Hiker Missing for 2 Days Is Rescued From National Glacier Park

A hiker who slipped off a mountain trail in a heavily forested part of Glacier National Park in Montana and was missing for more than two days was rescued after a heat-seeking device on a helicopter detected him, park officials said this week.

The hiker, Matthew Read, 19, of Dexter, Mich., had last been heard from on Friday afternoon at the park and was reported missing on Sunday, according to the National Park Service.

A search that began Sunday afternoon and, on Monday, grew to a party of about 30 people culminated at about 11 p.m., when a helicopter from the Two Bear Air Rescue Foundation, which was equipped with an infrared camera that detects heat, picked up Mr. Read’s “thermal heat signature in heavily forested terrain,” the Park Service said.

Black and white video taken from the helicopter showed rescue workers as they used a 175-foot hoist to lift Mr. Read.

Mr. Read, who was in stable condition, was then flown out of the park and to an ambulance and taken to a hospital, park officials said.

“It sounds like he is going to be OK,” Gina Kerzman, a spokeswoman for Glacier National Park, said on Wednesday.

James Heckman, a chief pilot with Two Bear Air, a nonprofit group that provides aerial support for search and rescues in the northwest United States, said in an interview on Wednesday that Mr. Read was most likely cold and had encountered “every type of precipitation out there — snow, sleet and rain.”

“The weather was pretty crummy throughout the weekend,’’ Mr. Heckman said, adding that temperatures were probably in the 30s to 40s.

Mr. Read had been hiking on the Huckleberry Lookout trail on Friday, where he encountered a snowfield covering the path, according to the park service.

He then slipped into a drainage area on the east side of Huckleberry Mountain.

“He descended into chest-deep snow, losing his phone, water bottle, and shoes,” the Park Service said.

When he realized that he could not make it back up the trail, he started working his way down, the Park Service said.

Mr. Read’s vehicle was located on Sunday at the Huckleberry Lookout Trailhead, after he was reported overdue to rangers.

The park, known for its eponymous ice formations, which have been around for 7,000 years but have been shrinking since the late 1800s, has more than 1,500 square miles in northwest Montana where visitors enjoy hiking and backcountry camping.