Missing Teen Hiker Rescued in Glacier National Park
by Aventura on May 15, 2023
The National Park Service reported that a missing teenage hiker was rescued in Glacier National Park on Monday, after his heat signature was picked up by a helicopter.
Matthew Read, 19, had embarked on a hiking trip on Friday afternoon and had not been heard from since. His car was discovered at the Huckleberry Lookout Trailhead on Sunday, the day he was reported missing. An initial search operation was launched that day, followed by an expanded search the next day.
Late on Monday, a helicopter from Two Bear Air Rescue, a Kalispell-based company, detected a heat signature in an area described by the park as "heavily-forested terrain." A rescuer was lowered from the helicopter and found Read, who was "somewhat responsive," lying in the snow. Read was hoisted up and transferred to an ambulance waiting nearby. The National Park Service described his condition as stable.
The Park Service explained that Read had attempted the Huckleberry Lookout Trail, an arduous 11.6-mile round trip day hike to a fire lookout tower on a mountain top. He encountered a snowfield that had covered the trail and, upon attempting to cross it, slipped and fell into a drainage area filled with snow up to his chest. He lost his phone, water bottle, and shoes in the fall. Realizing he couldn't retrace his steps back to the trail, Read navigated down the drainage area for three days until he was found by the rescue team.
Glacier National Park is a stunningly beautiful federal park located in the U.S. state of Montana, adjacent to the Canadian border. It spans over one million acres and includes parts of two mountain ranges, which are part of the Rocky Mountains.
The park is home to a variety of wildlife including grizzly bears, moose, and mountain goats, and is also the habitat of numerous plant species. It contains over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals.
Glacier park is well-known for its glaciers; however, global climate change has led to a significant reduction in the size and number of glaciers in the park, and by 2021, it was estimated that fewer than 25 active glaciers remained out of the 150 present in the mid-19th century.
