Some Climbing Fun for the Tech Team

On the second Saturday of each month, our technical rescue team gets together for a regularly scheduled, all-day training. This is in addition to other random trainings throughout the year, such as ski lift evac training at Arizona Snowbowl, avalanche courses given by the Kachina Peaks Avalanche Center, and foul weather navigation. 

For November's regular training, one of our team leaders decided that we should celebrate our recent success in the Mountain Rescue Association rock rescue test by doing some climbing instead of training per se. So, we headed out to the Mt. Elden climbing area for some fun. It was my first climbing experience.

For a new climber like me, those are some pretty big walls...

Being a Saturday with mild weather, we had plenty of company on the cliffs, including a class from Northern Arizona University...

Okay, here are a couple shots of me. How's my form? (Don't answer that.) I even once used my face, but, hey, I didn't fall onto the rope until I was ready to come down. Not that I'm going to tell how far up I got. 😉

Would you believe me if I said I was 100 feet off the ground here?

A Technical Rescue in Waterholes Canyon

Twelve of us, including nine technical rescue team members, a lieutenant, and two deputies, stood near the rim of Waterholes Canyon, watching the helicopter fly low over the landscape as the pilot assessed the situation. Would a short haul of the two stranded young men in the canyon be possible? And, if so, was a short haul the best option?

That had yet to be determined by the time our team had driven two hours north from Flagstaff and then overland across the desert about a mile from the highway. We had a lot of heavy gear to haul, especially all the rope, so we were glad to be able to use vehicles and the Polaris Ranger UTV to get it closer to the rescue site.

Eventually, the helicopter landed and the pilot and medic came over to talk to the team. A short haul was not advisable, the pilot said, and the team had already come to the conclusion that a ground technical rescue would be the safest option. The subjects were in good condition without any injuries or medical complaints, so the'd be able to assist in their own rescue.

The call had come at around 11 p.m. the night before. Tech team members were asked to report to the SAR building by 4:45 in the morning. Voice contact had been made between the two stranded men and a deputy on the rim several hundred feet above, and the two said they were unhurt and okay to spend the night down there. They had enough gear, food, and water to wait for a daylight rescue, which would be safer for all involved.

It was a calm, beautiful day on the Colorado Plateau near Page, Arizona, but the forecast was calling for very high winds, which had already picked up to the south. High winds would make the rescue more difficult, in part because it would hamper voice communication between rescuers and subjects since the subjects didn't have radios. So, once the short haul was ruled out, there was no time to waste getting to the two men and assisting them back to the rim. While no one rushed unnecessarily, the team got right to work.

This was our team's first technical rescue since passing the MRA (Mountain Rescue Association) rock rescue portion of the three-part test, which took place on October 9th. (The third will be the Snow & Ice test on the San Francisco Peaks here in Flagstaff in early March.) To me, my teammates now seemed much more relaxed than before the test. Maybe it was my imagination, but it felt like there was more camaraderie than there had been prior to our day-long evaluation during the challenging simulated rescue. (Edited to add: Just to clarify, this was not Coconino County SAR's first technical rescue by any means. Coco SAR has been doing tech rescue for a long time. MRA certification is not something that's mandatory.)

Basically the Waterholes Canyon rescue went like this:

Our team leader that day was able to make voice contact with the men in the canyon and, along with other rescuers, decided on a good route to descend. They'd bring the subjects back up those several hundred feet using fixed lines, one below the other on two different anchors. This plan meant the two men down in the canyon would need to do one more 50-foot rappel to rendezvous with the hasty team, which they were equipped and very able to do, they said.

The subjects were experienced canyoneers. However, they'd gotten what they said was some bad information and had been unable to locate a particular "escape route" out of the canyon partway between the starting point at the bridge on Highway 89 and the Colorado River. They had not intended to travel the whole canyon, which would require some very long rappels further down, and they didn't have enough rope to continue to the river, where they could have been picked up by boat. Unable to safely go up or keep going down, they'd stayed put until the girlfriend of one of the men reported them overdue and the responding deputy finally made voice contact that night.  

In the end, after a two-hour operation from the time the rescuers began their descent until the three of them arrived back at the rim with the two subjects, everything went smoothly. We were packed up and on the road home by the time the strong winds reached Waterholes Canyon.

Here are some photos from the mission:

We were able to use the Polaris to haul some of the gear close to the site.

Ranger flies over the canyon, where they spot the subjects and assess the situation.

Ranger comes in for a landing near the rim of the canyon.

The helicopter pilots talks to our team about the possibility of a short haul rescue.

After a short haul is ruled out, our hasty team heads to the rim to descend to the subjects.

Phillip ties in (left) and goes to the edge to keep an eye on the rescuers and subjects below.

You can see the top of the upper fixed line on the boulder to the right.

The first subject arrives at the rim with a rescuer behind him.

