A Tracking Challenge: Are We Making This Up?

"Are we making this up?" Robert asked, not for the first time that morning, talking to himself again as much as to me.

I stood there, staring at the faint depression in the pine needles.

"I don't think so," I replied without confidence. "I mean, we keep seeing things, and we were sure that was a partial print back there. So, I think we're on the track."

Whether it was the subject's track, though, was another question. We'd been told he was wearing "motorcycle boots," but we weren't sure of the tread and couldn't be sure the information was accurate, either. It would not have been the first time we'd been told a missing person was wearing one kind of shoe only to later find out they were wearing something very different.

We'd been trying to follow whomever's track that was for a couple of hours, starting not far from the campsite the missing man had been sharing with his son, until he walked away from there the day before and failed to return. It was now nearing noon, the worst time of day for tracking with the sun overhead.

We were sure someone had crawled under the barbed wire fence at the bottom of the hill—the grass was flattened, and there was a partial print nearby—and we were pretty sure that same someone had come up to the top of the hill where we were standing. But trying to track through pine needles is a real challenge. Robert and I kept having to kneel down and carefully move the needles out of the way to see if, in fact, that faint impression was indeed a footstep.

Then there were the little holes I saw here and there near the impressions. We'd been told the 77-year-old subject had been carrying a cut-off golf club as a hiking stick. The holes I saw now and then in the small patches of bare dirt seemed kind of small to be made by a cut-off golf club. But, then again, it had rained heavily during the night, and some dirt had probably washed back into the holes. Robert wasn't as convinced as I was that, yes indeed, those were cut-off golf club holes.

As the two of us made slow progress along the track, we heard a couple of our teammates on the radio, also following some tracks. Could we all be on the same track, I wondered, just made at different times and places? Based on their location, I thought it was possible.

As we were tracking, other teams were driving containment on Forest Service roads, a K9 team was in the field, and some folks from our mounted unit were searching on horseback. Other campers and a deputy in the area were also looking for the missing man. Given his age and the fact that he had not been carrying any supplies when he left the day before, I don't think I was the only one concerned about the subject's well-being.

BUT, as it turned out, he was in very good shape when he came walking along the meadow toward camp. Turns out, the man had indeed gotten lost and spent the rest of the day before and all that morning wandering around, trying to find his way back to his camp. He'd spent at least some of the night lying on the ground, trying to sleep. But aside from being a bit dehydrated, he was okay.

Before Robert and I headed back to base to debrief, we did have a chance to look at the subject's boots. Yep, those had been his tracks alright! And it seems that Robert and I were following the same tracks that our teammates had been following, only we were further along in the timeline. (That is, the tracks we were on were more recent.) From what the K9 handler said, the dogs had been showing signs of interest when they'd been getting close to where the man had apparently walked not long before they arrived. So, not only did this search have a positive outcome, but we SAR members also got some positive reinforcement that our skills had been working for us.

Mountain Rescue Association Tests: One Down, Two To Go

Our team has decided to apply for membership in the Mountain Rescue Association (MRA). The MRA is made up of mountain rescue teams from around the country and has strict requirements for membership. The teams make up the association rather than individual members.

To become accredited by MRA, a team has to pass three different field tests based on guidelines established by the association. The tests are conducted on appropriate terrain in the team's home area by at least three current MRA teams working together to evaluate the applicant group that's being tested. The tests include high-angle rescue (rock rescue), ice and snow, and wilderness search. Accredited teams must retest every five years to maintain their accreditation.

From the MRA website: 

"The Mountain Rescue Association ... was established in 1959 at Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood, Oregon, making us the oldest Search and Rescue association in the United States.With over 90 government authorized units in the US, Canada and other countries, the MRA has grown to become the critical mountain search and rescue resource in the United States.

"Because MRA teams are test-qualified by their peers, local, state, and federal agencies feel confident about working with them on search and rescue operations."

