Deb's Search and Rescue Stories

A Remote Canyon Search

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:03:18 PDT

The sand-blasting lasted less than a minute as the helicopter lifted off, and then it was quiet. Very quiet and still, save for a distant tweetle (of a Canyon wren perhaps) and a curious fly buzzing my ear. I stood there for a long moment, taking in the silence and surveying the scenery. We'd been dropped off on what seemed like an island, on a shelf between the Esplanade high above us and the Redwall cliffs below.

This was my third day on what had been, so far, a weeklong search for an overdue and very experienced canyon hiker. Today was his 66th birthday, and I was hoping to wish him a happy one ... or that someone else would at least. Was he out here somewhere in this vast, rugged, incredibly beautiful landscape of colorful rock layers, cactus and cliffs? If anyone could survive out here, he could. But for how long? Or was he long gone maybe, alive and well out of the area? Lots of scenarios had passed through my mind and in the minds of other searchers over the past week.

My teammate broke through my thoughts and the silence.

"You can search the inner part," he said. "I'll go out near the edge." He knows I'm not fond of edges when I'm not on a rope.

We both hoisted our packs, heavy with water, and began walking slowly through the cactus and desert brush, studying the ground and stopping frequently to look around for anything that didn't look "usual"--a color that might catch our eye, bird activity. Any kind of sign that another person had passed through the area. We were also listening and looking carefully for rattlesnakes. Both "pinks" and "greens," the latter being the very deadly Mohave rattlesnake, had been seen (and heard) during the search.

These were some of the most difficult tracking conditions I'd encountered, not just the rocky and coarse, sandy substrate but the fact that wild horses and other critters had tramped all over the place, not just here but also the bottom of the canyon where I'd searched two days earlier and on the Esplanade, where I'd searched two days before that. Add the age of some of the tracks we had encountered during the search, and I really had to go slow, look around at the same spots from different angles and literally get down on hands and knees at times. My teammate and I occasionally consulted with one another: "Is that a footprint or a hoof print?" Actually, sometimes, in some conditions, it's hard to tell.

We searched our canyon island from end to end, looking carefully at the "pinch-points" to the north and south, where someone would have to have walked in order to get around the side canyons, the heads of which left little room to negotiate the dropoffs. No signs of human prints or other evidence.

We took a break in the shade of a large overhang, careful to check there too before sitting down, in case someone else had also taken respite in that cool, cozy nook. But again, nothing.

We watched a single, circling vulture, but the bird soon moved on and circled somewhere else.

And we found nothing more before the helicopter came back for another sandblasting, to pick us up and fly us back to Incident Command where we converged with other field teams. No one reported any new sign on this particular day.

But as far as I heard at the last general SAR meeting, there is more searching to be done, to follow up on sign found by a Park Service employee who was helping with the mission. I'd seen him when he started off at the head of Mohawk Canyon, prepared to be out for as many as six days. He was one of several canyon experts who's assisted the Sheriff's Office and our team with this search.

Want to read more about this mission and who we're searching for? See...

Hiker on Hualapai Reservation Missing

Missing Hiker a Canyon Expert

A bird's-eye view from the helicopter

On the Esplanade on my second day as part of this search

My teammate, Steve, searches on the Esplanade.

SAR Ops: From Classroom to Call-Out

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:20:36 PDT

I had just received my Inland Search Management class certificate the day before, on Friday. At 4:15am Saturday morning, my phone beeped me awake with a text message then rang moments later. It was a call-out for Operations leaders to respond to the SAR building regarding a search for a missing person -- my first call-out as one of those Ops folks.

Also the first to show up, I found a note on our Coordinator's office door, saying he'd gone to the main Sheriff's Office building -- something about picking up information regarding the subject's recent cell phone activity -- so I waited. I wasn't sure what the procedures were for our team's Ops volunteers as opposed to what I usually do when I arrive for a regular call-out. But two, more experienced Ops leaders walked in within minutes and put me to work. Then our coordinator returned and gave us a short briefing.

While I shouldn't ... well, can't ... give many details about the search (I have to remind myself of that sometimes), I can say it was fun (probably politically incorrect but true) coming up with various scenarios and working on plans for the search.

Shortly after our SAR Coordinator had briefed us on the situation, I'd been instructed to call one of our volunteers who lives in the area of this search, which was a good distance from our base in Flagstaff. This searcher is often notified directly when there's SAR activity in his neck of the woods, so he can get a head start as he did this time, heading out to meet with the RP (reporting party) and drive some roads in the area. He knows those roads well.

Next, I helped prepare a briefing packet for the Initial Response, and then several of us leaned over maps that had been spread out on the conference room table, at times our heads nearly touching. Cell phone information was plotted on those maps, fingers followed contour lines and Forest Service roads, distances were measured, and scenarios hashed out and re-hashed.

Not long before the general call-out was made to the rest of the team, two of the Ops leaders -- also regular members of the unit, like I am -- left for the search area. They would eventually rendezvous with our volunteer already down there and assist with the "Route and Location Search," which is what we're calling a hasty search nowadays, based on what we'd come up with as the most likely places the subject might be found.

I'm happy to report that the information gathered in the initial investigation, combined with the scenarios and plans that were formulated back at the SAR building and the quick response from our volunteer in the area, the subject was located and in good condition.

I was also able to attend the next call for Ops leaders just days later, to discuss a potentially very complex search in remote, rugged terrain. I didn't say much at that meeting, except when asked directly for my opinion, but I found it really interesting to listen the other, more experienced Ops leaders and law enforcement/SAR personnel talk about scenarios, logistics for getting a large amount of specialized gear and personnel into the area, and weigh the risks against the quality of the information -- or lack thereof -- that was available so far.

Yep, I really find this SAR Ops stuff fascinating. Although I already knew quite well what goes on "behind the scenes" of a SAR mission and what's involved in more extensive, multi-operational period and multi-agency missions, the Ops classes I've taken so far have really reinforced the knowledge that there's so much more to SAR than people just showing up to wander around, looking and how important it is for as many people as possible be trained to work within the Incident Command System, particularly for large, complex situations. It also drives home the message that taking the time to properly investigate and plan a search, as opposed to just rushing out to the field, can really save time in the end and get the missing subject found sooner than later.

Both paid and volunteer SAR professionals work with the WIN-CASIE computer program during the Inland Search Management class, held in Flagstaff, Arizona

**********

And in other team news....

Our own Cindy McArthur received word from NASAR Canine Committee Chair, Ann Christensen, that her dog, Nitro, who passed away earlier this year, has been selected to receive the NASAR Canine of the Year award. Christensen stated, "This year, we were very fortunate to have a number of deserving canines nominated for this award and the competition this year was stiff and the decision difficult," but, in the end, Nitro was chosen for his years of excellent service to the SAR community.

Nitro will be honored and the award presented at the 2012 NASAR Conference Closing Award Ceremony on Saturday, June 9^th at Lake Tahoe.

Congratulations, Cindy and Nitro!

And speaking of SAR canines...

The 2nd annual Arizona K9 SAR Conference, held here in Flagstaff, AZ, just concluded this past Sunday and, once again, was a great success, with more than 60 handlers and their dogs attending. We're looking forward to more of these educational training events in the future.

While I Was Away

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:09:55 PDT

While I know our SAR Coordinator and assistant Coordinators have been plenty hard at work, in part with calls that ended up being resolved by deputies and means other than us volunteers, it has been rather slow when it comes to call-outs. Not that that's a bad thing, of course! But there have been some call-outs lately, all of which occurred while I was either in a SAR-related class (Incident Command System 300) or while I was away for eight blissful days at Yosemite National Park.

First, there was the call for another body recovery below Midgley Bridge in Sedona. I say "another" because, sadly, we tend to have several of these calls each year. All but one that I know of since I've been on the team have been suicides, while one near (but not under) the bridge was an accidental fall. In this latest case, it was a 60-year-old woman who died. See Woman's Body Found Below Midgley Bridge in the Arizona Daily Sun. Several of my teammates responded to this call.

Little Colorado River Gorge

Then there was a technical rescue call for a young man who'd fallen into the Little Colorado River Gorge and badly broken his leg. After a long wait due to the remoteness of the area and some misinformation from the reporting party about the victim's location, the injured man was eventually short-hauled by helicopter to the rim and then flown to the hospital. Read Multi-Agency Effort Rescues Injured Hiker from Litle Colorado River Gorge in the Payson Daily Bugle.

As I was on my way back from the Yosemite trip, a SAR call came through about a missing "mule-rider" in the Schultz Pass area (of the San Francisco Peaks) who may also have been injured. The call was for both General (Ground) and Mounted SAR. I later found out that the missing party showed up at home on his own.

After returning home myself, I happened upon a news story stating that Search and Rescue volunteers and deputies had been sent to look for a self-reporting lost hiker on Mount Elden, who told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that he'd hurt his ankle and thought he was being stalked by wild animals. Since I never received a call-out message, I'm assuming that certain volunteers who live near Mt. Elden were called directly to make the initial response. Read Drunken Hiker Asks for Rescue to find out how that mission was resolved.

And that's about all the SAR volunteer activity I know of, other than some team trainings, while I was away. In about a week, I'll be tied up again, this time in a 5-day Inland Search Management class. Having completed the ICS-300 class last month and some other pre-requisites, I've now been added to the Ops list and will be called out if Operations Leaders are needed to prepare for a mission. So this next class will teach me more about SAR Operations and help me contribute. I'm excited! (Have I mentioned lately that I love SAR?)

It's Time to Learn Some SAR Ops

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:23:32 PDT

Now that I'm in my fifth year with Coco SAR, I'm eligible to begin training for SAR Ops (Ops = Operations). I'm pretty excited about this, because I love that part of Search and Rescue. That is, I look forward to helping with things like mapping out and planning a search, allocating resources and personnel, directing SAR members as they show up for a mission as to what needs to be done and what gear needs to be loaded, and assisting with whatever else the coordinator might need when preparing for a mission.

On Tuesday, March 13th through the 15th, I'll be taking the Intermediate Incident Command System (ICS) class, which will cover topics such as transfer of command, unified command functions in a multi-jurisdictional or multi-agency incident, ICS forms, resource management, inter-agency mission planning and procurement, and ICS staffing and organization to include reporting, working relationships and information flow.

