A 17-year-old boy and his father joined in the rescue effort after an avalanche trapped skiers at Silver Mountain Resort in Idaho. Blaine Goodner had just finished a run down one of trails with his dad when they learned about the avalanche. They jumped back onto the ski lift and rode to the top of Wardner Peak to help the Silver Mountain Ski Patrol search for survivors.
As they made their way back down the mountain, they used ten-foot poles to probe the area where the avalanche occurred, hoping to find survivors. They found one woman, who was half-buried in the snow, and she told them she was with three other skiers.
"Everyone was kind of calm about it -- like, they knew that they couldn't be frantic, and they knew what was happening. They knew how many people were there, and they just needed to come together and do what they needed to do to find them," Goodner told KXLY.
As they trudged their way through the snow, they were elated to find a skier alive underneath nine feet of snow.
"One of the people she was riding with was the last person we found... nine feet under, and was still alive and completely fine," the teen remarked.
Unfortunately, two people died in the avalanche, and Goodner watched as the snow patrol dug one of the bodies out of the snow. After seeing first-hand how devastating the avalanche was, he was surprised anybody managed to survive.
"Me and my dad talked while we were on our way [to the avalanche], we were like, 'The odds of someone being still alive after an hour under there are pretty slim,'" he said.
In total, rescuers managed to save five people who were trapped by the avalanche.
Early Wednesday (January 8) morning, officials received word that another individual who was skiing in the area had not made contact with their family following the avalanche. The Silver Mountain Ski Patrol, along with other law enforcement agencies, are conducting an "intense search" of the mountain.