Our team was very happy to pass the first of three tests: Wilderness Search. It was run like any real search operation that's gone beyond the hasty search phase. In this case, the hasty phase was verbalized by our coordinator as all participants and evaluators gathered around the command trailer for the briefing. As usual, searchers were given packets with information about the missing subjects, maps of the area, the weather forecast, and safety and communications information. When all field teams had their assignments, we headed out to do what we always do... except, this time, we were being watched and evaluated and had to answer evaluators' questions as we worked.

All in all, the mission went really well. Teams located most of the clues that had been placed in the rather large search area, and we located both subjects, one of whom required medical evaluation and care and a litter evacuation to an imaginary waiting ambulance. The other subject, who was mobile, was found by one of the containment teams driving Forest Service roads.

At the end of the mission later that afternoon, evaluators met privately to discuss the operation and how we did, then came over to our waiting group to give us feedback and announce that we'd passed. Yay!

And now for test number two, rock rescue, in October. So, that means extra practice for many of us on the technical rescue team. Here's Patrick practicing a mid-face litter scoop in the SAR building (without the cliff face, that is):

The rescuer gets the injured victim into the "tuxedo" to protect his spine.

The rescuer maneuvers the patient into the litter.

Tah-dah! Ready for raise.

 In other Coconino County SAR news, our team was involved in a body recovery below Midgley Bridge in Sedona. See: Midgley Bridge Suicide Briefly Closes 89A.

The Stinkiest SAR Mission I've Been On

All the recorded call-out message said was "evidence search" with no further details. Our team was being requested by local law enforcement for Monday morning. So, I checked my calendar and, being free that day, called in and left my usual "This is Deb, unit number 6-2-0, I'll be responding" message. I got a phone call from the lieutenant later that evening.

Oh. The evidence search would be at the dump, he said. Hm. Okay, well... why not? Might as well go and see what such a search is like. And it was for a good cause, so...

So, on Monday morning, I showed up at the SAR building with plenty of motivation. Yep, I was gonna find some evidence at the landfill! Let's go, team!

We met up with some volunteers from C.E.R.T. (Community Emergency Response Team) who'd be accompanying us in this glamorous task and headed to the site, where we were were briefed on dump search safety by the landfill manager and then introduced to the friendly and very appreciative law enforcement contingent. As we sat around in the break room at the main office, I was thinking, hey, this wouldn't be bad at all. Nice people to search with, and I didn't smell a thing!

We all drove to the top of the hill where we'd be searching. With the help of the landfill folks, detectives had determined where exactly the bag of trash that held the coveted item had been deposited a week earlier. That is, where in a 100x50-foot and 12-foot deep area.  Folks, that's over 60,000 cubic feet of trash. And it had been covered with dirt and heavily rained on since then. And what we were looking for was quite small. (Sorry, can't tell ya anything about the item or the case because it's ongoing.)

With the windows of the truck rolled up and the air conditioning on, everything seemed fine. And we'd be wearing Tyvek suits and booties, gloves, and face masks. So, how bad could it be?

And then I opened the door.

Beverly models the fashion of the day.

Ugh!! I frantically located a face mask, which cut the "ugh!!" factor down by no more than about 5%.

Al gets all suited up.

But, okay, I was there to do a job, and, by George, I was gonna do the best I could! So, I took my mini-garden rake, the kind that's about 10 inches long, and started in on the big batch of trash the backhoe had scooped up and spread out—the first of many, many, many scoops.

The backhoe scoops and the bucket loader pushes what we'd searched out of the way.

Meanwhile, I tried not to pay attention to the stakes that marked the entire area to be searched. Oh... my... god, that was a lot of garbage. But I raked and raked, my tool hardly making a dent in the woven mass of trash. So, I used my gloved hands too as I breathed through my mouth inside my face mask and sweated profusely in my stylish Tyvek suit. That stuff does not breathe.

These booties didn't hold up for long.

As we searched, we kept altering our methods, trying to be as efficient as possible. It was a little like a stinky logic problem. One of the officers was sent out to buy different tools—longer rakes and shovels—so we didn't have to bend over so much. Eventually, a larger piece of equipment showed up, rented from someplace in Phoenix, so the scoops got much bigger, too. And faster. We raked and raked our butts off, I tell you.

