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Saying it would be miraculous if she was found alive,
Oregon officials have significantly scaled down the
search for an Ambler woman who never returned from a
snowboarding run 11 days ago.
Kate Svitek, 22, was supposed to meet friends at the
base of Mount Bachelor, in Bend, Ore., after a snowboarding
run on Feb. 9. She never showed.
Sgt. Chris Nolte of the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office
search and rescue unit, said yesterday that workers,
all volunteers, would no longer comb the mountain regularly,
but that the search would continue.
"We've got the [Mount Bachelor] ski patrol and
the people at Bachelor continuing as they can, and we'll
continue as we can," Nolte said. He said his office's
efforts would include training exercises in the area
where Svitek, a ticket attendant at the ski resort,
was last seen. Nolte stopped short of calling the search
hopeless, saying "it would take nothing short of
a miraculous miracle at this point for her to still
be alive."
"I feel like it's a tough decision, but it's certainly
what needed to happen," said Molly Moloney, a Mount
Bachelor spokeswoman. "We are definitely going
to keep going, and we hope to find her."
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Nolte said that one factor in the decision was the
failure to find a trace of Svitek despite an intensive
10-day search conducted by as many as 100 volunteers,
including search-and-rescue teams, dog teams, and helicopters
from throughout the Northwest.
Approaching inclement weather and the danger it posed
to searchers was another factor in scaling back the
effort, he said. Forecasts called for snow and winds
approaching 80 miles per hour at the mountain's 9,000-foot
summit yesterday. The search for Svitek was concentrated
at the 6,000- to 7,000-foot level, he said.
Moloney said Svitek's relatives, who have been keeping
a vigil at the mountain since Feb. 10, understood the
decision but remained hopeful. Still, she said, they
were distraught.
The family's rabbi, Gregory Marx of Congregation Beth
Or in Spring House, Montgomery County, flew to Oregon
yesterday to comfort the family, said Elizabeth Hirsch,
the synagogue's executive director.
Svitek, a graduate of Germantown Academy and the University
of Vermont, had lived in Oregon since September. A 2001
Vermont graduate with a degree in outdoor recreation,
she began working at the ski resort after becoming disappointed
with a teaching job.
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