******

The way it's working these days with our team is that, when the coordinator is contacted about a SAR call, he'll do some initial investigation and then, if necessary (depending on the type of mission it is), call out just those members qualified to help with operations. Whichever "Ops leaders" are available at that stage respond to the SAR building to assist. Then, when ready, the coordinator will do a general call-out for the rest of the team or just the technical rescue team or even specific members with specific skills as the case may warrant.

Other than the paid coordinators, SAR ops folks are all volunteer members of team. (Many are also members of the tech team, and one or two are mounted unit members.) Some of those who help with Ops have been on the team for many years--more than 25 years in one case--and have taken many different Ops courses. I'm looking forward to that type of training, myself.

Sometimes, Ops leaders and the Coordinator are able to resolve a situation, often with the help of deputies on scene or over the phone with a lost subject, before a general call-out is made, so other volunteers are able to keep doing what they're doing (like sleeping, for one thing) and never know about the situation until it's discussed at a monthly meeting. It's amazing how many times the Coordinator has been "just about to push the button" for a general call-out when the subject has been located or assisted back to safety or a known location by phone. That saves the rest of us a lot of interrupted activities and unnecessary response. Saves money too, not to mention time for the person/s who needed help in the first place.

Want to know more about Incident Command System training? These classes are part of FEMA's National Incident Management Training Program. Visit the FEMA NIMS Training site.

A Joint Technical Rescue Training with Border Patrol

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 06:23:54 PST

That was fun! And it was a challenging exercise, too.

Members of Borstar (which stands for Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue) out of Tucson invited our technical rescue team to join them for some training in Sedona. They'd come up from southern Arizona on Tuesday to work on wilderness survival and high angle rescue skills, setting up camp in a beautiful spot overlooking red rock country.

On Wednesday morning, those of us from Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue who were available to participate drove down to meet them, and, after introductions were made around their morning campfire and breakfast and coffee were consumed, we moved to the site of the day's tech training: the canyon at Midgely Bridge.

The goal for the day was to set up a high line across the canyon, then do some evolutions with a rescuer on the line, sending that brave soul out to the middle of the canyon, lowering and then raising the rescuer, and then hauling him or her back to one side of the canyon or the other. (I heard some onlookers refer to what we were setting up as a "zip line," but that's something quite different. We certainly didn't want to send anyone "zipping" anywhere.)

The first part of the operation was a real challenge, given that we didn't have one of those guns that shoots rope. (I've not seen one in action yet, but I've heard about this piece of equipment several times -- every time we have to haul rope from one side of a canyon to another, actually.) Once the rope (the track line) had been secured on the "near side" of the canyon, a Borstar member rappelled down to the bottom, brought the rope across and hooked it up to a line sent down from the "far side," so the other end of the rope could be raised and anchored over there. Problem was, there were trees in the way, and the rope had to clear those trees. And it was a lot of rope. The canyon was just shy of 300 feet from rim to rim.

No one was in a big rush, but it took quite a long time just to get the rope strung across the canyon. Then came the task of actually setting up the anchors, the artificial high directionals on both sides, the tag lines, and the hoist line. Issues were discussed (ie. the angle of the monopod and guiding lines), and the teams on either side hiked around to the opposite rim via the bridge to inspect the other team's set-up before any evolutions took place.

Finally, it was time to send someone across, down, up and over. Some challenges were had along the way, but, in the end, everything was done safely and successfully. Here are some more photos from our fun day of training. (Some of my teammates went back to Sedona for a second day of joint training with Borstar.)....

One of my teammates helps Borstar members put together the monopod.

Getting some good shots of the system.

Putting together the final touches, like the big Kootenay pulley on the track line.

A rescuer is sent out over the canyon.

The rescuer is lowered mid-canyon, then raised and hauled to the other side.

A Happy Surprise in Waterholes Canyon

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:04:48 PST

Once upon a time, there was a man in a canyon. Well, not just in a canyon, stuck in a canyon. This was a very deep and narrow canyon, and the man had been stuck down there for four days and three nights. Three very cold nights, that is, with little to protect him from the elements but a thin jacket and leaves he stuffed in his shirt. A winter storm had visited the area while he was down there, alone.

The man, a traveler from Europe, had run out of water in his Camelbak, probably on the first day. He had no food. He'd injured his left ankle, which was severely swollen, and had bad rope burns on his hands. By the fourth morning, he'd given up hope and "made peace," he later said. He knew he would not survive another night.

But he did! Thankfully, the cards were in his favor, as was his own strength, so he spent that fourth night in a warm bed instead of freezing, thirsty, hungry and possibly dying in that canyon.

The man had entered the canyon on Friday. His flight home left without him from Las Vegas on Saturday. (Good thing it was that soon, because no one may have realized he was missing until he missed that plane.) On Sunday, his wife had called for help when her husband failed to return, and that call for help was relayed to the Coconino County Sheriff's Department.

In the wee hours of the morning on Monday, the man's vehicle was located at the top of the slot canyon, in a pull-out along the highway south of Page, Arizona. The Search and Rescue team was called out at about 4am, and north we went from Flagstaff. It didn't look good for the man we had to assume was somewhere in that big canyon, with many rappels, one about 400 feet in vertical length, between the highway and the Colorado River.

But then things took a turn ... for the MUCH better: A deputy, walking the rim and calling out in the dark, heard a voice answer from below. That great news was quickly relayed to our team as we drove, and the mood changed. Approximate coordinates were called in by the deputy on scene to our coordinator in another vehicle and transmitted from our coordinator to us. Then our teammate in the passenger seat, an expert canyoneer very familiar with this canyon, plotted those coordinates on the map, knowing it was not possible to pinpoint the man's exact location by voice contact alone. Given a good idea of where he was, however--although he could have been at the top of a rappel or at the bottom--rescue scenarios were hashed out and re-hashed among us. Everything would depend, of course, on the man's actual location in the canyon and his physical condition.

The rescue could not have gone more smoothly. Two of my teammates and a medic from Page Fire Department entered Waterholes Canyon via a known "escape route" not far from where voice contact had been made from the rim. Carrying medical and warm-up gear, extra food and drinks (including some water I'd boiled for hot cocoa), they made their way down and then up-canyon towards the subject.

Meanwhile, the rest of us came up with a backup plan in case the man needed to be raised out of the canyon with a technical rope rescue system. The DPS helicopter had landed and the pilot and medic stood by.

Regarding the helicopter crew, they'd flown over the canyon and spotted the man, but they would not have been able to short haul him from his current location. The canyon was too deep and narrow. And given the fact that the man was standing and waving his arms, the added risk of performing a short haul, had one even been possible, was deemed unnecessary. The man would either be assisted out by rescuers under his own power, or he would be "packaged" in either a litter or a harness and raised out of the canyon with an attendant.

As it turned out, the man (perhaps somewhat aided by adrenaline?) was able to tough out his injuries and exit the canyon via the escape route, with the help of the three rescuers. As his head popped up over the rim, we all saw a big smile on his face, and we all smiled, too.

Joel and Mike get geared up and ready to go into the canyon.

Jeff from Page Fire looks down at the deputy on the rim.

Rescuers wait for word from those descending to the subject.

DPS Ranger out of Tucson arrives on scene.


Our team's Polaris UTV with mattrax is very useful in this rugged terrain.

******

And in other recent Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue news....

There was a mission in Meadow Canyon, a moderately technical canyon south of Flagstaff. This was a search for two overdue canyoneers. (Canyon rescues seem to be ... rather, I would say ARE on the increase in the area.) I was unable to respond to this call, which came in the middle of the night, because I couldn't leave my sick pup (who's now fine, thankfully). But a teammate gave me the scoop. He said.....

"I went on that call last night thinking it would last maybe 6 to 8 hours (I had a job lined up at noon) and instead it lasted 16 hours. A couple guys in their early 40s were overdue from a canyoneering trip. Eight of us tried all night to find roads that would take us to the edge of the canyon but with no luck. The back roads were muddy, icy and snow covered. The helicopter saw the subjects' campfire and got their coordinates, but we still couldn't get to them. With daylight, a radio was dropped to them and they claimed they were too tired and cold to go further and were afraid of the almost 100-yard swim in from of them. We talked about sending two people in by helicopter to help swim and hike them out but opted instead for a short haul. The chopper was low on fuel, so the subjects were flown just to the rim, and we had to pick them up via UTV and ATV. The road was strewn with boulders, mud and snow, and it took a couple of hours. On the way back, the ATVs got stuck in the snow a number of times. It was a long day, but the subjects were very thankful."

So, good, another happy ending!

******

Need a new read? My novel "I. Joseph Kellerman" (which has nothing at all to do with SAR) is available on Amazon Kindle and in paperback from Amazon or my website. Thanks for putting up with my blatant plug.

Being a Backer -- A Search Near Wapatki

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:48:26 PST

View of the San Francisco Peaks from Wapatki National Monument

The first call-out happened not long after I'd gone to bed. It was sleeting, and the roads were icy. Earlier that evening, I'd been reading online about lots of accidents in the area, and I knew my car was not adequate for driving in those conditions. So I decided to stay home. That's never an easy decision for me.

At 5:45 the next morning, another call-out came through for a second operational period. The missing person hadn't been located during the hasty search overnight. Knowing I really didn't want to miss another call, my boyfriend kindly offered to drive me to the SAR building in his truck. Good thing, because the roads were still very icy.

As I was getting ready for this winter weather mission, my phone rang again. It was our K9 handler, Cindy, asking if I'd be her backer as I've done a number of times now. I didn't hesitate. I really enjoy working with Cindy and her dogs. We'd meet at the SAR building and head out to the search area as quickly as possible--before the rest of the team--to get a head start, to let the dogs search before there were others in the area.

When I'm backing the K9 team, I'm responsible for navigation and radio communication, while I help Cindy keep an eye on the dogs (she often uses all three of her search dogs at the same time) and doing my own searching. I also help Cindy decide the best way to search our assigned area. Sometimes, the Incident Commander asks us what we think the best area and search strategy would be, so we put our heads together and hash out the ideas, taking into account wind direction (related to the dogs' ability to scent a subject), terrain, and what we know about the missing person's actions and the point last seen (PLS).

In this case, we were searching for a missing woodcutter. He'd disappeared around 4:30pm the day before, walking away from his two companions during very cold and windy conditions. It had gotten even colder with precipitation overnight. The other two men, who hadn't seen their friend's direction of travel when he wandered away, stayed in the area for a while, searching, then left and called for assistance.