But after hours of raking, shoveling, picking, and being on the verge of puking, we'd had no luck and had searched just a small portion of the designated area. We peeled off our Tyvek and headed out. Despite the protective suits, the stink had seeped through and permeated our clothing, our hair, our boots, and our vehicles, so much so that we could hardly stand ourselves (or each other) on the ride back.

When I got in my own car at the SAR building, I rolled down all the windows and made sure my seat was well covered. When I got home, everything I was wearing came off in the garage. The boots... well, those are still airing out outside almost a week later. The clothes were immediately washed (twice), and I took one of the longest showers of my life.

Needless to say, I declined a second day of evidence searching at the dump. I'm happy to report, however, that the next day's search was successful. Coveted item found!

Update: The Search for Little Sylar is Over

Just a brief post to share this news with you regarding my earlier entry about two-year-old Sylar Newton, who went missing from the Beaver Creek Campground on July 24th. His skeletal remains were located today.

Read the news on the Arizona Daily Sun site.

I just read in another news story that the remains were found in a wash at about 1 p.m. this afternoon. 

A Search with a Tragic Ending

On Monday evening, August 2, Emmett Trapp's mom awoke from a nap and discovered her two-year-old son, one of her four children, was missing from their home in Dewey, Arizona. After family and neighbors searched the area without luck, they called 9-1-1.

Yavapai County Sheriff's deputies arrived within 10 minutes, and the search quickly expanded to include law enforcement personnel, search and rescue teams from multiple counties, and other citizen volunteers. As of dawn on Wednesday morning, Emmett still had not been found.

Searchers from multiple agencies and counties at base, getting ready to deploy

Our SAR team from Coconino County was called to assist beginning on Wednesday. Two of my teammates and I and three golden retriever area search dogs arrived at Incident Command before 6 a.m. More of our teammates would join the search later that morning, but the three of us wanted to get started with the dogs as early as possible since they work better in the cooler air. When they get too hot, the dogs breathe more through their mouths so their noses can't work as effectively.

Cindy gets her boys ready to go

After checking in at base, we received our assignment and went directly to our search segment. Cindy, our SAR dog handler, determined the direction of the barely detectable breeze with her little bottle of powder, positioned us accordingly for the dogs, then worked with her canine partners while also searching the thick brush herself. Her cross-trained dogs would alert her if they detected human scent, living or not.

The dogs are already working as we head to our assigned segment.

My other partner and I flanked Cindy on either side and slightly behind her, taking care of the navigation and doing our parts in the grid search. We pushed through the tangled mass of cat claw, which grabbed at our clothing and skin, trying our best to stay in formation despite the terrain. A small child could easily crawl under the bushes and be very hard to see.

After we'd covered more than half of our assigned area, another field team of 14 searcher moved into that same segment behind us, walking a grid perpendicular to ours.

View of base from our first assigned search segment on the hill

The media hang out on the periphery of the search area

 

 

 

Eventually, Incident Command gave the three of us a new assignment—to work together as a K-9 team and two human man-trackers—when another field team located what looked like part of a small footprint. So we relocated to the site of that partial print and began to work the track.

We were reassigned again when another field team located fresher footprints, also small and clearly barefoot as Emmett had been reported to be and even further from the Trapps' home than we were. So, we got in our truck and took off to jump ahead of those tracks, which were headed in the direction of the highway. Our assignment was to determine if the tracks crossed beneath the highway, through the culverts. If not, we were told to work in the opposite direction of the team following the track, so we'd be going toward them. Emmett would hopefully be somewhere in the middle.

But the  search came to an end just as we arrived at our new area. Sure enough, Emmett had been between us and the team on the track, who located him. Sadly, little Emmett had not survived.

Back Home And Back To SAR

I hadn't planned to respond to any SAR calls for at least a week after coming home from Nepal. I figured I'd take a little break after being on the other side of the planet for a few months, spend some time catching up on my to-do list, reorganize my SAR pack, and generally just chill out.

