(Teton County, WY) – Teton County Search and Rescue (TSAR) successfully assisted a group of snowmobilers who got stuck on a Towgotee Pass trail system late Sunday night/early Monday morning (February 2/3), according to a recent post on the Teton County Search and Rescue Facebook page.
The group consisted of two adults and two teenage boys from Minnesota who had become stuck while snowmobiling on Sunday.
TSAR was paged for assistance around 7:50 PM and made contact with the group, who were all “cold but otherwise unharmed,” just after midnight, according to the TSAR post, which is shared in full below.
At 7:53 p.m. on Sunday, February 2, Teton County Search & Rescue was paged regarding a group of snowmobilers who’d become stuck on the Togwotee Pass trail network.
The group sent out an emergency text-to-911 via satellite along with their coordinates to the Teton County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center. Dispatch contacted TCSAR and indicated that the party of four was in the vicinity of the K and V trails. The group consisted of two men and two teenage boys visiting from Minnesota. To communicate, the group had an iPhone with satellite messaging capability as well as a satellite-specific communication device.
With high winds and drifting snow limiting visibility, TCSAR volunteers responded with teams on snowmobiles. Just past midnight, a group of six volunteers located the missing party about eight miles from the trailhead. They were cold but otherwise unharmed. The trail they were on had essentially disappeared under snow drifts.
The volunteers helped dig out two of the stuck snowmobiles. The two men in the missing party were able to ride their sleds out of the backcountry while the two boys were transported via snowmobile by TCSAR volunteers. All returned back to Togwotee Mountain Lodge.
The volunteers then returned to the TCSAR hangar in Jackson just before 3 a.m. and prepped the equipment for the next callout.
Regarding the use of satellite texting, this incident showed how the SAR team was able to use the technology in an emergency. As the incident unfolded, one of the men was using his iPhone to text his wife via satellite. She connected with TCSAR, who asked her to tell her husband to initiate a text to TCSAR incident command. He did so, which enabled back-and-forth text communication between his party and incident command at TCSAR.