Check out these photos from down in the Canyon:

Lower Waterholes Canyon

Waterholes Canyon

Back-to-Back SAR with an Hour Off for Dinner

I had just finished my last bite of dinner when the phone rang: SAR. I'd heard some radio traffic about missing base jumpers earlier in the day while on another mission, but hours had passed with no call-out. I figured the situation had been resolved. I guess not.

The earlier mission had been a rather sedentary one, with a long drive to and from Forest Lakes, the same rural development where we'd searched for Mark Irby for 10 days. This time, our coordinator had requested five volunteers to go down there to assist the dive team from Page, Arizona—the Coconino County Sheriff's Office Underwater Search and Recovery Team from the Page Substation, to be specific—who would be searching a pond for a the body of a man who'd been missing since this past summer. (That initial search had taken place while I was in Nepal.)

I had no idea how we were supposed to help a dive team. We weren't told to wear swimsuits (lucky for me) or bring snorkels, only to check in with the deputy on scene when we arrived.

So, here's what we were instructed to do: Each of us SAR folks would stand on shore, holding a rope. At the other end of a rope would be a diver, holding the rope in his hand, keeping it taut. The ropes would have two purposes:

1. As means of communication between the diver and his partner on shore — One tug meant something, two tugs something else, three yet another message, etc. (things like, stop, go, surface, found something, and so forth). The recipient of the message on the other end of the rope was supposed to repeat the tugs, indicating they'd understood. And the tugs needed to be exaggerated, so the diver and especially the person on shore could differentiate actual communication tugs from involuntary pulls on the rope, like as the diver swam.

2. As a means of keeping the diver on his grid — Each diver would search an area of the pond in a back-and-forth grid pattern. The diver would swim to the outer edge of their area, and then that diver and their partner—the person on shore—would take up any slack in the rope. The rope would be kept taut as the diver went under and searched. After the first pass, the diver would turn around, the person on shore would take in the rope about three feet (that distance determined by the amount of visibility underwater, which was low in this case), and then the diver would swim back the other way, thereby making the second sweep three feet away and parallel to the first one. Then the person on shore would take up another three feet of rope for the diver's next pass and so forth.

Make any sense?

So that's what my teammates and I did for several hours—hold rope, take in rope, and tug if necessary—while the dive team swam back and forth. I sat on shore, then I stood, and I sat and stood some more, trying to stay focused on my job while the warm sun made me sleepy. Our one teammate without a rope to manage periodically delivered drinks and snacks to the rest of us stationed around the pond.

In the end, the divers did a thorough search but found nothing... except some unusually huge crawdads.

So homeward bound we'd headed, listening to the radio traffic along the way. That's when we'd heard about those missing base jumpers.

"What's a base jumper?" I'd asked my friends.

I was told that a base jumper is someone who puts on a parachute and jumps off a cliff.  Oh. Is that, like, fun? Guess it is for some folks, but apparently this particular foursome, who'd jumped into the Little Colorado River Gorge, hadn't planned well for getting out of the canyon once they'd jumped in. Oops.

Base jumpers (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

But there had been no call-out for SAR by the time we returned to the building. So, I headed home, grabbed some microwavable dinner, and had been there for about an hour when the call finally came.

And back to the SAR building I went. I figured this mission might be a bit more on the active side than the first—possibly a tech rescue—and I had plenty of energy in reserve.

As it turned out, the reason for the delay before the call-out was the need for more investigation by the Sheriff's Department to determine where exactly we needed to look. They had received information using base jumper nomenclature, which was not marked on any map. Based on past experience, several areas were checked and the subjects' vehicle eventually located. And then SAR was called.

Apparently, the four young men, ranging in age from 18 to 30, were now a day overdue, the reporting party had said. As I understand it, this was supposed to be a day trip: jump, open parachutes, land, hike out. But I guess the route out, which they'd heard about from someone somewhere, hadn't been so obvious.

As we made the rather long drive from Flagstaff to Cameron and then onto Navajo Reservation land, the four subjects were spotted by the helicopter, climbing out of the canyon... as in, hand-over-hand climbing. They had left their gear, including parachutes and camera equipment, at the bottom. They were also very dehydrated. As SAR was en route, still thinking we'd need to go down to help them out, the helicopter dropped (or lowered... not sure) water to the men.

As we bumped our way along the unpaved roads, the Navajo officer on scene reported that one of the men had made it to the rim. Then another and another and, finally, the fourth. They were all basically okay and apparently wanting to know how they were going to get their gear out of the bottom of the canyon.

From what I heard, what they did get were citations for being on the rez without permits and for "littering" by leaving gear down there.

After waiting to meet up with the four shirtless and shoeless jumpers so our coordinator could take a report, SAR headed for home. I got in sometime around midnight, making it a 19-hour day of SAR with a lotta sittin'.

The Little Colorado River meets up with the Colorado River in Grand Canyon