But I couldn't resist. A couple of days after I got back, when there was a second call-out within a half hour for more volunteers to assist Yavapai County Search and Rescue with a search for a missing two-year-old, I dialed the SAR line after listening to the message and left one of my own. "This is Deb, number 6-2-0. I'm responding."

The call was for the following morning, to meet at the SAR building at 6 a.m. Soon after getting there, I was headed south to Beaver Creek Campground near Sedona with a teammate from general SAR along with a member of the mounted unit and his horse. Coconino County SAR had been assisting with this search for the previous two days, also.

When we got to the staging area and signed in, the three of us were given our assignment: a rather large, rugged area, thick with cat claw and cactus. One boundary of our search area was the creek that runs alongside the campground from which little Sylar Newton had gone missing in the middle of the night a few days earlier.

We searched as thoroughly as we could all day, doing our best to stay hydrated and focused as we dripped with sweat in the intense heat and humidity. We called in anything we found that we thought had any possibility of being important to the mission, giving a description and coordinates to Incident Command. A deputy came out to inspect and collect some of the items we located.

At the end of day four of the search, Syler was still missing. And he's still missing today, the end of day seven.

While this search was going on, members of our team were also helping in neighborhoods east of Flagstaff impacted by flash flooding. These floods are the result of charred soil on the peaks from the huge Schultz wildfire earlier this summer, unable to absorb all of the monsoon rain. That fire was started by an abandoned campfire and burned more than 15,000 acres. The resulting floods have caused extensive property damage to area residents and one death, when a 12-year-old girl was swept away.

On Thursday and Friday, I responded to more calls for SAR assistance in the flood areas, but my contribution (going door-to-door passing out flood advisory information) was minimal compared to the days of neighbors helping neighbors and other Flagstaff residents volunteering to fill and stack sandbags, shovel mud, and anything else they can do help those in need, including some whose homes appear to be a complete loss.

Related article: Rain Outlook Bad For Schultz Flood Area

Nepal Update: Back to Kathmandu

It was time to return to Kathmandu before heading back to the US and my home in Flagstaff. I was very ready to go.

But the planes from Pokhara to Kathmandu weren't flying, grounded by heavy rain and low cloud cover, making it dangerous to fly over the mountains. So onto plan B; I hired a driver. I could have taken a tourist bus for less money, but I opted for the more comfortable, faster car.

But it makes no difference what kind of vehicle you're in when the one narrow road to Kathmandu is blocked by a landslide. Things had been going along smoothly and surprisingly quick until everything suddenly came to a stop.

My driver, who spoke little English, and I and hundreds—maybe thousands—of our closest friends sat, stood, paced, and sweated on the road for hours. (Stupid me, Miss Preparedness, neglected to bring any food, but thankfully I'd remembered bottled water.) We finally moved. A few feet. And then we sat, stood, paced, and sweated for more long hours. At one point, mud started to slide not far behind where our car was stuck in the long line of vehicles, but luckily that slide didn't turn into anything major.

I started to wonder if we might spend the night, even days, stranded on that road. But just when I thought I might lose my marbles in the midst of all those laid-back Nepalis who didn't seem to care about our predicament, things began to move. We crept along for a couple of hours until we passed the major slide, the road still covered with a foot of mud, and then picked up speed, passing trucks and buses on sharp curves just in the nick of time, time and time again.

About 12 hours after I'd left Pokhara, I made it back to Kathmandu in one piece and famished. After dumping my stuff at the hotel at Boudha Stupa, I made a beeline for Saturday's Cafe. It felt good to be on my own—anonymous—for a change. I was ready for some quiet time in the crazy city, just me, myself, and I, and a lot of people-watching as I began to process all that happened in the past two and a half months.

Nepal is a fascinating place filled with fascinating people and cultures, and I've had an amazing experience, but I'm more than ready to be home with friends and my own search and rescue teammates. It will take a while to organize all of my notes, recorded interviews, thoughts, and experiences and begin to write what turned out to be much more of story than I'd anticipated when I first left on this trip.