So we knew basically where to begin--the general area along a Forest Service road on BLM land, just outside of Wapatki National Monument--but not a specific point. No footprints had been found by trackers during the hasty search overnight, so still no direction of travel had been determined. The area is mostly cinder-covered with lots of pinon pine and juniper (much more than what's shown in the photo above). Cindy and I noted that our own footprints were very clear in the cinders, so we knew that the subject's would be as well.

Cindy tested the wind direction with her little bottle of baby powder. She does this frequently as we search with the dogs, since wind direction can change quickly. We also discussed where to search and what to use as boundaries in this mostly very open area. (We noted power lines both on the map and in the field, along with two-track roads we could use. We would also use random GPS coordinates to create the area for our grid search.) At this point, given what we knew, we agreed that walking tight grids would be best ... in case the subject were unresponsive (ie. due to hypothermia or worse).

As we were getting our packs together and putting the harnesses with GPSes on the dogs, word came in over the radio that the missing subject had JUST called a family member on his cell phone, saying he was very cold and trying to walk towards Wapatki Road. He was alive! Unfortunately, the phone call was dropped and no further contact had been made. Cell service was very sketchy out there, and I had none at all.

Wapatki Road surrounds the area in a big loop. So the subject could have been walking in any direction towards this "catch feature." And we still had no idea where he was, so his distance from the road could potentially have been a very long way. But now that we knew he was alive AND moving, Cindy and I agreed to make our grid passes with the dogs much wider.

Based on wind direction and given the area the DPS helicopter had been flying over as we'd been en route and getting ready, we decided on the area we'd search. We got moving at a pretty good clip, the dogs running and weaving, working excitedly. Cindy and I called and whistled for the subject as we watched the dogs for any sign they were working scent.

I glanced at my GPS now and then, to make sure we were making fairly parallel grids, letting Cindy know if she should angle a bit more to the left or right. I stayed a bit behind her and several paces to her side, keeping downwind of the dogs so my scent wouldn't interfere. I also let Cindy know when it was time to turn around for the next pass.

After about two hours of searching in long, wide grids and yelling and whistling, I called in to base. We'd not heard any radio traffic for a long while. Had any additional contact been made with the subject? Were the other searchers in the area yet?

As a matter of fact, the reply was: "The subject has been located. You can return to base."

It was a lengthy walk from our current location back to our vehicle, and I now noticed how tiring walking on cinders was. (I don't notice fatigue as much when I'm actually searching.) The dogs, though, were still full of energy and still searching for human scent on the way back. To them, it's all a fun game.

When we met back up with IC, we learned that the subject had been found along a Forest Service road (not paved Wapatki Road) a good distance away from the area we'd been searching and in a direction the dogs could not have detected his scent on the wind. Still, we felt we'd done the best we could and made a good strategy decision based on what we'd known--which wasn't much--when we'd begun searching. We were glad we'd had a chance to work together again.

Recent SAR Activity

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 08:00:18 PST

I haven't posted in awhile, but that's not for lack of SAR activity. Although it's been slower than last year at this time when it comes to call-outs, there have been missions lately. It's just that, unfortunately for a writer-type like me, there have been a couple of recent missions I've participated in that I'm not able to write about due to their ongoing and, you might say, legally sensitive nature.

BUT ... I can tell you about a few other missions, none of which I've been able to respond to myself. Two of those calls happened Wednesday, as I sat here with a nasty head cold and sore throat. Woe is me. So, my teammates filled me in....

A Bitter Cold Search on the North Rim

This search occurred a few days before Christmas. The call out, which came at 3am, was about a track hoe driver who didn't return from moving his machine from one area to another near the North Rim of Grand Canyon. Searchers towed the team's snowcat and four snowmobiles a few hours from Flagstaff to Jacob Lake and then another 20 miles toward the Grand Canyon on Highway 67. They stopped at a side road the missing subject was reportedly on and sent in the 'cat with the snowmobiles on standby. In about a mile, the 'cat found the track hoe with the driver inside - cold but otherwise in good shape. He had gotten low on fuel and stopped after midnight.

SAR volunteers were then told two of the subject's fellow employees had taken a Jeep to go look for him, so when the DPS helicopter arrived on scene, our Coordinator directed the aircraft to look for their vehicle. The crew spotted the unoccupied vehicle and one subject a few miles away, walking toward the track hoe, so SAR volunteers in the snowcat went back in and picked him up. Turns out, he was the only one in the Jeep. It was bitterly cold out there - below zero with the wind chill - so searchers were glad to wrap things up.

A Joint Search for a Missing Hiker in Yavapai County

At 6am on the morning of Wednesday, December 28th, our technical/mountain rescue team was called to assist the Yavapai County team with a search for an overdue 21-year-old hiker, last seen on Tuesday at around noon in steep, rugged terrain near the Village of Oak Creek.

That hiker was Mahdi Harrizi, visiting the area with his family from New York. Mahdi's mother called for help at about 4pm on Tuesday, after her son called her on his cell phone, saying he was stranded on a ledge near Castle Rock. According to reports, Mahdi had taken a trail from behind the resort where they were staying. At the time his mother made the call to authorities, she had been able to see him up at the top of the mountain.

Searchers from Yavapai County arrived on scene soon after, just as the sun was setting, but Sheriff's Deputies were unable to get a GPS coordinate on Mahdi's cell phone because of the remote location. Ground searchers and a Department of Public Safety helicopter crew looked for Mahdi through the night and then called Coconino County SAR for assistance.

From what I heard, just after the DPS helicopter dropped off more technical rescue SAR members at the top of the mountain at about 11:15am on Wednesday and were flying off, the crew spotted Mahdi's body between a sheer cliff and some shrubs. Sheriff’s officials stated that Harrizi apparently fell about 150 feet, and he may have fallen shortly after his conversation with his mother.

Here are a couple of photos submitted by one of my teammates who was at the top of the mountain....

Read: Hiker Killed in 150-Foot Fall

From One Mission to Another

At 4pm on the 28th, we received another call-out. This was another mission down in Sedona, for a stranded climber. Additional technical rescue team members as well as General SAR were asked to respond, to assist the other tech team members already en route from the day's first mission to the next.

I don't yet have any details about what happened, but I'll fill in you once I do.

And now that I'm just about over this creeping crud I've had for several days, I've got my SAR gear ready to respond if ... well, when ... we get another call.

******
Looking for other Search and Rescue blogs to read? I've put together a pretty long list of them here. And please let me know if I've missed any others.

Coconino County Sheriff's SAR Celebrates It's New Home with a Grand Opening

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:38:12 PST

On Saturday, December 10th, a gathering of Search and Rescue volunteers, Sheriff's Office personnel, folks from the Department of Public Safety, Guardian Medical Transport, local fire departments, the Park Service and Forest Service, Sheriff's Posse volunteers, members of the County Board of Supervisors, friends and family and members of the public, celebrated the Grand Opening of the new Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue facility, which is located behind the Law Enforcement complex in Flagstaff.

This new building houses all of our team's Search and Rescue equipment, including our technical rescue gear, snow & ice and medical equipment, a fleet of snowmobiles and ATVs, a snow cat and other Search and Rescue vehicles, communications equipment, water rescue equipment and more. The facility now also brings our meetings, trainings and coordination under that same roof. This means more efficiency and even faster response times, since the team will no longer be operating between this new building and the main law enforcement building across the parking lot.

According to yesterday's article in the Arizona Daily Sun, construction on the new Search and Rescue facility began back in 2004, when the pavement was first poured. But that construction stalled soon afterward when financing dried up, and the actual structure wasn't completed until 2008. At that time, our team was able to move the equipment from its long-standing location on the east side of town at the County yard, making our response to call-outs more convenient.

From that point until just a few days ago, however, we'd been operating out of a shell of a building, with our Coordinator and map-printing capabilities over in the Sheriff's Office, which meant that preparing to deploy for a mission was what you might call a fragmented operation. Not so any longer, thanks to additional funding of this project by the County Board of Supervisors enabling the completion of the administrative side of the building. There's still work to be done, including the installation of a sixth bay door, a mezzanine, a climbing wall for training, and the paving of the exterior parking area, but that will happen over time.

On Saturday, SAR members were on hand to answer questions about our equipment--including a new Humvee from the Arizona National Guard--and our training program. Lunch was followed by comments from Sheriff Bill Pribil, members of the Board of Supervisors, State Representative Paul Gosar, and our team Captain, Andrew Moore, and then a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Here are some photos from the event....

The new sign

Our snow cat, some quads, and our new Hummer in the back

A gift from the National Guard

The huge bay where we store team equipment and vehicles.

Technical rescue and snow & ice equipment (and a rescue dummy)

The new communications room

The new meeting and training room with flat screen monitors

The kitchen, for events and to feed volunteers during big incidents

Our team captain cuts the ribbon as the Sheriff and many others look on

A Passing Motorist Brings A Search to a Close

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:30:26 PST

The man we were looking for had been missing for three days, having failed to show up at a prearranged rendezvous time after another of his many camping and "walkabout" trips in this area he knew well. I know I wasn't alone in my assumption that he wasn't "just" lost.

Hypothermia was a possibility, though. It had rained some in the past couple of days, and the subject apparently wasn't well prepared for the cold, wet weather. Injury was, of course, another possible scenario as was a potential miscommunication with the family member who'd gone back to get him on Saturday. Based on information we were given in our briefing prior to starting the search, we had reason to believe this may have been the case--that he had decided to stay out there longer but failed to contact his ride about his change of plans. Given the weather, though, and the fact that he wasn't properly equipped, our SAR Coordinator decided to call out the team to look for him sooner than later.

The subject had also made prior statements about taking his own life, so that too was on our minds.

We had been divided into teams of two, in this case one experienced member with one new member as the split was pretty much down the middle. It was good to see so many new SAR teammates from the latest academy come out for the search.

We were all in or on vehicles--SUVs, trucks, quads and the UTV--slowly driving unpaved roads and two-tracks, looking for the missing man's campsite and any other clues that might be associated with him, not to mention the man himself. We'd been told he preferred to stick to walking roads as opposed to traveling cross-country, so that's what we were starting with. As always, we were scanning the landscape and looking for any sign of tracks or clues, hoping to get a direction of travel. The team did find a number of things--the campsite, prints, a jacket--which turned out to be related to our subject.

But the search lasted only a couple of hours from the time we reached the area and deployed. A 9-1-1 call from a motorist on westbound I-40 about 21 miles east of Flagstaff, several miles from where we'd begun our search at the man's last known location, reported seeing what she thought was a body hanging from a billboard. It was difficult to see from the highway, so I'm thinking the person who spotted the lower portion of the man's body behind the billboard was an observant passenger.

