CoCo SAR News

Although our team actually passed the last of the three required field tests—wilderness search, technical rock rescue, and snow and ice—this past March, press releases are just now going out about Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team's 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, who were the first on scene and taking over incident command.

Once Flag Fire 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 rugged carry-out. (I was unable to respond due to other commitments.)

Also, on July 27th, SAR volunteers, myself included, will be giving a P-SAR (preventative search and rescue) presentation at Pinewood Camp. We'll be working with kids ranging in age from 4 to 14 and will give them an introduction to SAR (what it's all about), teach them how to NOT get lost, 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 for 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.

Way Over The Edge -- A Technical Recovery Mission

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

Do you know how heavy 900 feet of half-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 teammate took over, when my arms were starting to shake 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 process 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, 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 9 p.m. But we were glad to help bring closure to that search and that 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

Two very dehydrated hikers were lost with no lights and no other gear and separated from each other. One of them had a cellphone 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 3 p.m., but unbeknownst to them, they were not actually on the Humphreys Trail. Instead, they'd hiked down the Kachina Trail, away from Humphreys. At some point, they decided to go off-trail anyway and up toward a different summit. Eventually, the two turned back when their energy supplies and daylight started to fade quickly.

At about 9:30 p.m., I heard SAR activity on the online scanner, so I knew the call-out was coming. At around 10:00, 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 Snowbowl. Another pair of searchers drove down Schultz Pass Rd., then headed up the Weatherford Trail to intersect with the Kachina Trail from the other end, and our third pair of searchers drove down Friedline Prairie Road to that trailhead, to hike up and intersect the Kachina 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 the subjects' 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, for a while, he'd practically carried his friend, who was in worse shape. Finally, the friend 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 45 minutes before he again had to stop. I believe it was then that he'd 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.

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 gully. In the distance, Cindy heard the jingling 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 dogs returned to her, gave their other alerts—jumped on her—and took off back into the gully 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 was hydrated, the second hiker was able to walk out with Cindy and eventually met me, 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 declined medical attention, we all went on our way. I was home at 3a.m.

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.