Nepal: Recent Photos

Corn harvesting time

Bringing home the evening meal

Paddy planting

Waiting for customers at Lake Side

Gathering water cress

Will and I go for a paddle

Just me

Nepal Update: The Water Buffalo Days of Summer

Namaste!

And aside from "meeto," which means "tasty," and "ali, ali," meaning "a little bit" (as in, food, because I don't want to be given more than I can eat), that's still the only Nepali I know. I ask how to say something, repeat it (badly) several times to the delight of those listening, and then promptly forget what I've learned. I guess I just don't have a very good ear for language.

Anyhow, on my morning run today, I was surprised to round the bend on my usual route and find that a stone building that had been intact, roughly speaking, just yesterday had partially collapsed. Here's a photo of what it looked like before:

Obviously, it hadn't been in the best condition and appears to have been previously repaired. I'm wondering, then, if a rather far-off, magnitude 5.1 earthquake on the Nepal-India border yesterday was enough to bring the weakest part of this building down.

And here's another recent photo. I took this from the taxi as I was leaving Lakeside after an afternoon spent wandering amongst the shops and along the shore of the lake and treating myself to lunch at the garden restaurant, Boomerang.

It took a few minutes to pass these... um, ladies, I believe, because every time the taxi driver shifted direction, so did they. Even he, the same driver who had been so stoic on the earlier ride out, couldn't help but crack a smile. He tried his rather obnoxious horn several times, but the girls didn't seem to bat an eyelash or flick a tail.

Aside from a random visit to town, these hot, humid days have taken on somewhat of a routine here on the edge of Pokhara. I usually start with my very early morning run (and the people along the way seem to have gotten used to seeing me out there, doing such an odd thing in my short American shorts and now say "Hello!" and "Namaste!" instead of "Whatchoo doing? Why you running? Where you going?"). Then I come back to the house and let the sweat dry while waiting for my turn in the bathroom for a cool to cold shower (which I've somewhat gotten used to). Then it's brunch a la Jit or Ingo and usually with Ingo. Then on to some reading and an attempt to catch up on email and news from around the world. In the afternoon, I often walk down a new or familiar. unpaved or paved but deeply rutted street, do some work on the book project, then more reading, and eventually dinner, which often happens after 8 p.m.

And I finally received an email from Will, my photographer friend from Flagstaff. I'd been wondering whether he was actually coming to Nepal—I'd heard very little from him since I got here. He now tells me his plane leaves the US on June 28th. So, I guess I'll be seeing him here in Pokhara sometime around July 1st. Or I would assume so. He didn't give me any further information beyond the date of his departure. But it'll be fun to have a friend from home to do some further exploring with and possibly return to Shyuali Bazaar.

Well, that really is the extent of my news from Nepal. For now. I'll leave you with another photo,  taken a few days ago on a rare summer morning when the Himalaya decided to come out of hiding. This view lasted for maybe half an hour before the mountains once again did their disappearing act:

Nepal Update

Today, a cold shower felt really good. By the time I got back from my three-hour walk, I was drenched. Sweat, not rain. But the monsoon has got to be close because I don't think the air has been quite this thick since I arrived. I've learned how to give in to the heat and humidity, though, and not try to fight it—to just let the sweat drip and ignore it—which has made it easier to tolerate.

What a great walk, though! So peaceful. I headed out the way I've been running, but I saw so much more at a slower, easier pace. All kinds of flowers. People working in their rice paddies. A bunch of chicks running down the river rock road after their mother. A baby sitting alone on a porch, petting a little goat, and an old, wrinkly man snoozing under a banana tree. The road led further away from town, but there were farmhouses most of the way. I took a load of photos. Here's just a handful:

Time, I walked with an umbrella because, cloudy or not, the sun is intense. I got fewer stares than I usually do since I looked a little more normal, I guess, carrying sun protection like the locals. But people still clearly thought it odd that I was out walking with no particular destination or purpose in the hottest part of the day. I heard, "Whatchoo doing? Where you going?" from several people sitting in the shade. "Oh, just walking" was apparently pretty funny.

