A Busy Memorial Day Weekend for Search & Rescue and the CCSO

It was a three-day weekend with six calls for Search and Rescue that I know of.

Saturday started off with a missing person with dementia who'd walked away from a home in Junipine Estates. The SAR team was called, but the subject was located by a passerby before searchers arrived. Deputies and one SAR member went to the subject's location to extricate him from the brush where he was sitting, and he was transported to the hospital.

Then there was the call-out for a technical rescue at Mooney Falls on the Havasupai reservation. A DPS helicopter was en route when SAR was called, but it was unknown if high winds would prevent the crew from landing or doing a short haul in the canyon. So, the technical rescue team headed that way from Flagstaff as quickly as possible, although it's a very long response time for ground SAR to travel that far. Luckily, the helicopter was able to land near the falls, and the patient was loaded without any technical rescue, air or otherwise, necessary. The SAR team made it all the way to the turnoff from Seligman before they were told to turn around.

Just after refueling the SAR vehicles back in Flagstaff, the tech team was asked to head out of town again, this time to Waterholes Canyon just south of Page.

Waterholes Canyon

The victim had fallen approximately 100 feet and was about 500 feet below the rim. Page Patrol deputies and Page Fire Department also responded, as did DPS Air Rescue, but it was determined that a helicopter technical rescue was not possible due to extremely windy conditions.

The Coconino County Sheriff's SAR coordinator requested additional assistance from the Park Service at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. With multi-agency cooperation, the victim and a paramedic who'd scrambled down to his location were raised to the rim, where a Classic Air Ambulance transported the patient to Flagstaff Medical Center at about 9 p.m. SAR and Page Fire personnel then assisted the uninjured members of the canyoneering party from the bottom of the canyon to the rim. The CCSO technical rescue team returned to Flagstaff again at 2 a.m.

On May 28th, while the rescue in Waterholes Canyon was underway, there was a call for a lost hiker near Ashurst Lake. A Coconino County Sheriff's Office corporal who is also an assistant SAR coordinator handled the call and conducted a hasty search. He successfully located the missing hiker.

The next morning, the Sheriff's Office received a report of an accident at Willow Springs Lake. The victim, who was still onshore at the time another canoe flipped, tried to assist in a separate boat, which also overturned. From what I heard, the victim had called for help, went under, resurfaced, and called again, then disappeared. A deputy from Forest Lakes and the Forest Lakes Fire Department responded to the scene, and search and rescue was requested to assist with the search. Our SAR coordinator arranged for the Coconino County Sheriff's Office Dive Rescue Team and members of the NPS Glen Canyon Dive Rescue Team to respond, and an underwater search was conducted into Sunday evening. The search was suspended at dark and resumed on the morning of the 30th. The missing subject was located deceased at approximately 4:00 p.m. on Monday.

Also on Monday at approximately 9:00 p.m., the Sheriff's Office received a call of separated hikers on the Humphreys Peak Trail. Deputies responded and located both parties.

These were just some of the incidents the Coconino County Sheriff's Department was involved with over the busy Memorial Day weekend.

SAR Business is Picking Up

Compared to past winters since I've been on the Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue (Coco SAR) team, this last one was relatively quiet. Not nearly as many call-outs as the year before, for sure. But now that spring has sprung in northern Arizona, the calls are coming more frequently.

After the successful all-night search in Sedona, there was another call-out just a couple of days later, this one for the rescue of three stranded hikers in Sycamore Canyon, at least one of whom was suffering from a heat-related illness. Eight SAR volunteers responded to the area, while a DPS helicopter was on its way. The helicopter crew located the subjects and lowered food, water, and a handheld radio to the young men, the latter so SAR could keep in contact with them. They didn't have enough of a cellphone signal in the canyon to make a voice call, but one of them had apparently been able to send a text message to a family member, who had then contacted 9-1-1.

I was not able to respond to the mission that night, but I talked to a team member who was there and was told the hikers had run out of food and water and eventually light. With the one hiker being ill and without provisions, they'd been unable to keep moving. After being hydrated and re-fueled by the DPS crew and later, when search and rescue reached them on foot, given more food and water and warm clothes, they were able to slowly hiked out with our team.

Then, yesterday, the start of the Memorial Day weekend, there were two calls, one a search for a dementia patient and another for a technical rescue near Supai at Mooney Falls, which is down in the Grand Canyon on reservation land, not in the National Park. I was on a recreational hike at the time, quite a distance from my vehicle and then a long drive from Flagstaff, so again, I was unable to respond.