Soon, Sheriff's deputies and SAR personnel confirmed the body as that of 39-year-old Stephen Dale Sterling, bringing our search to an end. (See the story in the Arizona Daily Sun.)

Searching For Justin

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:30:46 PST

With my left set of fingertips gripping a tiny, sharp ridge of (hopefully) embedded volcanic rock above me, my left foot perched on a small piece of (hopefully) embedded rock below, and my free hand and foot groping for something solid, I tentatively glanced down over my left shoulder. I decided there was no way I could safely go back the way I'd just come up, and I was doubtful about moving on. The steep wall of the canyon was covered in loose cinder, and I couldn't know for sure if the pieces of rock I wasn't quite able to reach were loose or solidly attached. Judge incorrectly or make a wrong move, and I was going for a fast ride down that cinder slide and over that ledge down there. That's what I was envisioning, anyway.

Crap. Not the kind of pickle I like to find myself in. And my two more confident teammates knew it. Every other word of mine was a bad one at that point.

So, you see, we'd completed our assignment, having been inserted into the Little Colorado River gorge by helicopter several hours earlier, exiting the DPS aircraft as the rotors continued to spin and kick up sand. We'd searched the far side of the river, which was flowing pretty well at the time, overlapping the point where another team had been inserted further upstream. We then forded the river at a wide, shallow (and slippery) area, and searched the opposite bank back the way we'd come. We'd been careful to look at piles of river debris from past flooding and kept an eye on the mud and shallow parts of the river for anything unusual that might be sticking out. We'd searched the shores, including small caves and crevices and vegetation that could potentially catch and hide human remains.

We were looking for any sign of 40-year-old Justin Brian Hall, an avid outdoorsman, former Appalachian Trail thru-hiker, and climber, who'd disappeared from a friend's home, where he'd been house-sitting in the very rural area near Sheba Crater and the border of the Navajo Reservation more than a month earlier. This was a continuation of the ongoing search, which had already extensively covered a one-mile radius around the house and well beyond, following up on tips and suggestions from locals and family and friends. Nothing at all had turned up that would indicate a destination or direction of travel.

This is the house where Justin had been staying....

Now searching about 10 miles (as the crow flies) from Justin's last known location, where his vehicle and belongings remained, ground teams were covering several miles along the Little Colorado River. A K9 team, with myself as one of the backers, had already searched the area just below and partway up Grand Falls at an earlier date, but it was being searched again on this day. We were looking for not only human remains but possibly a couple of items believed to be in Justin's possession at the house but yet unaccounted for, as well as any type of clue or sign that could potentially be linked to him. We found nothing.

Here are a couple of photos from our earlier search at Grand Falls with the dogs....

This is us searching partway up the falls, on a ledge.

Today, by the time our field team of three returned to the place we'd been dropped off at the bottom of the canyon several miles downstream from Grand Falls, the DPS crew had been reassigned and left the area. So our options were to climb out on our own or ... yeah, that was about it. We could do that either somewhere near where we were, or turn around and hike all the way back to Grand Falls, where we knew there was a trail to the rim. Or perhaps find a good place to climb out along the way.

We chose to find a route near where we were, but, looking up, it was difficult to tell how it would go. For the most part, the climb turned out to be steep (obviously) and the rocks and sparse vegetation were sharp, but it was otherwise okay ... except for a couple of spots like the one I described above, where I was temporarily frozen. And stopping one's momentum in sketchy spots doesn't exactly help matters. I could feel myself slipping every second I stayed in place.

Thankfully, my teammates stationed themselves in spots below and above me that gave me just enough confidence to move from those precarious locations. After anchoring himself as best he could, one of my companions offered me an outstretched wrist to reach for in case I needed it (which thankfully I didn't). My feet slipped as I practically threw myself across to the closest stable spot.

Eventually, the climb turned into a heart-pounding, steep scramble up a volcanic scree slope, but the scary stuff was over. Here's Keith at the top of the cinder slope....

Once at the top, we began walking towards base as we waited for someone to reach us by vehicle for a ride back.

********

Since that day about two weeks or so ago, the team hasn't been called upon again to search for Justin, who is still missing and very much missed by his family, many of whom are back east.

And here are two photos of Grand Falls, the top one taken on the day I just described. It was running quite a bit more than it had been about 10 days earlier, when I'd gone there to search with the K9 team. The lower photo was taken during spring runoff a few years ago. When Justin Hall went missing in mid-September, the Little Colorado was flowing at a much higher level than it was in the upper photo but not as much as the lower....

To see a photo of Justin Brian Hall, see the Coconino County Sheriff's press release.

A Facebook page has been set up as well. See: Missing Justin HALL

Back in 30 Minutes Turns Into Back in 18 Hours

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:37:27 PDT

She left her boyfriend's house at 9:30 in the morning, saying she was going for a short walk to "the Point" and would be back in half an hour. ("The Point" referred to a known location not far from the house.) At about 7:00 that night, our team was called to go look for her. A witness's likely sighting of the subject at about that time gave SAR a place to begin the search, up on Anderson Mesa near the Observatory.

This was one of those cases in which the missing person wasn't necessarily lost and might not want to be found. But we couldn't be sure of that, of course, and there was always the possibility, even if that were the case, she may have gotten injured or otherwise into trouble out there. So the search began, first with the K9 team sweeping the area and other searchers driving Forest Service roads and two-tracks. After the dogs had a chance to search the perimeter of the "point last seen" without others on foot contaminating the area, two of us set out on the Arizona Trail.

My search partner and I hiked more than 8 miles that night, tracking, calling the subject's name, scanning the moonlit surroundings with our headlamps. But all we heard in response to our calls were the elk bugling (which sometimes sounded like talking, sometimes crying and sometimes all sorts of other things) and all we saw in the beams of our headlamps were the glowing eyes of critters and the white stripes on four skunk tails, two of which went up in alarm. We're even quite sure that one set of moving eyes was a mountain lion. After a while, moonlit stumps began to look like human forms.

There wasn't much traffic over the radio that night other than an occasional status (or welfare) check by incident command with a "Code 4" (or "we're okay") response and a current location from the field team being called. Other than the vocal elk and the infrequent, distant sound of a vehicle passing on Lake Mary Rd., it was a quiet night.

Tired from more than eight miles of walking on rocky trail and even rockier Forest Service Roads, my partner and I walked back into base at about 1:30a.m., where we found the K9 team and other searchers. Negative contact all around. We were dismissed from duty, and home we went, expecting another call-out for fresh searchers to come by 4am.

But that call never came. We later learned that the missing woman had shown up back at her boyfriend's house at 3:30am.

Oh well. It was pretty cool being out there at night ... even IF we were being stalked by a mountain lion. I doubt I'd ever wake up, comfortable in my bed in the middle of the night, and say, "Hey, I think I'll go for a moonlight hike on Anderson Mesa." So this search for someone who apparently wasn't in distress at least got me some exercise and a neat outdoor experience. Just glad it didn't get me sprayed by a skunk.

And in other Coconino County SAR news....

The team has been busy with other recent missions, including a body recovery at Midgley Bridge in Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona. In this case, the victim was a 30-year-old California woman whose body was discovered by two hikers. I believe this is the fourth recovery at Midgley Bridge this year.

The team also spent a couple of days out near Sheba Crater, searching for a man missing for more than a month. Justin Brian Hall, 40, was last seen on Sept. 7th at a home on Leupp Road near milepost 442, just west of the Navajo Reservation. He was housesitting for a friend at the time, and his vehicles and belongings were found at that home. Hall is said to be an experienced outdoorsman, an avid hiker and a rock-climbing enthusiast.

While this search was underway, other members of the team participated in an evidence search near Seligman.

Search & Rescue volunteers also assisted with parking and traffic control at the funeral of Flagstaff Police Chief Brent Cooper who died unexpectedly on Sunday morning, October 9th, while jogging with his loyal dog, Winston, on Purple Sage Rd. near Fort Tuthill. Winston remained with the Chief until he was found that afternoon. Chief Cooper served with the department for 33-years.

And, most recently, five members of the technical rescue team assisted a stranded hiker above "the Waterfall" on Mt. Elden.

Missing at The Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:11:15 PDT

I'm leaning over the steering wheel, fighting the sleepies, while my teammate snoozes in the passenger seat. (Looks like he's going to have a stiff neck when he wakes up.) But no, I'm not scribbling with one hand while driving with the other; I'm composing a blog post in my head to help me stay awake.

Let's see, I haven't slept in (calculating...) about 30 hours, and we've still got a few hours left to go before we get back to Flagstaff. I probably should pull over somewhere and do a wake-up jig.

Anyway, last night -- or was it the day before? No, it was last night. So I had just finished watching a movie -- can't even remember which one right now -- and crawled into bed when the text message came in: "Missing hiker at The Wave, near the Utah border. Respond to the SAR building to depart at 1am."

A minute or so later, the voice mail came through. By then, I'd decided to go, so I called in and left my "Number 6-2-0, Deb Lauman responding" message. Turned out that just two other team members responded to the call-out, one of whom is not really a hiker anymore. But he did come along to accompany our Coordinator in his vehicle and help him drive and assist with Incident Command. No one else responded after the second and third call-outs.

So northward the four of us went in our two vehicles, with Dennis and me in the pick-up full of tech gear, just in case. (We take technical rescue equipment and the Stokes litter on all missions.) It was still dark when we turned onto House Rock Valley Rd. and bumped our way along to the trailhead for The Wave and Buckskin Gulch (the world's longest slot canyon). I'd been there before, a couple of years ago. Dennis had been there several years before that.

Okay, I admit it; I did nod off a bit on the ride up, since I was the passenger.

Anyhow ... the missing hiker we were looking for was a 70-year-old man -- a geologist who must have been in heaven in this natural wonder of an area when he told his three companions he was going from The Wave over to the nearby Wave II formation and would be back in 15 minutes. Four hours later, apparently, his friends decided to go look for him. That was yesterday afternoon.

So, here's a picture of the Wave II. Pretty cool, huh?

We were given a description of what the man was wearing (which turned out to be incorrect, actually), and, as the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, the two of us searchers started off down the wash for the three-mile hike to The Wave and the subject's "last known point" (LKP).

We were searching and calling along the way, of course, and we detoured a bit to a slot canyon, where we actually made voice contact with a man we couldn't see.

