Rescue and rendezvous: a story of survival and lifelong friendship at SURF

December 13th, 2005, brought a particularly wicked and cold snowstorm to the Northern Black Hills. The storm caught Robyn Varland and her long-time friend, Leann Johns, in the middle of a holiday getaway to Hill City along infrequently travelled back roads. 

Their 2004 Honda Element could not keep up with the piling snow. Varland and Johns desperately tried everything to free the vehicle, but nothing worked.

Sunlight dimmed in the dense forest around them. Time was running out.

Varland exited the vehicle and walked along the road to find help, her feet struggling against the thick snow. One of her friends had a cabin nearby where they could rest for the night and retrieve their car the next morning. 

Unfortunately for Varland, she was nowhere near the cabin. She struggled to navigate the sudden heavy snowfall that obscured her sightlines and rendered the road impassable. 

As daylight faded away and the cold, December night sunk in, realization settled in Varland’s bones. The two women were lost. 

Twenty years later, Varland still gets emotional when recounting her time spent trapped amidst one of the worst blizzards of 2005. Years have passed, but the memories of her struggle and eventual rescue still cling tightly to her mind. 

“It’s not until you get out and start walking around that you understand why people tell you to stay put,” Varland recounts. 

Back at the car, Varland and Johns, alongside their three Chihuahuas and Norwegian Elkhound, began to realize the severity of their situation. They wrapped newspapers around their feet and trash bags around the dogs in a desperate attempt to stay warm. They started the car’s engine for just five minutes each hour. 

“Well, we might be on the news tonight,” Varland recalls joking to Johns. 

They were, in fact, on the news the next two nights.

Some forty-seven hours after getting the car stuck, a set of friends out adventuring on their snowmobiles stumbled upon Varland and Johns.

“And that’s how I got involved,” said Dan Pierce.

Pierce and his friend, Nate, had just finished their semester exams at South Dakota Mines and decided to take their snowmobiles for a spin on the freshly fallen snow. Little did the group of young men know, they would save lives that night. 

“I had heard about Varland and John’s disappearance on the news, but I didn’t really think much of it,” Pierce said.

The group ran across Varland and Johns only a few hours into their expedition.

“Nate stops right in front of me, and all I see is this little blip of a brake light.”

Pierce watched with curiosity as the whirling storm around them came to a calm. Varland stood in the driver’s side of the car with her door open, frantically screaming, ‘help us!’. 

The two men gave all the warm clothes they had to the stranded motorists and raced back to town to alert local authorities. Soon enough, search and rescue, the sheriff’s department, and the South Dakota Department of Transportation, in a fleet of snowmobiles and two snowcats, made their way to the women’s location for a successful rescue. 

“I just didn’t think they were gonna come back,” Varland remarks.

This would not be the last time Pierce and Varland saw each other. 

Some 10 years later—long after he had graduated college—Pierce was hired by Caterpillar as an engineer. On his first trip underground at Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), he ran into a familiar face.

“I'm walking down the Yates ramp, and I see this gal sitting on a cooler. She has a huge, bright white smile, and she says, ‘Hi Dan!’.”

For Varland, the unexpected reunion brought her right back to 2005, trapped in an endless blizzard and lost. 

“I about lost it,” Varland laughs. “I was trying to be tough in front of all the scientists and everything, but I almost left because I was so overwhelmed. When you have somebody save your life, you're devoted to them. Then, to see Dan on the cage, it was just unreal.” 

Today, Varland and Pierce are close friends, working side by side at SURF. Following their reconnection, Varland crafted a personalized brass tag for Pierce, depicting ‘you’re my hero.’

“I get to work with the person that saved me, and he's my hero. That's why I made him a brass that says, ‘You're my hero.’ He always will be,” Varland says with a grin. 

Varland’s friend, Leann Johns, has since passed, but her memory lives on within Varland, Pierce, and the entire community of Lead. Their story has become a local legend, passed on from person to person as a testament to the strength of South Dakota’s community.

Friendship can find us in the strangest of places, and even in times of crisis. Varland and Pierce’s experience is one of many tales of a local community coming together to help one another.  By circumstance of a snowmobile outing, Pierce not only helped save two lives—he gained a lifelong friend.