The first mission, however, was soon called off because the subject was located and transported by EMS. I don't yet know what happened with the Mooney Falls mission, other than the fact that, when the call-out was made, a DPS helicopter was already en route. For those familiar with the area, you know that Flagstaff is a long way from Hualapai Hilltop, the trailhead for Supai and, from there, Mooney Falls. Our response time would be very long. But I'll update you when I learn more.

And here I sit at home, listening to wind blow up to 65mph gusts outside my office window, hanging around doing computer work and reading until the next call-out comes in. If... or, more likely, when it comes, I'll be going.

An All-Night Search in Sedona

Seven of us from three merged ground-pounder teams lay on the cool rock with our packs under our heads, stargazing as we rested and waited. Our headlamps and any other sources of light were off. Not far from Submarine Rock, on the jeep road in the trees below, a team on the Polaris UTV shut off their vehicle lights, and another team on foot somewhere in the area went dark as well. The helicopter, DPS Ranger out of Phoenix, had arrived with their night-vision equipment, so searchers held their positions and became as little of a distraction as possible. If the missing hikers were out there, it was them we wanted to stand out.

It was around 3 a.m. on Sunday. We'd been hiking and searching for several hours, with teams starting from different trailheads, covering as many trails and roads as we could in this hasty search phase, sometimes bushwhacking through dense manzanita, cat claw, and cactus to try to get a look into a side canyon. Earlier, a few of us had detected a faint whiff of smoke from the top of Submarine Rock, but it soon dissipated on the breeze. We reported it and the general direction we believed it came from to Incident Command. From our high point, we didn't see any glow in the surrounding forest.

We were looking for three missing French-Canadian hikers who'd started out from the Chapel of the Holy Cross parking lot around midday on Saturday, rendezvousing with their three friends at Chicken Point at 2:30 in the afternoon. The others had started hiking the Broken Arrow Trail from the north, and the two groups had exchanged car keys when they met up, as planned. The three hiking to the vehicle parked at the chapel arrived at their destination, but the three hiking north never had. After waiting and doing some searching, the friends of the missing hikers had called 9-1-1.

We'd been told that the missing hikers were wearing shorts, light clothing, and sneakers, and they had one liter of water left between the three of them when they'd met the other group at Chicken Point. One of the missing was a smoker, so she possibly had cigarettes and a lighter or matches with her. If so, they may have been able to start a fire.

We also kept calling and blowing our whistles and stopping to listen. We looked for prints—there were many in this popular hiking area—especially watching for any fresh tracks that veered off the main trails. We took a closer look at prints now and then that were on top of all the rest and the mountain bike tracks, but we found nothing that seemed significant. On a beautiful weekend day in that area, a large number of feet would have passed through.

As we lay on the rock, the helicopter made a big circle around the area. We watched them return in our direction and then disappear behind a butte. They didn't immediately come back into view, and within less a minute our radios transmitted our coordinator's message in unison: Ranger had located our three missing hikers. It was indeed the smoke from their fire we'd smelled earlier. Thanks to the helicopter, locating the source of that smell was very much expedited. Had we tried to find it on foot in that rugged terrain and given their location in the bottom of a wash about a mile from any trail, it would have taken us hours longer.

DPS Ranger gave us coordinates, which we plotted on our maps and entered into GPSes. Five of us hiked up the rocky drainage and bushwhacked to their location, arriving at the three happy hikers at about 5:15am. They were not only in a good spirits, laughing at the whole situation and thanking us profusely for coming to their aid, but they were in good physical shape, too. Carrying an ill or injured hiker out of that location would have been a beast.

After dousing and buying their fire, offering the hikers water and making sure they were okay to walk out, we all followed the boulder-strewn wash back to the jeep road. From there, the three hikers were given a ride on SAR's UTV to their waiting friends at the Broken Arrow Trailhead.

Before departing, I got lots of appreciative French kisses... uh, meaning the cheek-to-cheek kind... meaning the face-cheek kind... as the vacationing hikers and their friends again thanked me and my teammates for our help. Despite the skin I left behind on the cat claw "claws," it had been a good night for some SAR.

See: 3 Lost Hikers Overnight in Sedona Wilderness from the Arizona Daily Sun

A view from Submarine Rock / Flickr -- CC

A Fallen Climber in Jack's Canyon

I had just gotten home when the call came for a technical rescue in Jack's Canyon (pictured above), about 30 miles from Winslow, AZ. I'd been at the morning session of the map and compass class, part of our team's annual three-day "navigation boot camp," which we run primarily for members of other teams and organizations. The field session would begin later in the afternoon, so I'd wanted to stop home for a while beforehand to see my dog and have lunch. But SAR called, and back to the building I and eight other tech team members went.