"Hello!" we called.
"Hello?" he answered. He sounded cautious.
"Are you [insert subject's name]?" Dennis asked.
No response.
"We're with Search and Rescue," I then called down into the canyon. "We're looking for [subject]."
No response.
"Are you the lost person we're looking for?"
"We're just hiking," came the man's reply from the canyon.

And that was it. He didn't answer us again. Hmm. Might have been someone (or two people maybe, because he had said "we") out there without the required permit. Maybe that's why he'd been reluctant to talk to us.

And onward Dennis and I went, climbing up and over and around rock formations and trudging across sand. It had quickly gone from very chilly to very hot, and I made a big dent in my water supply early on.

When we got close to The Wave, at the base of the sand dune we'd have to climb to get up there, we decided to first search a slot canyon to the west of The Wave and below the Wave II. We figured that the likelihood of the missing hiker actually being at either formation was slim, given that there were already other people at those locations who'd have run into him. (We'd seen them along the route and talked to a few of them.) We also wondered if perhaps the subject had fallen into the canyon we were about to search, since there certainly are fall hazards. So we turned west and entered the narrow canyon to search from below.

Here's a glimpse of that canyon. The Wave II was way up above, to the left...

In the meantime, a fixed-wing aircraft, flown by the Kane County, UT, SAR Coordinator was searching high overhead. And then a DPS helicopter arrived to fly lower than the plane. We heard the rotors nearby as we made our way further into the canyon.

Eventually, Dennis and I got cliffed-out in the canyon and it was too sketchy to go up and around to the side in order to continue on. So we decided to go back out to that sand dune below The Wave, ascend and head over to the Wave II, and then try to get back down into the slot canyon from above, bypassing the obstacle we'd run into. Dennis had done that before, years ago, and he recalled that there was a way to do it safely.

But we didn't quite get that far. After trudging up the sandy incline and across the slickrock "shelf," then down to where we could see our re-entry into the slot canyon, we heard through the static on our radios that the subject had been located by the helicopter crew, and they'd soon be landing to pick him up.

Turns out, the missing hiker was up, not down -- that somehow he'd scrambled to the top of the mesa above The Wave and was perhaps stuck up there. I really don't know exactly how he ended up where he did, when the Wave II is so easy to find when coming from The Wave. (Must have gone walk-about to explore some more and then gotten himself misplaced.) In any case, he was in good shape -- in part thanks to water pockets he'd been able to drink from -- and good spirits, as were his three friends when hot and tired Dennis and I arrived back at base.

And now I'm really looking forward to a hot shower. The soft bed will have to wait awhile, though, because as tired as I am, I can never seem to sleep in the middle of the day. I'll just be glad to get out of this truck.

Welcoming New Team Members and Saying Goodbye to Another

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:15:06 PDT

The Search & Rescue Academy is underway, with 18 new members taking classes in skills such as Personal Safety, Map and Compass, GPS navigation, ATV operation, and Tracking, with a mock search to be held at the end of the two-month training. Once students have completed the Academy, including two Incident Command System tests, they'll be added to the call-out list and be eligible to respond to missions.

Sadly, as we welcome new members to the Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team, we're also mourning the loss of another -- a four-legged team member named Nitro. Nitro, whose nickname was Peedles, was the oldest and most experienced of handler Cindy McArthur's four SAR dogs, and he did his job enthusiastically and with energy till the day before he suddenly succumbed to previously undetected liver cancer earlier this month. Nitro was ten years old.

A NASAR-certified search dog cross-trained in area search (for live subjects) and HRD (Human Remains Detection), Nitro had three live finds and three HR finds on missions during his career and countless other successful finds during trainings as much as three times per week.

Among his mission finds were an autistic teen, an 83 year-old man with dementia who'd been missing more than 40 hours, the verified location of the scent of human remains in a closet three years after the body had been removed, which led to the killer's arrest, and the location of 8 human bones buried in a pack rat nest. Earlier this year, Nitro located two lost hikers in the San Francisco Peaks and also found a smear of blood on a pair of pants inside a locked trunk, later determined to be human blood through the use of Luminal by the Coconino Sheriff's Office CSI Team.

Nitro received the Search & Rescue Dog of the Year award in 2005 from the Association of Pet Dog Trainers and, in the same year, the Kingman Police Department Excellence Award for assistance in a homicide case (which he shared with Radar, another of Cindy's search dogs). Nitro also received the Good Gun Foundation Award for Search Dog Unit in 2007.

As Cindy said, "[Nitro] was the best SAR dog any handler could dream for, and I will miss him dearly. Our SAR unit has lost one of it's most dedicated members."

Having worked with Nitro as Cindy's backer and also as a lost subject for her dogs, I too will miss sweet, loyal Nitro.

******

The Search and Rescue community recently lost another member of its family -- DPS helicopter pilot, Matthew Uhl, who was killed in a car accident on September 20th when the vehicle he was driving was struck head-on by a Ford Explorer moving at a high rate of speed as the driver may have been attempting to pass other vehicles. Matthew Uhl was deceased on scene.

Uhl, a DPS Pilot since 2006, operated the Bell 407 Ranger Air Rescue and was assigned to the DPS Central Air Rescue Unit in Phoenix. At the time of his death, he was en route to cover a shift in Kingman as part of the DPS Western Air Rescue.

On February 20, 2010, Matt Uhl and DPS Officer/Paramedic Eric Tarr rescued 3-year-old Victoria Bensch who had been missing for nearly 15 hours after she wandered away from her Cordes Lakes home.

Uhl was also the pilot who flew the short-haul rescue of the severely injured canyoneer in Insomnia Canyon on August 13th that our team participated in. He will be sorely missed.

See DPS Pilot Killed in Head-On Accident

Body Recovery Call at Bear Canyon Lake

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:40:35 PDT

Just catching up on some SAR missions from the past few weeks, including a call for the technical rescue team at about 7:30 on a Sunday morning, for a body recovery -- two, unfortunately -- at Bear Canyon Lake in the Forest Lakes area. I wasn't able to respond to that call, but a teammate of mine filled me in the next day. This is what he said....

"Six Tech Team members showed up, and because there was rain in the forecast we loaded all the gear in the back of the Suburban instead of the pickup to ensure the rope stayed dry. We were told that an ATV had gone over a cliff, but as with most rescues the initial information is often unreliable, so we weren't sure how this one would unfold.

We finally turned toward Bear Canyon Lake on a what was initially a decent dirt road, but it deteriorated quickly. When we arrived at the scene we found a group of Forest Service and fire hot shot personnel and the Medical Examiner vehicle.

Below us was an approximately 15-foot deep ravine, with a wrecked ATV and the bodies of two young men in their early 20s lying near it. It's always tragic to see young lives ended much too soon, and I could only imagine the pain the families were feeling.

We realized we could walk to the scene from the edges of the ravine, so with the help of the hot shots we transported them up to the road. The Forest Service folks told us this was the 6th fatal ATV accident this year in the Forest Lakes area.

With our mission complete, we headed back on the dirt road, where the suburban suddenly stopped running. We ended up having to load all the gear into the pickup and left the disabled suburban with [our Coordinator and one team member], who waited for the tow truck. When we arrived back at the building we were all stiff -- not from the mission but from the 5-1/2 hour drive.

For us the mission was complete. For the families of the victims, the agony of their loss was just beginning."

A Training Hike & Abandoned Camp in West Fork Canyon -- and other SAR news

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:03:53 PDT

There are certain places within the county that our team is called to time and time again, and, over time, patterns begin to emerge. People tend to get into pickles often in the same places and under similar circumstances. So it's a good idea for those in Search and Rescue to familiarize themselves with these popular "people-in-pickles" spots, so when we're called upon to go find the lost and assist the injured, we know what we're getting into and where we're going.

I'd never hiked into West Fork Canyon from the top, so this training hike was a good opportunity for me to check it out. Four of us, led by assistant SAR Coordinator, Dave, who's very familiar with the area from many years of exploring by foot and flying over it as a helicopter medic, would hike and boulder in at least 2.5 miles to the junction of West Fork Canyon and Casner Cabin Draw, which is a place where hikers often go astray when thru-hiking West Fork from below. Many of those hikers don't carry maps and end up going up Casner Cabin Draw instead of West Fork. In Casner Cabin Draw, they come to a choke stone and can go no further. Then they're confused, tired, and darkness overtakes them in the rugged canyon. Eventually, they're reported overdue by a friend or family member when they fail to show up by the expected time (and often then some), and SAR is called.

In addition to familiarizing ourselves with the canyon, we had another job to do on this training mission: we'd be investigating an abandoned campsite that had been spotted first by air during an earlier mission and then briefly checked by two SAR volunteers who'd later hiked in that same night to locate five overdue hikers (with no connection to that campsite).

It was a warm morning, but I resisted the urge to zip off the bottom halves of my convertible pants because I knew the canyon would be thick with vegetation and there would be plenty of blowdowns to crawl under and over. And I was right. Had I been wearing just the shorts, I would have gotten even more scratched up.

The going was slow, not only because of the absence of trail, the countless opportunities to sprain or break an ankle, and the heat, but also because the canyon is so beautiful. We kept stopping to look around and appreciate how pretty it is.

As we hiked further, the canyon narrowed and the walls went higher. Wildflowers were blooming, hummingbirds were buzzing, and one pretty snake (non-poisonous) slithered past us after we disturbed its snooze in the shade of a rock. We saw bear scat but no bear. Dave told us about hiking this canyon with his dad, when he was a boy. He also told us how he and a friend carried out (without a litter, so literally carried) another friend who became seriously ill on their hike.

As we went, we'd periodically pause to guess where on our topographic maps we were. We'd all look around at the terrain and compare it to the contours on the map and point out our guesses to Dave, who'd guess as well. Then I'd map the coordinates from my GPS and see who'd come closest. It was a good exercise and a fun challenge. It was also fun to get it right!

After maneuvering our way through a section of large boulders, we came to the junction of the two canyons, also the location of the abandoned campsite. To me, it looked as if a party of perhaps as many as three people had decided, hey, let's try this backpacking thing, gone to Walmart and bought tents, sleeping pads and other not-so-pricy gear, some of which was more suited for car-camping than backpacking, and set off on their first overnight hike. Then, after struggling through that rugged canyon with all that STUFF on their backs, including some new clothes and new shoes, decided the next morning that all that shlepping wasn't as fun as they'd expected. So they took only the bare minimum for the hike out and left the rest. They'd left yucky garbage, deoderant and cologne behind, too.

