What a Workout! A Patient Carry on the Peaks

She looked up at me from the Stokes litter, her eyes, nose, and mouth lined with dried blood, her upper lip, deeply split. She'd need some stitches there. I saw blood spattered on her shirt.

A drop of my sweat just missed her face. She noticed and seemed to smile at me apologetically with her eyes, but her injured mouth didn't move. The woman did answer, though, whenever someone asked how she was doing. She was okay, she would say, but her neck was bothering her.

She and her husband, both in their early 60s, had been enjoying a hike on a perfect afternoon on the Kachina Trail, the sky almost as blue as our SAR shirts, when she tripped and did a face-plant right into a rock. She'd injured her neck in the fall and, clearly, her face. We weren't sure if she had a concussion, but she was experiencing some anomalies with her vision.

She didn't complain a bit, though, as we maneuvered the litter up and down the rough trail, lifting it over rocks and sometimes struggling to maintain our footing on the narrow trail. It was not a smooth ride.

I'd been in the check-out line at the grocery store when the call came in. It would take me at least 45 minutes to get home, put all the perishable food away, and then get to the SAR building. Too long. So, I called our  coordinator and asked where I could meet the team. I was told to drive to Snowbowl Road and, from there, take FS 522 (Friedline Prairie Road) about a mile in and look for the SAR vehicles at the corrals. From there, I'd hike up an unofficial trail to intersect the Kachina Trail. The patient was closer to the midpoint of the trail than the trailhead, so this would be a faster route.

Still reacclimating after my three months at a much lower altitude in Nepal, I was breathing heavily as I climbed, wondering how far up the trail the intersection was. I'd never hiked up from that road before. I pushed myself to maintain a steady pace as I tried to catch up with my teammates. Before I reached intersection, I saw a blue SAR shirt up ahead.

The last two teammates in the initial group were moving slowly. One of them wasn't feeling too well. The other, just ahead, was keeping an eye on her while carrying the extra weight of the backboard on his own back in addition to his pack. At the intersection, he handed off the backboard to me and stayed behind to check on our teammate. I pushed on, unsure how far up that roller coaster of a trail the rest of the team, the patient, and two Guardian medics were located. Turned out, they were farther up than I expected.

Just before I reached the others, one of my teammates met me on the trail and relieved me of the backboard. A fast hiker with long legs, he'd headed down to see if he could speed up the process of getting the backboard to the patient's location, so they could get her secured in the litter and ready for the carry-out. By that time, she'd been there for a couple of hours, and it would take a least a few more to get her to the waiting ambulance.

With just seven of us on the litter, it was a difficult evacuation. Only one person at a time could take a break, while the rest shifted sides to at least rest one arm a bit.

Using a piece of webbing hitched to the litter railing, crossed behind my neck and over my shoulders, and held by the hand away from the litter helped me make more of a contribution to the effort. Without the webbing, my arm on the litter was doing all the work, which meant my lack of upper body strength compared to my male teammates made me less effective. But my sore, tired arms and dripping sweat were testament to the fact that I was trying my hardest to help. By the time we reached the ambulance a few hours later, I was spent.

A day after the rescue, we received a nice thank you email from the patient's husband. He said his wife was doing well and didn't have a concussion after all. It's a rather rare treat to hear from a subject or the family after a mission.

*******

The next day, our team received another call-out for another litter carry, this time on the Humphreys Trail. But one of our team members who lives near Humphreys responded directly and quickly and was able to walk the patient out. So the SAR response was canceled.

Two days after that, during the compass class field exercise for this year's SAR Academy members, we received yet another call-out for a litter carry off of Humprheys Trail. Seven of the 13 of us helping with the class left, reconvened at the SAR building to get some equipment, and then drove Code 3 (fast, like an ambulance) to the mountain, lights and sirens going. (I have to admit, that's fun.) By the time we reached the trailhead, however, that patient was also already at the trailhead.

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.