By the time I arrived, the gear had been loaded and we were ready to roll. We drove code three—lights and sirens and speed—down I-40, listening to our coordinator communicate with other agencies, including DPS and Guardian helicopter crews and an on-scene deputy. We knew that the Blue Ridge Fire Department was there also and that it was likely the patient would be airlifted to the hospital before we'd arrive. There's a landing zone at the bottom of the canyon, not far from where the accident occurred. But we kept going, knowing that anything can happen and assuming our help would be needed. That's how we always respond to call-outs.

Sure enough, the patient was packaged and on the Guardian helicopter, en route to Flagstaff Medical Center, before we got to the staging area, which of course was better for the patient. Waiting for us to get all the way out there from Flagstaff and then do a long, rugged litter evacuation probably wouldn't be a patient's first choice.

Apparently, the climber had taken a 20- to 30-foot fall, landed on his feet, then went down on his back. He'd hit his head but thankfully was wearing a helmet.

After talking with the deputy about what had happened, my teammates and I walked to the canyon rim and a short distance down the trail to take a look at the area. Several of us had never been there before.

It sure was a busy place on that Saturday afternoon, with several groups of climbers visible in the relatively small area of the canyon we could see from where we were standing. We watched climbers on the canyon's far wall and could hear lots of voices coming from below. There were numerous tents set up among the pinon–juniper on the rim.

As we stood there, watching climbers, we discussed how we would have carried out the evacuation had there been no helicopter available but just a waiting ambulance, or if the accident had occurred far from a landing zone. Never know what a future call to Jack's Canyon might bring.

Overdue Hikers Found in Blue Ridge Area

On Wednesday night, May 18th, I was at home, cozy in my PJs and down booties as the winter-like temps in Flagstaff continued to drop after a day of freezing rain and snow. As my friend prepared to head out following our late dinner, I said, "I have a feeling it's a SAR call night." About an hour later, I texted him, "Yep, it's a SAR call night."

This would be a search in the Blue Ridge area for two overdue hikers who'd last been seen leaving their campsite at 1 p.m. earlier that day, unprepared for the cold, wet conditions. They weren't carrying any food, water, or gear other than possibly a lighter.

While 10 of us volunteers readied our gear to depart the SAR building, a second mission was brewing in the same general area, but that one was resolved before we'd finished briefing. Due to icy road conditions and numerous accidents in the area, we took the lower elevation route to our destination, towing ATVs and the Polaris Ranger. In the meantime, a team member who lives in Blue Ridge went directly to the subjects' campsite and met up with deputies and Forest Service personnel to begin searching. The weather conditions and lack of preparedness on the part of the missing hikers lent a sense of urgency to the mission. Hypothermia was a big concern, and they'd already been missing for eight hours.

When the rest of us reached the point last seen, which became our staging area, assignments were given and, two-by-two, we headed out to search. One of the teams included a K9 handler, her four area search dogs, and a backer to do the navigation, radio communication, and assist with searching while the handler worked her dogs. Another team of two took the UTV, and the rest of us went out on foot. My field partner and I were one of the teams carrying night vision goggles, and everyone had warm-up gear to help the subjects regardless of who would find them.

While no DPS helicopter was available—the Phoenix crew couldn't fly due to weather concerns, and there was no crew available from Flagstaff or Kingman—a Guardian medical helicopter came to assist with the search. They arrived on scene just as we were deploying into the field.

Not long after, my partner and I heard through the static on the radio that someone was hearing yelling. It was one of the searchers driving Forest Service roads, doing containment, who had heard the shouts. He and another volunteer in a different vehicle had been slowly driving a perimeter around the area, going in opposite directions and stopping often to make noise and then listen. The two of them had just passed one another on the road when one of them heard the voices.

Soon, two very cold, hungry, and thirsty hikers were inside the vehicle, warming up. A landing zone was located for the helicopter, and the subjects were driven to that location, where they were checked by the Guardian medic as a ground ambulance continued to their location to transport the two to Payson.

It was about 3 a.m. when the lost hikers were located, so they'd been out there for about 14 hours, during which time the rain and snow had resumed for a while. They'd apparently continued moving till around midnight, covering a pretty good distance and certainly more than they'd planned. Finally, they'd laid down between two logs, a short distance from the Forest Service road and not all that far from a highway, for what turned out to be a few more very uncomfortable, freezing cold hours.

At 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, I walked back into my house and once again changed into those cozy PJs and down booties as the wintry, wet weather continued.

See: Lost Hikers Rescued from Cold Conditions from the Arizona Daily Sun