We packed out their trash, usable and not.

At that point, we considered whether or not to add about 2.5 more miles to our already 5-mile round-trip hike to go up Casner Cabin Draw to the choke stone. But the thunder was rumbling loudly by then, and it was already later than we'd anticipated, so we decided to head back.

It was a great day and a useful reconnaissance mission. The next time we get a call for overdue hikers in West Fork, I'll know more than just the first few easy miles from the bottom.

And in other Coconino County Search and Rescue news....

Here's a really good article with photos about that recent (VERY) technical rescue in Insomnia Canyon, a tributary of West Fork: Climber Miraculously Survives 140-Foot Fall

And I received a mission report from my teammate, who responded to the call for a litter evacuation of an injured hiker on the Humphreys Trail. He wrote:

"I left at 6:30 am this morning to get a backpacking permit at the Grand Canyon, then proceeded to do a 5 mile day hike on the Hermit trail. About 30 minutes after I got back, there was the callout for the Humphreys litter carry. I responded directly to Snow Bowl [with another team member], and we both were transported by the Snow Bowl UTV to the trailhead. By this time, [a second callout was made]. We arrived at the patient, and eight rescuers including a young hiker who volunteered to help, and Flag Fire and Guardian personnel 200 yards beyond the sign-in box. [The patient] was already packaged in their litter and was in obvious pain with an injured arm and ankle due to a fall. I called [our coordinator], who had not yet arrived on scene, and let him know we had it covered, and we slowly brought [the patient] down, stopping to administer Morphine 3 times. We loaded her on the back of the Snowbowl UTV and steadied the litter as it drove down slowly. When we got back to the parking lot, there were more than 6 SAR members waiting. Fortunately it was a short rescue, because I was pretty worn out."

An Out-of-County Search -- Coconino SAR Assists in Apache County

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:57:18 PDT

It was late on the night of our monthly general SAR meeting when our Coordinator announced that Apache County was requesting our assistance with the search for a missing hiker. They were asking us to respond to their Incident Command the next morning for a two-day stay.

I looked across the room at Cindy, our K9 handler, with the "ya wanna?" question on my face. We'd talked about this search a few days earlier, when she'd gotten a call about it -- a little advance notice that Apache County would probably be asking for her to bring her dogs, all four of which are NASAR-certified and cross-trained in area search (for live subjects) and human remains detection.

I needed to make sure I had someone to watch my own (non-SAR) dog, and I'd had other things I was planning to do in the next couple of days, but I was willing to go if she was. I'd go along as Cindy's backer.

So, we decided to do it. The two of us, four rather large dogs (at least, they seem large when they're all in the same vehicle), and a bunch of gear piled into Cindy's SUV the next morning and headed southeast. This was an area Cindy knew well from her childhood, but I'd only passed through a couple of times.

******

Helping with a SAR mission in a different county is an interesting experience. It's difficult, if not altogether impossible, to leave behind the expectations of how a search will be carried out based on your experience with your own team and the norms you're used to. (Coconino County is fortunate, by the way, to have a full-time Search and Rescue Coordinator. Most counties do not.) As a searcher, though, you report to whoever is in charge, you give your two cents -- your ideas and suggestions -- if asked for, you get your assignment, and you carry out that assignment to the best of your ability. And that's what Cindy and I and four hard-working Golden Retrievers did.

It was a stormy day, and our assignment took us up to 11,400 feet on the open summit of Mt. Baldy, Arizona's second highest peak, and into the thick trees on the extremely steep slopes surrounding the ridge. I felt the adrenaline rush through my veins each time the thunder seemed to be coming back our way. The rain fell steadily, and we and the dogs were soon soaked and stayed that way for the duration. It was cold up there.

Cindy and her four search dogs near the summit of Mt. Baldy

Searching for scent along the treeline on the Mt. Baldy ridge

Searching the ridge after the thunderstorm moved off

We were searching for Frank Carl Patane, 60, from Tucson. Mr. Patane had disappeared on August 11th, after signing the Mt. Baldy trailhead register at 7:30 that morning. His vehicle was found at the trailhead a couple of days later by a deputy, when the hotel staff where Mr. Patane had been staying reported that he hadn't returned after saying he was going to hike that mountain.

Family members described Frank Patane as an avid day hiker who was inexperienced as a camper. He'd had surgery for a detached left retina a month before this solo hike. They were concerned that his eyesight may have become an issue.

On the day Mr. Patane signed the register, a severe storm hit the area at roughly 11:30am, an hour after another party signed that same trail register. They'd turned back due to the weather, having seen no sign of the man we were searching for. The search continued intensely for 17 days, with multiple counties responding -- ground-pounders, K9 teams, ATV teams, and mounted units. No clues were found.

The "chow truck," feeding volunteers from many counties during the search

Basic information on the missing person on the side of the Command Trailer

Incident Command / Base Camp

On our second day assisting with the search, Cindy and I were joined by another teammate from Coconino County. We grid-searched a large meadow with a narrow, muddy creek running through it, as well as a wooded area and some unoccupied buildings (one of which was heavily guarded by wasps) as thunder continued to rumble.

We search again the next day

Cindy and the dogs and another backer (I couldn't go) returned to Apache County a second time the following weekend. They searched for two days during the final "big push" to locate Mr. Patane. Last I heard -- and I've found nothing online to indicate otherwise -- no clues have yet to be found.

Here's another news article about the search, with a photos of Frank Carl Patane: Authorities Continue Search for Missing Hiker; More K9 Search Teams Join the Effort

An "Extreme," Multi-Agency Technical Rescue

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:37:10 PDT

Photo courtesy of R. Marlatt

First an overview and then some personal comments about this mission, which may be one of the most technically difficult rescues our team has ever faced....

On Saturday, August 13th, 36 year-old Mike McEntire from Payson, AZ, was canyoneering with several friends in Insomnia Canyon, a tributary of West Fork near Sedona. Mike was on the final 150 feet of a 350-foot rappel when he lost control, picking up speed, and fell about 100 feet. He struck a rock on the way down and then fell another 40 feet, ending up a total of 1,800 feet below the rim with multiple injuries. Two of his friends continued down canyon and made the long trip out to get help, while two others remained behind with Mike.

Once emergency services were notified of the accident, more than 25 rescuers from multiple agencies responded, including Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue, Sedona Fire District, Flagstaff Fire Department, Guardian Medical Transport, Department of Public Safety helicopters out of Kingman and Phoenix, and Native Air.

Two of the volunteers from Search and Rescue had to make eight rappels and three swims to reach the patient late Saturday night and remained with him, rendering medical care while other rescuers rappelled with the Stokes litter, additional medical equipment, and gear for setting up lowering and raising systems, main and belay lines. About 2,600 feet of rope was needed.

An attempt by a DPS helicopter crew was made at first light on Sunday to short haul the patient from his original location, but the slot canyon was too tight for the aircraft. So the patient was then raised by rescuers 800 feet to a ledge where he could be accessed for the short haul, which took place at 1pm at Sunday, at least 24-hours after he'd fallen. Two rescuers accompanied the patient on the raise, while two others continued down canyon with the patient's uninjured friends, including at least a couple more rappels and then a lengthy hike out. They were met en route by fire personnel, who'd hiked in from the Call of the Canyon trailhead to assist them with carrying gear after their exhausting time in the canyon.

After the patient was removed from the canyon and flown to a hospital in Phoenix, where he's since been upgraded from critical to serious condition, came the arduous task for the rescuers of getting themselves and their gear out of the canyon, with a 1,000-foot elevation difference between their location and the rim. This involved ascending ropes one by one, hauling both their own body weight and heavy gear with their spent muscles.

Several rescuers were able to make the difficult climb, but given the stormy monsoon weather that was moving in, the time of day, and their extreme exhaustion, six of the remaining rescuers were short hauled to the rim by DPS. DPS also assisted with this rescue by lowering a cargo net full of fluids to the rescuers and hauling off two nets full of gear.

Rescue personnel were assisted by volunteer members of Coconino County C.E.R.T. (Community Emergency Response Team), who drove our weary group back to Flagstaff. Their help was much needed and appreciated.

Regarding the patient ... In a comment on a Hiking Examiner article, Mike McEntire's mother writes, "He did break both his heels, and his pelvis in six places. He also fractured his spine and had internal bleeding. The internal bleeding seems to have stopped. He will need to have more surgeries and procedures and it will be at least 3 months before he is able to walk again."

And now for some personal comments (sorry, I know this is long, but....):

I am so proud to be a member of this team and so proud of my teammates, who went all out on this mission and at personal risk. Controlled risk, yes, and with as much attention to safety as possible, but no tech rescue is without risk, of course. And this one was a doozy.

Yes, I was on this mission, and I did assist, but my role was minimal compared to my teammates. I say that because, after descending approximately 500 feet below the rim on a handline (using a Prusik), when I came to the ledge at the start of the next 500-foot rappel, I ultimately made the decision that that's where I needed to stop. It wasn't an easy decision, and I agonized about it through the night as each of my teammates loaded up with gear in addition to their own packs, attached their self-belays to the second rope and their rappel devices and, one by one, descended through the thick manzanita, their headlamps soon disappearing from view. It seemed to take a very long time until the one on rappel would announce over the radio that he was off rappel and off belay. One said this was the nastiest rappel he'd ever experienced.

A 500-foot rappel. With heavy gear. With a self-belay. Through the brush and other difficulties. Was I ready for that? What would happen if I ran into trouble partway down? On my own. I didn't really have enough rope time under my belt -- not with all that gear, all that distance -- I thought to myself. And if things didn't go right, I was putting not only myself but my team and, ultimately, the man we were there to rescue at even greater risk. No, I decided, I wasn't going down any further.

So the best I could do to help was go up and down the hand line with equipment, help with communications, and whatever else might be called for up top.

Of course, this mission wasn't about me whatsoever, and I'm sure no one was really thinking about me BUT me. And I had to make a decision about my own limitations, regardless of the fact that more hands were sorely needed below. Like I said, it was a very tough call for me. But I'll be continuing to gain experience on the rope, rappelling and ascending with my pack and extra gear, passing knots in both directions ... and with someone else belaying me, at least at first. Eventually, I'll be ready.

And in the interest of not ending on a note about me, I want to reiterate what an awesome job Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue technical team did, along with all other responding agencies. You saved a life in really difficult conditions. You rock!

