A First Snow's Mission

It's still Sunday. I got home from the "Drunk on Devil's Head" mission at 4:30 this morning. At five-something this afternoon, we had another call-out. Between the two missions, Steve and I enjoyed a midday dog walk, during which the sun was shining and it warmed up enough that I shed my winter coat and tied it around my waist. Sometime during the afternoon, however, while we were busy painting our bathrooms (too yellow, unfortunately), the clouds moved in, the temp dropped, and white stuff began falling for the first time this season.

And now I'm in a warm SAR vehicle, while several of my teammates are hiking in the precipitation, alternating between flurries and whiteout conditions throughout the evening. Three other volunteers have driven around to the other end of this five-mile section of the 800-mile Arizona Trail, which stretches from the U.S.–Mexico border to the Utah state line. The two lost subjects, a man and woman, are stuck between Sandy's Canyon and Marshall Lake.

This is a basic unprepared hiker scenario: no maps, no lights (save for the flash of a camera, we're told), improper clothing. But they do have a cellphone that ain't dead yet. So, when they got lost and it got dark, the couple called for help.

As a result of cellphone communication with a deputy, we pretty much know where the stranded hikers are located. In fact, they can see our spotlight from here at Incident Command and even heard the deputy yell when he walked a short distance into the forest. So, as the crow flies, they aren't far from here, but there's a canyon between us and them, and they can't safely move in the dark. They're also now wet and cold.

Fifteen of us are out tonight, so more than enough SAR as long as things go smoothly and no one gets hurt or overly hypothermic. That's why I'm toasty and snug in the vehicle along with two of my teammates, while four others are getting some exercise. The leader of the ground team just called in some coordinates on the radio, and I could hear him huffing and puffing.

Time passes as my vehicle-mates and I chat about this and that. I keep one ear on radio comms and the other on the conversation in the truck. Oh good, they have voice contact. And soon, the ground team reaches the subjects. They're going to warm the two up and give them additional clothing before hiking them out.

Turns out, they're closer to the other SAR vehicle near Marshall Lake, so that's where they're headed. The rest of us drive around to rendezvous there.

We wait for a while until the ground team arrives with the rescued hikers, who appear to be in their fifties or so. They look happy and grateful. I can't hear what they're saying, but I see their smiles, their single Camelbak (water pack) and one water bottle, the camera around the man's neck, their cotton sweatshirts. While I don't personally condone hiking with cellphones to the exclusion of other essential gear, it's a good thing they were able to make that call tonight. Otherwise, severe hypothermia would most likely have caught up with them before anyone else would have.

Another happy ending.

Drunk on Devil's Head

So I think there's a bit of a pattern emerging here. I tell you how unusually quiet it's been for a while, then beep, beep, beep! Well, it's more of a song my pager emits than a series of monotonous beeps... but my point is, the thing seems to go off not long after I make that sort of comment. That's what happened the other night after I finished the "PLB's and Plenty of Z's" entry. I'd been reading in bed (Lost in the Amazon, it's called), and my book had just settled on my face when I was jolted awake by that familiar little song.

The page-out was initiated by our team captain, also a volunteer, since Sergeant D is out of town. This would be a search for a 43-year-old male who'd driven up to the top of Mt. Elden, drunk (or had gotten drunk up there, perhaps) earlier in the afternoon and hadn't been seen since. The reporting party said the man was not dressed for the cold. It was now a little after 10 p.m. on Saturday, below freezing in town at 7,000 feet and certainly colder at over 9,000.

I've never driven up Elden Lookout Rd. before, just hiked to the top via various trails. And I think I prefer the hiking. The trails are fairly strenuous but not nearly as rough on the body as bouncing up that dirt road, which is more a jumble of boulders than actual dirt. As a passenger that night, I was holding on to the "oh-sh*t" bar with both hands. Even my seat belt wasn't enough to keep my head from bumping the roof of the vehicle a time or two. And that drive took us a while. I'm thinking I may have been able to hike up there faster.

At any rate, there ended up being 13 of us searchers and rescuers on the mountain, including two deputies. When we convened at the tailgate of one of our pickups, a usual location for a team briefing, we learned some additional details:

Originally, there had been four in the party: the man who's now missing, his girlfriend, his brother, and a friend. They drove together to the top of the mountain, where they drank and they drank. Then they argued. Then, the brother and the friend took the vehicle and left the mountain. Bye-bye! Meanwhile, the now-missing man and his girlfriend continued to argue and walked southward, across an open area called Turkey Park, and apparently slid aways down the side of Devil's Head.

Just to give you an idea of the terrain, it's basically one long mountain with three peaks: Little Elden to the east, Elden in the middle, and Devil's Head to the west. Mt. Elden, the highest of the three, and Devil's Head are mostly separated by a grassy area called Turkey Park. You can drive right up to the top of Elden or, just below Turkey Park, take the other prong of the forked road and go to Devil's Head.

Anyhow, the reporting party this evening had been the missing man's girlfriend. The details were a bit fuzzy, but I think the man had slid further down Devil's Head than his girlfriend had (at one point someone said she'd actually pushed him)—or perhaps not but was maybe drunker than she was—and he couldn't get back up, either due to injury, inebriation, or maybe both. I'm not sure about any of that, but I do know the girlfriend climbed back up to Turkey Park, then walked all the way down Elden Lookout Rd., and somehow got a ride back to town where she called 911.

Okay, so before breaking into ground teams, we gathered around a clear footprint definitely made by the man we were looking for when he and his girlfriend had started walking southbound, first on the road and then overland toward the rim. He was wearing cowboy boots.

We then divided into several groups. One team of three had arrived a bit before the rest of us and were already headed to the area the girlfriend had described as where they'd gone off the side of Devil's Head. The rest of us were assigned to scouting the interior of Turkey Park—"purposeful wandering," as our leader for the evening described it—searching the perimeter of Turkey Park along the rim and searching the radio and lookout towers at the summit of Mt. Elden. We had no idea if the subject had perhaps left the area where his girlfriend had last seen him. We had no idea if he was badly hurt or if he was suffering from severe hypothermia. Or both. Alcohol only makes matters worse, of course.

I was on the three-person team doing the purposeful wandering around the interior of Turkey Park. We spread out about, oh, 30 feet or so and searched the tall grass and clumps of short trees, calling out the subject's name as we always do and looking closely in case he was there but unresponsive.

Eventually, Team 1, who'd gone to the general area last seen, found what looked to be a slide pattern. And, soon afterward, they had voice contact from below. I was actually a little surprised how accurate the girlfriend's description had been, given her altered state at the time of the slide.

Turns out, the man was not seriously hurt. Nor was he apparently stuck, at least not by then, because he walked up to meet the SAR team. After warming him up, the rest of the ascent was quite slow as apparently the man had to, uh, stop and dispose of some "cookies" shall we say (okay, barf) every so often. At the request of Team 1, other SAR members brought Gatorade down to the dehydrated guy. Eventually, he was handed over, wobbling, to a deputy, who drove him home.

I heard the subject was lucky he hadn't slid off the edge of Devil's Chair, which is a sheer cliff. I'm not familiar with that area on an up-close-and-personal basis, but if you see it from a distance, that's what the formation looks like: a big chair. All in all, things turned out much better than some of us had anticipated. A heavy-duty hangover is nothing compared to a broken neck.

Anyhow, that's how I spent Saturday night till 4:30 Sunday morning. No Zs that night.