shoshone County notified Mineral County because the avalanche was on the Montana side of the ridge.
Brede’s emergency beacon wasn’t deployed until 3:01 p.m.
“In the beginning, we were calling family members and 911 and trying to get a coordinated effort going,” Brede said.
Dispatchers asked several times for coordinates off their rapidly dying iPhones instead of the GPS, which was saying they were in Canada.
They assessed their options. Ground crews likely couldn’t get to the accident site safely. A helicopter couldn’t land on the slope. Weather was deteriorating. Darkness was approaching.
Said Byquist, “Mike is so knowledgeable. He knew the only formally equipped rescue helicopter that might be available to us in that situation was Two Bear Air. I’d never heard of them.”
They tried to relay the Two Bear information but got no assurance from 911 dispatchers.
Activation of the satellite locator mayday signal was the key that launched the helicopter service, said Deputy A.J. Allard, Search and Rescue liaison for the Mineral County Sheriff in Superior, Montana.
“That signal is for an urgent situation and we react accordingly,” he said. “We notified Two Bear Air.”
Based in Whitefish, Montana, Two Bear Air is financed by philanthropist Mike Goguen, who put up more than $10 million for two rescue helicopters, training and operation costs.
“I’m on call 24/7,” pilot Jim Bob Pierce said. “We’re not an air ambulance, but our crew can assemble and launch in about 40 minutes.”
But the skiers didn’t know whether any rescue was coming — and nobody knew if rescue was possible.
“After the accident, the weather deteriorated like crazy,” Byquist said. “We estimated the snowfall rate was 2 inches per hour.”
“I was trying to stay conscious; trying to stay warm,” Brede said. “Brandon and Jason gave me all of their down layers, gloves and mittens”
Meanwhile, the Two Bear pilot, joined by a paramedic, was drawing on 4,800 hours of flight time and more than 2,000 hoist missions just to reach the area.
“I knew the weather was bad and that nobody else would fly on these guys,” the pilot said.
Instead of a direct flight to Lookout Pass, Pierce had to wander through valleys and canyons until he could follow Interstate 90.
The 3-hour wait was emotionally agonizing, Hershey said.
Hershey believes Brede, who was beyond the shivering point of hypothermia and still bleeding, was within a few hours of dying when they heard the helicopter.
“We got to the victim right at dark, flying under night vision,” Pierce said. As the chopper hovered and fanned the snow into a blizzard, the paramedic descended by cable.
“They brought me up into the helicopter and I flopped on the floor,” Brede said. “Minutes later they were loading me into an ambulance at Lookout Pass.”
The injured skier was in surgery in three hours and required six units of blood.
But the ordeal wasn’t over.
Two Bear quickly flew back to pluck another skier from danger.
Equipped to take only one additional person, the heli-crew hoisted Hershey aboard and flew him to Lookout Pass.
“The chopper was stirring up so much snow, I had to hunker down in a little ball,” Byquist said. “The rescuer looked at me with a stone face and said, ‘We’ll come back for you if we can.’
“That’s when it struck me that I’d been left in a snowstorm wearing only a polypropylene base layer and a shell jacket. Everything else was wrapped around Mike.”
Byquist heard the helicopter 20 minutes later. And then he didn’t. Visibility was nil. The chopper had to turn back.
His options were limited. Staying put was too dangerous, a new avalanche was possible; he headed up to the ridge.
“I was treading very lightly; made a couple hundred vertical feet of descent to a couple of small trees. I grabbed one tree and gingerly stepped down from it when the entire slope below me broke loose and avalanched.
“If I’d have taken one more step without a hold on that tree I would have gone down for the ride.” Alone.
Pausing to collect himself he realized the avalanche was his ticket.
“That slide cleared the slope. I got on my back and glissaded down near the bottom.”
He clicked into his skis and felt reassured as the exertion warmed him.
After a mile of breaking trail, he saw a rescue team’s headlamps. “They said they had been shooting guns and making noise with chainsaws to help me know they were in the area,” Byquist said. “I hadn’t heard a thing.”
Kevin Davis, of the Idaho Panhandle Avalanche Center credits the three skiers for their preparedness with training, trip planning and proper gear. “They needed all of that to have a good outcome,” he said. “A lot of skiers and snowmobilers aren’t so prepared.”
“That’s our standard protocol, whether it’s a short day out from the lifts at Lookout Pass or a 15 miler,” Byquist said. “I would be willing to carry even more knowing what I know now. All the bits and pieces of how we prepare added up to getting out of there in time for Mike to stay alive.”
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