A Vision Quest Gone Bad?

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:57:23 PDT

That's what the note said that 43-year-old Michael Snarski of Thornton, Colorado, had left on his dashboard -- that he was not lost; he was on a vision quest. The note was dated 7/24/11.

Two weeks later, someone reported to the Sheriff's office that the car was still there, parked at a pull-out about twenty miles south of Williams, AZ. That's when detectives asked for our K9 team, trained in human remains (HR) detection, to come to the site and check the vehicle. They'd smelled what could have been an intermittent, faint "odor of death," they said. Our dog handler, Cindy, then contacted me and another team member, often her backers on other missions, to accompany her and her four NASAR-certified Golden Retrievers.

All four dogs independently alerted on the trunk of the vehicle, but my teammates and I didn't smell anything in the air or coming from the car. Still, each dog gave an enthusiastic, distinct alert, a couple of them becoming what I'd call frustrated at not being able to find the source of the smell, digging at the ground by the trunk and jumping up on the vehicle with their front legs.

A deputy called his boss for permission to have the vehicle unlocked and the trunk opened. Permission was granted, and we all waited, wondering what we'd find.

Once the trunk was opened, however, there was no visible evidence of human decomposition and no odor -- at least none detectable by our human noses. The dogs were again brought back to the car, one by one, and each now alerted on a specific area of the trunk.

"Show me," Cindy would say when they each alerted. And each dog jumped back up and touched the same spot inside the trunk with their paws and noses. Something related to human decomposition was there, but whatever it was, we couldn't see it and we couldn't touch the numerous items in the trunk to look beneath them.

Later, after the vehicle was towed and law enforcement searched the vehicle, it was discovered that the dogs had indeed found something -- a spot of blood about the size of nickel on a pair of pants.

Following more investigation, an extensive area search was planned and SAR volunteers from both Coconino and Yavapai Counties were called, including K9, ground and mounted units. I'm sure everyone was thinking this would likely be a long, tedious search through difficult terrain. Even the command trailer was being brought out to the site.

K9 units arrived at the search area at first light, to begin while the air was cool and while the light winds would still be coming up out of nearby Bear canyon. That way, the dogs would be able to detect human scent if the missing person were down in that canyon. The wind would (and did) soon change direction as the sun rose, so we wanted to search the rim as soon as possible.

But the search didn't last long. As Cindy and I slowly made our way along the rim with two of her dogs, picking through thick manzanita, over rocks and other pinion/juniper forest debris, and one lethargic snake, another K9 team discovered Michael Snarski's body not far from the road. He was sitting on a blanket, up against a tree, with full water bottles and a couple of uneaten, by then blackened bananas at his side. Facing west towards what may have been the sinking sun on his final day, he still had his sunglasses on. This is the last view Michael would have seen, but without all of the SAR vehicles. His car had been parked where ours now were:

See the Sheriff's Office Media Release: Missing Person Snarski Located Deceased

Remember the Telephone Game?

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:28:13 PDT

Sometimes Search and Rescue is a little like that game I played at camp when I was a kid. Someone would start out with a couple of sentences and whisper them into the ear of the next kid in line. That kid would then whisper to the next and so on, until the message reached the last person and he or she announced the message. Then it was compared to the original message, and, nearly every time, it was at least a little -- if not very -- different.

I don't know the chain of communication in this latest SAR case, but by the time I saw the Facebook post by a local newsperson who listens to and reports on scanner traffic, it was "MAJOR MEDICAL: 3 APS employees have fallen from a ledge while working on a power box on Mt. Elden." I began changing into my mission clothes immediately.

Soon afterward, SAR was called, and I headed out. This was going to be a long, difficult mission, I thought, evacuating three injured patients off that rugged mountain. Apparently, they were not on or near a trail.

Soon, nine of our volunteers rendezvoused with Flagstaff Fire Department personnel at the base of Mt. Elden along the gas pipeline trail. Two of our members, who had responded directly to the mountain while the rest of us loaded Stokes litters and other technical rescue equipment, climbed up to the power company workers, who were visible from below. There were actually seven of them up there.

When the rest of the responding SAR members arrived on scene, we and Flag Fire were informed that everyone on the mountain was mobile and could be walked down. What had happened to the injuries I'd read about online? A leg injury, a foot injury, and one complaining of "severe chest and stomach pains"?

Apparently, there was one guy with a bad knee that was bothering him, but no leg injury. There was no evidence of a foot injury that I was aware of, and I was told that the chest and stomach pains had been cramps from dehydration, relieved by the water and Gatorade brought up to them by the first responders on scene.

Those of us preparing to climb up were asked to bring mountain rope and other gear needed to rig some safety handlines as a precaution for the bouldering left to be done to reach the bottom. Some of the APS workers were tired and, though they'd been rehydrated, might be at greater risk of tripping and falling on shaky legs. We also brought extra helmets and headlamps in case it got dark before everyone was down.

In the end, everything went smoothly and all were in good spirits and good shape. No one requested or wanted medical attention.

From what I heard, the APS workers had, earlier that morning, left a couple of their vehicles at the base of the mountain, then driven to the summit. They were, as one man put it, on a "reconaissance mission" to scope out an electrical line that was going to be built (or rebuilt maybe). "It wasn't one of the smartest things we've ever done," he said.

I'm really not sure what exactly happened up there, but they didn't seem prepared--physically or otherwise--for a day on the mountain. I believe several of the workers had made it down or most of the way down to their vehicles at the bottom but had then gone back up to assist the other three. If there had been any kind of fall, I didn't hear anyone mention it. Hm ... who knows? Just glad it all worked out well, with daylight to spare.

Searching for Those Who Don't Want to Be Found

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:02:29 PDT

I could feel the sweat dripping down my neck and back and occasionally off the tip of my nose. It was late at night, but Oak Creek Canyon was holding in the heat and monsoon season humidity. I turned off my headlamp as my partner and I stopped for a brief rest, and, in the absence of a moon, couldn't see the drop-off to my right.

We each called one of the missing boys' names. As we'd expected, there was no response from the darkness.

These were not "just" missing teenagers. They were runaways. Earlier that day, they'd taken off from some sort of camp for troubled or IN trouble youth, scrambling up a very steep slope, towards what we didn't know. Did they?

Randy and I picked up some human tracks, off-trail, soon after we'd arrived at our assigned search area along Route 89A in Oak Creek Canyon. But we lost those tracks amongst the thick pine needles and game trails partway up the calf-burning slope. We later wondered if the boys had stopped and hidden until the coast was clear, then gone back down to the road.

Picking and slipping our way back down to the road, I stopped frequently to pull bits of forest debris out of the palms of my hands. Mental note: wear my work gloves when doing stuff like this.

When we got to our vehicle, we drove down the road (up and down, actually, until we found the nondescript trailhead we were looking for) and headed up the Thomas Trail to the rim, calling and searching upslope and down with our headlamps. We needed to be sure that the boys, though they intentionally ran away, hadn't gotten themselves into a bad situation -- cliffed out, for example, or injured -- in the process.

Meanwhile, other ground teams were searching by ATV and UTV up on the rim. Another pair of searchers was hiking the Telephone Trail, parallel to ours, maybe a mile away. All reported negative contact.

Before Randy and I hiked back to the bottom of the canyon, we contacted Incident Command and found out that our Coordinator had gone further down 89A to assist with a multiple fatality, head-on collision near Grasshopper Point and Midgley Bridge. He asked us to look closely for "sign" (footprints or other clues) at the top of the trail, but we saw nothing of interest around Thomas Point.

About an hour later, we slipped our sweaty packs off our sweaty backs. Randy then called I.C. on the radio for our next assignment.

"You can return to Flagstaff," our Coordinator told us. "The subjects have been located."

Back at the SAR building close to midnight, we learned that a family member had contacted law enforcement and said the boys were safe ... somewhere.

Hm, interesting.

*******

Earlier last week, our SAR team responded to a call to search for a missing suicidal female. We were given the description of her vehicle, and our search area was based on information from a cell phone "ping" from her most recent call. We were instructed to contact Incident Command if we located the woman and/or her vehicle but not to approach. She was eventually located in that vehicle, alive but in need of medical assistance.

*******

Recent SAR Stories News posts:

New Search and Rescue Reading and Ongoing Searches

Search and Rescue Reading and Writing

The Mountain Locator Unit and Other Emergency Signaling Devices

Search and Rescue Community Outreach

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:57:15 PDT

This past week, members of the Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team visited the kids at Pinewood Camp in Munds Park for the second time, teaching them about SAR, the ten essentials, map and compass and a little alternative navigation, how to NOT get lost and what to do if they do get lost, and a bit of backcountry patient care and litter evacuation. A good time was had by team members and campers alike.

Fourteen kids participated in the program, ranging in age from seven to fourteen. During the initial overview of what Search and Rescue is all about, there were lots of questions -- bear encounters was a theme that kept coming up -- and requests for SAR stories that had taken place in the area.

After a few stories, we divided the kids into two groups and had some fun with navigation, gear, and hands-on, simulated patient evacuation with the backboard and Stokes litter.

Here, Pete does show and tell with the ten essentials from his backpack...

Meanwhile, Al and Dave teach some navigation to the other half of the group....

Next, we did a bit of pretend SAR. In this photo, the injured subject has been located and packaged in the litter...

The kids help Bob, Pete and I evacuate our patient (who was a very enthusiastic actress)....

After the groups swapped places and had a chance to do everything we'd planned, we did a little impromptu technical rescue demonstration (with an imaginary cliff)...

After we wrapped up and the campers left for lunch, the camp host said it had gone really well and the kids must have had a great time ... because they didn't even once ask about their usual snack break. We were then invited back for next summer.

One of the ongoing requirements for being a member team of the Mountain Rescue Association is doing community outreach and PSAR (Preventative Search and Rescue), so we'll be doing more presentations and interactive programs in the future, for both children and adults.

CoCo SAR News

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:47:01 PDT

Although our team actually passed the last of three required field tests (wilderness search, technical rock rescue, and snow and ice) this past March, press releases are now going out about Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team's MRA (Mountain Rescue Association) accreditation.

From a recent media release from the office of Sheriff Bill Pribil:

During the June meeting of the International Mountain Rescue Association (MRA), held in Eagle Colorado, the Coconino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Technical Rescue Team received full accreditation as a certified member of MRA. The MRA was established in 1959 at Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood, Oregon, making it the oldest Search and Rescue association in the United States.

