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How rescuers saved an Idaho man and his 16-year-old daughter after a ski accident in Montana’s backcountry By Eli Francovich, The Spokesman-Review
Published: February 22, 2021, 6:05am
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2 Photos Kelly and Edward Moellmer smile during a backcountry skiing trip in 2020. (Courtesy Edward Moellmer/The Spokesman-Review/TNS) Photo Gallery
SPOKANE Goggles covered in ice and visibility nearing zero, Edward Moellmer squinted down an expanse of snow near the summit of Montana’s Engle Peak.
What was that? That blurry disruption in an otherwise white expanse of snow and fog. Trees maybe?
He sure hoped so, longing for the visual surety trees provide during whiteout days. It helps orient a disoriented skier and keeps vertigo at bay.
Published: 3:55 PM PST February 17, 2021 Updated: 4:10 PM PST February 17, 2021
BONNER COUNTY, Idaho A 16-year-old and her father are back home safe after becoming separated in the Cabinet Mountains in Montana thanks to search and rescue volunteers from the Sandpoint and Bonners Ferry area, as reported by KREM 2 news partner the Bonner County Daily Bee.
Ed and Kelly Moellmer were on a father-daughter ski trip in the mountains at Engle Peak, a roughly 90-mile drive from Bonners Ferry. At roughly 100 feet from the summit, Ed said, he planned to take the route of a gentle slope on a southwest face of a peak but became disoriented due to the whiteout.
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There, I’ve said it in print. It’s a legacy, I think, of a rural childhood, though it’s also fed by that (very male) desire to catalogue, collect and identify, added to which birds are just, well, amazing. And beautiful. And so varied. And of course they can fly, which is cool, and eat worms, which isn’t cool but is still sort of impressive. Many of the books I’ve owned the longest are about birds, which means they date back to at least the mid-1970s. My favourites are Bird Spotting, written by John Holland and illustrated by Rein Stuurman (my hardback 1973 edition cost a mighty £1.25, so it must have been a birthday present), and The Observer’s Book Of Birds’ Eggs (75p the cost of the 1974 thirteenth reprint). Since then I’ve acquired others such as the Collins Bird Guide and the indispensable Collins Garden Birds.