Six people stranded during the blizzard on Wednesday night are safe following a difficult rescue by local law enforcement agencies. According Sweetwater County Sheriff John Grossnickle, the Sweetwater Combined Communications Center received a report at around midnight on Wednesday of a man stranded on White Mountain after experiencing an engine failure in his tracked vehicle. The man reported that he was actually an on-the-clock employee of Visionary Communications and had been dispatched to the area to inspect some equipment. Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office initiated a search and rescue operation after midnight, mobilizing volunteers and equipment from Sweetwater County Search and Rescue and basing the search north of Rock Springs. Rescuers had to cut their own trail with a tracked vehicle, as the road was impassable with snowdrifts measuring four to five feet high. They also experienced frigid temperatures and blizzard conditions, with high winds and visibility limited to approximately 50 feet, forcing them to rely on real-time GPS mapping technology to navigate their route. Roughly 90 minutes into their search, they encountered two unexpected stranded vehicles and extracted five people to safety before returning back up the mountain and ultimately rescuing the original stranded party, finally returning to the staging area just after 8:30 a.m. In all, rescuers traveled in excess of 40 miles in the course of the night-long search.
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