The MRA is an organization of teams dedicated to saving lives through rescue and mountain safety education. The goal of MRA is to improve the quality, availability, and safety of mountain search and rescue. With over ninety government authorized units, the MRA has grown to become the critical mountain search and rescue resource in the United States.

The highly respected Mountain Rescue Association accredits teams involved in mountain rescue and has very high standards for performance in the areas of wilderness search, technical rock rescue, and snow and ice rescue. A team applying for full accreditation must pass an evaluation in each of those disciplines. Arizona lies within the Mountain Rescue Association’s Desert Mountain Region along with the state of Nevada. Within the Desert Mountain Region there are only three other fully accredited teams including the Southern Arizona Rescue Association, Central Arizona Mountain Rescue Association, and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Search and Rescue Unit.

On March 6th and 7th the Coconino County Sheriff’s Technical Rescue Team completed the Snow and Ice accreditation exam. The team was evaluated on winter rescue techniques. The evaluation included a field exercise in which an avalanche with three victims was simulated. The team was observed in the field by evaluators from the Southern Arizona Rescue Association, Central Arizona Mountain Rescue Association, and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The team's knowledge of over the snow travel, snow anchors, avalanche safety, winter survival techniques, winter rescue pre-plans, wilderness medical considerations and patient transport, and winter rescue equipment use was tested in the scenario.

With this last of three evaluations completed the Coconino County Sheriff’s Technical Rescue Team achieved accreditation in the three disciplines required for full accreditation. The Wilderness Search accreditation was passed in August 2010 and the Technical Rock Rescue accreditation was passed in October 2010. Coconino County Sheriff Bill Pribil said, “The Sheriff’s Office and the residents of Coconino County are truly blessed to have more than one hundred dedicated volunteers who spend countless hours training on an annual basis and who are willing to place themselves in harms way by venturing into hazardous terrain or inclement weather conditions to help there fellow man or woman.”

In other CoCo SAR news...

Yesterday, as I was listening to the scanner, I heard about an injured hiker on Mt. Elden. At first, SAR was put on standby by Flagstaff Fire Department, apparently the first on scene and taking over incident command. Once fire department personnel and Guardian medics reached the patient, who'd suffered a head wound with loss of consciousness on the Elden Lookout Trail, and packaged her in a litter, they did request SAR assistance. Team members responded directly to the trailhead and hiked up to rendezvous with the evacuation team already on their way down, providing extra hands to relieve those who needed a break on the difficult, rugged carry-out. (I was unable to respond due to other commitments.) You can read about the mission on Flagscanner.com: Mountain Rescue on Elden Trail

Also, on July 27th, SAR volunteers, myself included, will be giving a P-SAR (preventative Search and Rescue) presentation at Pinewood Camp. I believe we'll be working with kids ranging in age from 4 through 14 and will give them an introduction to SAR (what it's all about), teach them how to NOT get lost and what to do if they do get lost, basic map and compass use, and some hands-on show-and-tell about equipment (the ten essentials). We'll make the three-hour program as interactive as possible and are currently working on a plan for the afternoon.

Coconino County SAR members also gave a presentation on July 20th at a local church.

I'm told that interviews of prospective team members will begin shortly. Following interviews, new volunteers will take part in the Basic Search and Rescue Academy beginning this September, learning skills such as map and compass, GPS navigation, man-tracking, ATV operation, backcountry preparedness and safety, ICS (the Incident Command System) and more. Upon completion of the academy, new members will be put on the call-out roster and be able to respond to missions and ongoing training. If you're interested in becoming a search and rescue volunteer with Coconino County, you can fill out an application with the sheriff's department, but, at this point, you'll have to wait until next year's academy.

Way Over The Edge -- A Technical Recovery Mission

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:07:34 PDT

Horseshoe Bend (Colorado River) -- the site of our mission

Do you know how heavy 900 feet of 1/2-inch rope is? Neither do I, exactly. At least, not in actual pounds. But I've felt how heavy it is as I've tried to belay someone on the end of it. Actually, at the point where a stronger (male) teammate took over, when my arms were starting to shake a bit and the sweat was dripping off my chin -- it was about 100 degrees out there under the desert sun -- there was far less than 900 feet of rope already over the edge.

When my hands were free of the tandem prusik belay, I moved over to the main line and attached another rope to the 600-footer we were quickly using up (I tied the standard double fisherman's knot to join the two) and then maneuvered through the knot-passing when the time came.

And down, down, down our teammate went over the edge of the 1,100-foot cliff at Horseshoe Bend, retrieving evidence. That had been our assignment for the day -- to retrieve some items that had been spotted from the rim that were believed to belong to a missing person. But as that task was being carried out, things changed when our teammate detected something more than just evidence. It was intermittent and faint at first, so down, down, down we lowered him, communicating via radio, until he found the human remains.

As physically demanding, hot and uncomfortable as the task sometimes was for those of us up on top, we knew our teammate, who was on his own below the rim, had the most difficult job of all ... in more ways than one. Those of us tending to his lifelines from above frequently commented amongst ourselves about the long, grim task he was faced with.

Originally, the mission was expected to be fairly brief and wrapped up by noon. As it turned out, we didn't get back to Flagstaff until after 9pm. But we were glad to help bring closure to that search and the family.

Here are some photos from that day's long technical recovery mission near Page, Arizona....

The tech gear is loaded and ready.

An NPS ranger shows my teammate some of the visible evidence below.

We use the truck as an anchor for the main and belay lines.

Randy works the edge, keeping an eye on our teammate below and communicating with him.

The DPS helicopter drops a cargo net to our teammate for the recovery.

The helicopter moves closer to the cliff and our teammate's location.

Rather than raise Joel back up 900 feet, he's short-hauled to the rim.

In other Coconino County SAR news....

From July 5th -- Another find for the SAR dogs

I received this mission report from Cindy, the K9 handler:

"Last night at 2030 hours, the dogs were called out for a search on the San Francisco Peaks off the Weatherford Trail. We deployed from the center section of the trail, with the assignment of ascending to the summit starting at 2200 hours (appx 10,000'-11,000' elevation). After 3 miles and 1.5 hours of hiking, all 4 of my search dogs started to show alert signals telling me they were working scent. Each time they came to a specific point in the switchbacks we were hiking during our ascent, they would all begin to work up in elevation off trail then return to the trail. From this behavior, I was able to inform the strike team that I expected the subjects to be above us directly each time the dogs began to show their alert behaviors. Just another 2 switchbacks up, they all left the trail in a beeline straight up an extremely steep grade, cutting the next switchback entirely, directly to the subjects and gave simultaneous final responses. Both of the subjects were cold, shivering and wet from the light rain but, after some warming and a change of clothes, they both walked out with our strike team's assistance. They had no food, water, rain gear and the light they had was from their i-phone."

Two for the SAR Dogs - A Night Search on the San Francisco Peaks

noreply@blogger.com (Deb Lauman) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:34:29 PDT

There were two hikers, very dehydrated, lost with no lights and no other gear, and separated from each other. One of them had a cell phone and, luckily, a signal. He finally decided to call for help after hiking ahead of his friend, who could go no further.

They'd come up from the Verde Valley to hike to the summit of Humphreys (beginning at 3pm), but unbeknownst to them, they weren't actually on the Humphrey's Trail. Instead, they'd hiked down the Kachina Trail, away from Humphreys. At some point, they decided to go off-trail anyway and up, towards a different summit, but eventually turned back when their energy supplies and daylight started to fade fast.

At about 9:30pm, I heard SAR activity on the online scanner, so I knew the call-out was coming. At around 10pm it did, and I and five other volunteers, including one K9 handler with two search dogs, responded. In three pairs of two, myself with the handler and the two youngest of her four air-scenting Golden Retrievers, split up per our assignments and headed to our starting locations.

Cindy and I began hiking with the dogs from the trailhead at the Snowbowl ski area. Another pair of searchers drove down Schultz Pass Rd. and headed up the Weatherford Trail to intersect with the Kachina Trail from that end, and another pair drove down Friedline Prairie Road to hike up and intersect with the trail at another location. So we were searching from both ends and in the middle. I had a feeling, based on the information our Coordinator was given by the one hiker on the phone, that Cindy and I were closest to their locations.

And that turned out to be the case. About three-quarters of a mile in, the dogs alerted, and we soon had voice contact with the first subject. We found him sitting in the middle of the trail, in the dark. After thanking us for coming out, the first thing on his mind was water. He ended up drinking four liters before I eventually hiked him back to the trailhead. Other than being very dehydrated and hungry with a resulting headache, and a bit chilly (so I lent him one of my jackets), he was in good condition and denied needing medical attention. I stayed with him, while Cindy and the dogs continued up the trail to try to locate the second hiker.

The young man I was with told me that he'd practically carried his friend for a while, who was in worse shape. Finally, the other subject had said he had to stop and lay down, while the first guy kept going. At some point, he too had stopped, but the two remained in distant voice contact. That is, until the weaker of the two either fell asleep or passed out for a time. When he awoke, he later said, there was no answer from his friend. That's because his friend (the one I was with) had decided to try to keep going with the light from his phone. He'd made progress for about another forty-five minutes before he again had to stop. I believe it was then that he called 9-1-1.

DPS helicopters were not available to assist with the search, but a Guardian medical helicopter was able to come out. They didn't locate either hiker with their night vision equipment, but they did help in relaying communications for us once Cindy lost radio contact with me and with our Coordinator back at the Snowbowl trailhead.

Probably about a mile or so past where we'd found the first subject, the dogs again alerted, this time heading off trail, up-slope into a gulley. In the distance, Cindy heard the sound of the bells on the dogs' collars increase in speed, meaning they were running. Then she heard a bark, as one of her dogs will often do when alerting at night. Then the two returned to her, gave their other alerts--jumped on her--and took off back into the gulley as Cindy followed. Soon, as the dogs ran back and forth between the human they'd found and their handler, Cindy made voice contact with the second subject.

Thankfully, after he too rehydrated, the second hiker was able to walk out with Cindy and eventually met myself, his friend, and our Coordinator back at the trailhead. After all the obligatory information was gathered, some preparedness information given to the two subjects, and the second young man denied needing medical attention, we all went on our way. I was home at 3am.

Thank you to those super SAR dogs for making our job that night easier and faster. Had the second hiker been unresponsive, finding him without the dogs would have been a much longer, more difficult task.

Cindy and her search dogs on another mission.