Checking the SAR Line

I thought I'd do a test to see if the trend will continue. Ready? Drum roll, please...

Gee, it's been REALLY QUIET LATELY!

Ten... nine... eight...

I called the SAR phone number today, to be sure the most recent message about a call-out was the last one I heard when my pager went off at 2:30 a.m. on November 24. That mission was 10-22'd (cancelled) pretty quickly as I was en route to The 105 building. So I called to be sure my pager was working. Yep, I haven't missed anything. Still the same message from the 24th, about a lady missing near Williams.

Seven... six... five...

Before that was the plane crash in Sedona. So it's been over two weeks since we've had a call-out. Wow, I'm getting used to sleeping through the night.

Four...

Read some good search and rescue books lately, during all these quiet evenings at home (with my pager next to me on the nightstand, of course). The first was Lost In the Yellowstone: Truman Everts's Thirty Seven Days of Peril written by Truman Everts himself, who was—you guessed it—lost in Yellowstone (before it was a National Park). That was back in the late 1800s and apparently is still the longest anyone has gone missing in that area and been found alive... though not far from death in Evert's case. A thin book and a good read but a little challenging with all of the side notes, some of which are about the concurrent movements by the rest of Evert's party and others who went looking for him.

Three...

Then I read Coming Home from Devil Mountain by Eleanor Dart O'Bryon, who became separated from her fiance while climbing Picacho del Diablo in Baja, Mexico, and both were stranded without food for nearly three weeks. Another quick read, composed mostly of interlocking journals kept by Eleanor while alone on the mountain, starving, and her father, who mounted a search effort with the Sierra Madre SAR team.

TWO...

And my definite favorite of the three is Coming Back Alive: The True Story of the Most Harrowing Search and Rescue Mission Ever Attempted on Alaska's High Seas by Spike Walker. For me, it was one of those "I don't care how tired I'll be at work tomorrow, I've gotta keep reading" books. Totally distant from any experience I'll ever have, I found it fascinating.

One and a HALF...

So, no Coconino County SAR news (that I know of) to report for now. There's probably been plenty going on that just hasn't required volunteers or at least nothing that necessitated paging the whole team. Sometimes, certain team members with a lot of experience or specific skills are called directly to help with specialized missions. We usually hear about that stuff at our monthly general meetings.

One and a QUARTER...

But I'll be back as soon as I have something SAR to share.

ONE!

Hm.

Recent SAR Happenings

No call-outs since the Sedona plane crash, but some other news and events to share...

We had an Alternative Navigation class on Saturday, November 15. By "alternative navigation," I'm referring to navigation without the use of gadgets such as a compass, GPS, or altimeter. Skills we learned and practiced in the field included navigating by the sun, celestial navigation, and using terrain to our advantage with techniques like aiming off, safety baselines, funneling, catch features, pacing, and more. Let me just say, this stuff takes practice!

I took this course, taught by one of our team's navigation experts, last year and intend to take it every time it's offered. These are skills that definitely require time and repetition to master and continued use to keep sharp. I find celestial navigation fascinating, and I was so impressed by our instructor's knowledge. And a little jealous, too.

Anyhow, I wrote an article about Alternative Navigation on my SARstories blog. Click here if you're interested in taking a look.

A writer from the Arizona Daily Sun took the classroom portion of the Alt. Nav. training and, that afternoon, a photographer accompanied us for a short time in the field, so a newspaper article is in the works. I'll let you know when it appears.

In other news, several specially selected team members went out to the Little Colorado River in the area of Hopi Salt Canyon to collect some evidence located by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The evidence was potentially connected to the case of Reinhard Kirchner, a German national who went missing in early spring 2007. In April of last year, after 61 year-old Kirchner failed to meet his fiancee in Las Vegas as planned, his abandoned vehicle was found near the north rim of the Little Colorado River gorge. A large ground and air search involving multiple agencies and counties followed, but after six days of searching about 56 square miles of rugged terrain, the SAR mission was called off.

At our general meeting last night, Sergeant D said the items Fish & Game found could just be a river runner's stash. Still, investigation continues, including the potential for DNA testing on the items.

Also at last night's meeting, we were told that the pilot from the downed Piper near Sedona, 51-year-old Rockney Mark Herring, is still alive and has been stabilized. Apparently, he's also been awake. Boy, is that great news!

And with that, I'm off to the uniform shop to pick up my new, very yellow winter coat (it's one of our team colors, you see) that now has search and rescue patches on it. That way, people will know why I'm wearing a bright yellow winter coat and won't just assume I'm either color blind or unfashionable.