So, another thing I saw on my walk today—something I see every day here, actually, since it's across from the house—is a government school. Children wear uniforms at all schools, public and private. They're made to line up and chant and perform sort of a militaristic ritual in the schoolyard every morning. High caste don't mix with low caste, and most low caste children never go to school anyway. Physical punishment in the schools, while now officially against the law on paper, is still common, I'm told, and the law is usually unenforced. I read that well over half the children in Nepal are illiterate and never get an education.

                           

I've written a little about the school Ingo founded at Shyauli Bazaar, at the rescue squad's base in the jungle. Initially, it was intended for children of the rescue workers. But then it expanded when children from area villages were brought in as well, including a higher caste (Brahmin) boy whose father had traded his son in exchange for fulfillment of a debt, and the boy worked as a slave. (I met him in Kathmandu. He's about 25 now and attends the university.) All of the children from the Riverside School have gone on to higher education, becoming doctors and nurses, teachers, accountants, artists, etc.—children who otherwise would not have had an education.

At the Riverside School, no physical punishment was allowed, and the policy was strictly enforced. The children didn't wear uniforms. There was no caste system, so the "untouchables" sat beside, played with, and roomed with the higher caste children. They were not made to stand in lines and chant. They played games and sports. Ingo says children learn better and faster when they're happy.

There aren't any students in Shyauli Bazaar now because of the war. The war is over, but it's had a lasting impact. Ingo had to hide the older students during the war because the Maoists would force them to join their army or kill them if they refused. They did kill a 14-year-old boy, the son of a man I met when we visited the compound.

I hate to end on a down note, so here's a little something to hopefully make you smile. This is a video just posted on the HRDSN YouTube channel, showing some of their SAR dogs practicing their skills....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixipMfB-7c

From the HRDSN YouTube page:

"These Nepalese SAR dogs and their junior handlers need sponsors for at least 1 more year of specialized training to be fully fit for all sorts of search & rescue missions. Nepal is a disaster prone country. Annually out here occur many large landslides and floods during the long rain season and thousands of remote villagers need our help.

"Nepal is also a hot spot for earthquakes and a large earthquake is already long overdue here if one studies the records of the country's earthquake history that give the clear indication that a huge one is happening at intervals of 60 to 70 years. This is due to the sub-continental Indian plate shift, gradually moving northward in the direction of the Tibetan plateau, raising the Himalayas upward and altering the landscape of Nepal in a dramatic way once in a lifetime of every Nepalese.

"What one sees in this video clip is practicing for earthquake victim search, negotiating difficult terrain and moving rubble. Its' just the beginning. More training has to be made at all sorts of locations--collapsed buildings, large landslides, etc.

"Those who want to sponsor a particular dog and its handler in this video clip please feel free to contact me for details. Youth Clubs, dog food and pet-store companies, private individuals, school classes--everyone is welcome to adopt a dog and its handler for a long-lasting relationship and many exciting pen pal exchanges, training reports etc. Transparent audit of use of the given donations will be provided regularly by us."

Kind regards,
Jit Bahadur Masrangi Magar
jitmagar34@yahoo.com

Watching Coconino County SAR From Nepal

Note: When I first wrote this post, there was a video available That video is no longer online, but this is what I wrote:

Here's a video from a recent SAR call in Flagstaff, in which Coconino County Sheriff's Search & Rescue, along with Flagstaff Fire and Guardian medics, carry out an injured hiker on Fatman's Loop.

Every time there's a call-out, I get an email, so I know what kinds of missions are happening. And later, some of my teammates fill me in on the details. They know how nosy... uh, how curious I am, even from 8,000 miles away. I also get emails about all the good trainings going on for general SAR, like advanced man-tracking and the three-day navigation boot camp, and for the technical rescue team, including mid-face patient care and mid-face litter scoops and a simulation drill of a search for a downed aircraft with injuries and evacuation. Fun stuff!

*sigh* I miss the team.