Two thought dead in plane crash hike to safety

KALISPELL, Mont. – Two survivors of a Monday plane crash in the rugged wilderness of northwest Montana emerged on a highway Wednesday after making their way on foot through the mountains.

The survivors, both U.S. Forest Service employees, made their way out a day after both the Flathead County sheriff and the Forest Service had announced their deaths. Three others died in the crash.

“Initially we thought there were no survivors, but now there are two,” said Denise Germann, a spokeswoman for the Flathead National Forest.

Jodee Hogg, 23, of Billings, Mont., and Matthew Ramige, 29, of Jackson Hole, Wyo., apparently walked away from the crash site and were spotted by a road Wednesday afternoon, Germann said.

They were spotted by a motorist on U.S. 2 who then went to a bar in the Essex area and asked the bartender to call for help.

Hogg was listed in stable condition at Kalispell Regional Medical Center and Ramige was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for burn treatment.

Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont had said Tuesday that it appeared all five on board died on impact. The crash also started a fire.

The crash scene was above timberline on Mount Liebig, in the Great Bear Wilderness some six air miles northwest of Essex. The area is near the southern edge of Glacier National Park.

Jim Long, 60, of Kalispell, was piloting the plane. Also on board was Ken Good, 58, of Whitefish, an employee of the Flathead National Forest and Davita Bryant, 32, of Whitefish. Hogg, Ramige and Bryant all worked for the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Station in Fort Collins, Colo., but worked out of the station’s office in Ogden, Utah.

“Can you imagine these families?,” asked Bob Bryant, father-in-law of Bryant. “They’ve been told their kids are dead. And now they are resurrected,” he said in a hospital interview with The (Kalispell) Daily Inter Lake.

Linda Woods of Whitefish, a friend of one victim and survivor Ramige, said she and another person had organized a group to search for survivors but their offer to help was declined Tuesday. “There were 100 people waiting in Whitefish to do this. It’s possible we could have been very useful and saved some people some suffering,” she told the newspaper.

“Last night, we sat on the couch and cried instead of being out hiking and searching. And we just accepted what we were told,” she said.

The airplane crashed during stormy weather while trying to reach a grass landing strip at Schafer Meadows Guard Station, near the Middle Fork of the Flathead River in the Great Bear-Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex south of the park.