Two Bear Air Pulls Off Daring Avalanche Rescue at McCall

A snowmobiler experienced the rescue of a lifetime when he found himself caught in an avalanche over the weekend.

The man had parked his snowmobile on top of a ridge when the snow beneath him gave way and caused an avalanche. Luckily the man was able to clear some snow off himself so rescue workers could locate him. Two Bear Air Rescue had to use a hoist to remove the man from the snow. The entire rescue was caught on camera and the footage is pretty amazing.

How exactly does a helicopter rescue work here in the U.S.? Wikipedia explains:

In the United States, mountain search and rescue is a technical specialty within general search and rescue. It is handled by 'career, on-duty and on-call paid' teams within the national parks, and supplemented by other paid and volunteer assets/resources as needed. For areas outside the national parks, there are approximately 20 agencies, mostly sheriff's departments, in the U.S. which provide paid or career members of a mountain SAR team. Most of those supplement with volunteer professionals. The bulk of mountain SAR operations in the U.S. are provided by 'volunteer professional' teams (are not career positions or paid but must meet minimum industry-accepted standards at or above their paid counterparts), who may also respond via mutual aid or automatic aid to incidents out-of-county, out-of-state and into national parks, via intrastate, interstate, and national park agreements, as well as via the FEMA NIMS national mutual aid deployment system.

We reported last week that massive floods and avalanches are hindering travel for Idahoans, just another affect of the devastating winter we've experienced. All the snow is either falling and causing destruction, or melting and flooding areas all over the Gem State.

While we're following the story closely, we have not received any updates on the victim's condition.