It was the early evening of Christmas Day when Julie Balch received a call from the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office that a snowboarder had gone missing at Whitefish Mountain Resort.  

Dispatch was contacted around 5:30 p.m. by someone who hadn’t heard from their friend in two hours and was waiting in the parking lot. The 18-year-old was last seen on both the front and backside of Big Mountain.  

That’s when Balch, president of North Valley Search and Rescue, issued a "bat signal" of sorts, alerting the agency's members that assistance was needed.  

The rescue group was tasked with searching the resort’s north side, a mission the team trains for as soon as there is snow on the ground. A few skiers go missing on Big Mountain every winter, Balch said, and holidays are the busiest times of year. 

There are three areas on the back side of the mountain where skiers are often funneled into by the terrain, Balch said. Those are the first spots searched by the team. 

While the North Valley crew scoured the backside slopes, Flathead Valley Search and Rescue combed the front of the resort. The sister agencies often collaborate during rescues, and both deploy under the direction of the Flathead Valley Sheriff’s Office. 

“They have great backcountry skiers, we have great snowmobilers. Sometimes we call each other because we have different specialties,” Balch said. 

FLATHEAD COUNTY Search and Rescue was founded in 1947, stemming from a call for assistance to find a lost boy. After the boy was found, then-Sheriff Dick Walsh asked the volunteers to leave their numbers in case he needed their help again, according to the organization. 

Twenty-three years later, North Valley Search and Rescue formed after its sister agency called off an unsuccessful search for a Columbia Falls man that drowned in the North Fork of the Flathead River. The man’s father refused to stop looking and reached out for help from friends. The crew eventually recovered his body from a logjam, and the successful search launched the new rescue organization.  

Now, the over 50 members of North Valley Search and Rescue cover 2,436 square miles of the Flathead River watershed, bordering the west side of Glacier National Park and continuing down to the Bob Marshall Wilderness.  

Every year, the rescue team responds to roughly 24 missions, spends over 2,200 hours on search efforts, and over 4,142 hours in training. In spring when the ice melts and the Flathead River roars, “that’s when our boats and our swiftwater teams are just magic on the water,” Balch said.   

BALCH IS typically the search leader on missions. Stationed at the agency’s base in Columbia Falls, she communicates between search teams and the Sheriff’s Office. Because of limited manpower during the Christmas night search, the avid snowmobiler joined the team while Vice President Ruth Krager took over communications.  

Balch and four others arrived at the Canyon Creek snowmobile trailhead off North Fork Road in Columbia Falls that rainy night. Three veteran snowmobilers took off down Forest Road 316 while Balch trailed behind with a new rider.  

“We always pair those newer riders with senior riders so they can go learn these places, because they’re the next generation of us,” Balch said.   

From the trailhead, the two zoomed 16 miles down the groomed trail leading directly to the resort. While the senior riders searched around the base of Chair 7 on Big Mountain’s  north side, she made her way to a T-junction on the snowmobile road. Left goes to the Summit House; right goes to a warming hut 3 miles from the resort boundary.  

Volunteers for the Flathead Snowmobile Association built the small cabin in 1996 after the original one donated by American Timber around a decade prior was vandalized. The nonprofit continues to maintain it. Last summer, the cabin was fitted with a new wood stove, chimney and solar-powered lights. The nonprofit also grooms around 85 miles of trail in the area.  

While at the junction, Balch told her partner that every 50 yards they will turn their snowmobiles off and holler into the wilderness in hopes of a response. But then she noticed tracks in the snow.  

“I looked at the snow, and I’m going, ‘Oh my gosh, there are footprints right there,’” Balch said.  

She hopped back on her snowmobile and radioed to base what she discovered. As she continued down the road, the footprints stopped. 

“Where did he go?” Balch asked herself.  

Then she noticed slide marks in the snow.  

“Oh my gosh, he’s got one foot on his snowboard, and he’s shoving himself,” she realized.  

People who are lost typically don’t turn around after starting down a path, “which is a piece that we study and we use for search strategies,” Balch said. 

Four miles later, she reached the survival cabin around 8:30 p.m. Balch slowly opened the door and called out. Someone answered.  

“Yes!” Blanch exclaimed.  

She asked the snowboarder how he was doing.  

“I’m OK now,” he responded, while a fire crackled next to him. 

“He was cold, really tired, really thirsty, really hungry,” Blanch recalled.  

The snowboarder had skied down to Chair 7 to find it shut down for the day, according to Balch. She gave him snacks, water and checked that his coat was dry. The rain had turned to wet, heavy snowflakes, promising a damp ride out of the woods.  

Cell service is nonexistent, and even radio signals are unreliable behind the resort, so Balch had to contact the other search team, who contacted Krager at the base, who called the Sheriff’s Office to say the snowboarder had been found.  

“It’s a lot of coordination as well as just staying on top of radio communications and making sure the information is still flowing between all the necessary parties,” Krager said about being search leader. 

The entire search lasted an hour and 17 minutes.  

“It was pretty darn quick,” Balch said.  

For the teen who had been missing since 3:30 p.m., he spent five hours unsure whether he’d be rescued. He was brought to the Summit House at 10 p.m., where he was met by ski patrol and Flathead Valley Search and Rescue.  

Over Balch’s 26 years in the rescue business, lost skiers have either been found on the way to the cabin or in the ravine that funnels toward it.  

“It’s come in handy over the last 40 years for sure,” said Flathead Snowmobile Association President Amanda Berlinger.  

In the summer of 2013, the Daily Inter Lake reported on a biker who used the cabin as an overnight refuge to escape a bear and fix his broken motor bike after getting lost. North Valley Search and Rescue transported him off the mountain.  

While the cabin has been crucial for lost adventurers, it also serves as a resting place for back country enthusiasts who may not be in a dire situation.  

“Its purpose is just to be a spot for recreationalists to stop, get warm and rest,” Berlinger said.  

The Flathead Snowmobile Association plans to expand the cabin space, renovate the roof and deck and eventually add emergency communications and satellite capability to support riders and search and rescue teams. 

People can donate to North Valley Search and Rescue and Flathead Snowmobile Association at nvsarmt.org/donate and flatheadsnowmobiler.com/Donate. 

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and [email protected].