That was nice! A teammate called to check up on me because I've not been able to respond to the last two missions. You could say that's a bit unusual for me—missing two SAR missions in a row—and not something I prefer. But how cool it is to be missed.
Following the recent search for a 12-year-old girl, which thankfully ended well, my pager was silent until 7:15 on Friday morning, January 23. I knew I couldn't respond, but by habit, I had to call in anyway to hear what the call-out was for. The short message simply stated there was a possible downed aircraft.
Oh man, I thought, and I'm gonna be stuck in a hair salon? I take care of my mom, you see, and she doesn't drive. And she had scheduled her monthly hair appointment, which I had to take her to, as always. Needless to say, I fidgeted and paced for two hours, waiting for her dye-and-set to be finished, reluctantly listening to salon-style chatter, all the while knowing my teammates were "out there" somewhere. Every time the hairdresser would stop working in order to make hand gestures to help prove the point she was making, my knee would start bouncing and my foot tapping, and I could feel my blood pressure rise.
When I finally got home after dropping my mom off back at her own house, I thought about calling our SAR captain to tell him I'd be available to join the team in the field if need be, but first I went online and found two breaking news updates. When I refreshed the webpage, a third appeared. And before long, as I continued reading, my phone rang and I heard from a teammate who'd talked to another teammate who'd been on scene, and I knew I need not call.
Read all four breaking news updates from that day (in descending order) here. Two Flagstaff men died in the crash.
Only minutes after concluding the call with my teammate, I turned on the television and immediately saw news of the crash, including an interview with the deputy who was dealing with a traffic stop at the very moment the small aircraft flew right over his head and heard the impact moments later.
A couple of days later, on the snowy, windy, very cold evening of January 25, my pager went off again. Steve and I were in a restaurant at the time (that favorite sushi place of ours I mentioned in my last post), and I called in to find out what was going on. A technical rescue on Mt. Elden. I thought for a moment, knowing that non-technical team members were welcome to respond and go along in case we could be of help carrying gear or performing any other non-technical tasks that might arise.
On the other hand, Steve and I had driven to the restaurant in one vehicle (we sometimes take separate cars, just in case there's a call-out), and I'd first have to drop him off at home before responding. This would take at least 20 minutes, and then I'd have the drive across town. I didn't want to hold the team up and wasn't sure I'd actually be needed anyway... so I decided not to respond.
As Steve and I drove home after dinner, I looked over at the mountain, mostly hidden in the clouds, and shivered. I knew my teammates were probably still up there on that wet and wintry night and felt a pang of remorse at not being out there, too.
But such is life as a SAR volunteer. Sometimes you just have to pass.
Read Stranded Hikers Rescued from Elden Cliffs from the Arizona Daily Sun.
These are my stories as a volunteer member of the Sheriff's Search and Rescue team in Coconino County, Arizona. I'll share what it's like to go from a beginner with a lot to learn to an experienced and, hopefully, valuable member of the team, as well as the missions, training, and other activities along the way.
A Tribute To My SAR Spouse
In this case, SAR stands for "supportive and reassuring," referring to my husband of almost 11 years. Steve has always been supportive of my endeavors and adventures, not the least of which was my six-month Appalachian Trail thru-hike.
During that time nine years ago, he took care of the farm—the critters and the property—that we were employed to live on and tend to for the absentee owners. Over the course of the 185 days I was away, I saw Steve only once. That five-hour visit took place in a dump of a trail town (which shall remain unnamed) before my husband had to drive back, to make it home in time to do the evening chores. And he never once complained during any of our phone calls or when I returned home after I'd completed my hike, about all of the extra work he'd had to shoulder in my absence.
And Steve has held true to form when it's come to me being part of search and rescue. As anyone involved with SAR knows, our pagers (or phones) can and do go off at all times of the day and night. Our gadgets have no consideration for mealtimes, holidays, great movies or dates, or a good night's sleep during a snowstorm. People sometimes—often—need help when it's not very convenient for SAR personnel or volunteers. Not to mention for their families. So I wanted to publicly thank Steve for being such a great sport, not to mention bolstering my confidence when it wavers.
I recently read a book called Mountain High, Mountain Rescue
by SAR volunteer Peggy Parr, in which she writes, "The patience of a husband or wife at home is often forgotten, yet this is a vital ingredient to the team's accomplishments in the field."
She goes on to say, "Sleeping spouses, unmoved by adrenaline, are awakened in the depth of night by a pager's piercing tone giving an emergency message ... and subjected to the noise of frantic dressing and departure. If the spouse wants the car, chauffeuring is necessary. During the day the tone shatters silence at the sermon, the movie and the restaurant. Dinners turn cold, picnics are cancelled, guests are left waiting. Bachelors should contemplate this neglect a spouse suffers.
"After a mission, the spouse is forced to listen to endless phone calls from other members, where details are dissected like a frog. Gear is spread across the floor as in a garage sale. Two-hundred-foot nylon ropes are cleaned in the washing machine, and hang for days drying in spaghetti coils from the basement ceiling.
"The spouse tolerates these annoyances with a patience worthy of sainthood. Members are aware of these qualities, for we take their spirit with us always."
How true. And Steve even gets up when those middle-of-the-night call-outs happen, to make sure I don't leave anything behind as I stumble about for my clothing and gear on the way to the door.
Just today, as Steve and I were in the middle of stuffing our faces with raw fish by candlelight at our favorite sushi restaurant, my pager went off. Immediately, I said, "Oh, it's okay, I'll skip it this time," but my husband knows me all too well. "No, no," he said, "It's totally okay. Go help."
As we've done in the past, we'd have had the rest of our dinner doggie-bagged and then driven home, where I'd drop Steve off, quickly change clothes, and head to the SAR building. But, as it turned out, that wasn't necessary this time, and we finished our dinner date. Our coordinator's message, which I listened to with a face full of maki roll, said this was a call for the technical team. If, in the spring, I qualify for that subset of our general SAR team, those kinds of calls will then include me, and more doggie-bags may be necessary.
During that time nine years ago, he took care of the farm—the critters and the property—that we were employed to live on and tend to for the absentee owners. Over the course of the 185 days I was away, I saw Steve only once. That five-hour visit took place in a dump of a trail town (which shall remain unnamed) before my husband had to drive back, to make it home in time to do the evening chores. And he never once complained during any of our phone calls or when I returned home after I'd completed my hike, about all of the extra work he'd had to shoulder in my absence.
And Steve has held true to form when it's come to me being part of search and rescue. As anyone involved with SAR knows, our pagers (or phones) can and do go off at all times of the day and night. Our gadgets have no consideration for mealtimes, holidays, great movies or dates, or a good night's sleep during a snowstorm. People sometimes—often—need help when it's not very convenient for SAR personnel or volunteers. Not to mention for their families. So I wanted to publicly thank Steve for being such a great sport, not to mention bolstering my confidence when it wavers.
I recently read a book called Mountain High, Mountain Rescue
by SAR volunteer Peggy Parr, in which she writes, "The patience of a husband or wife at home is often forgotten, yet this is a vital ingredient to the team's accomplishments in the field." She goes on to say, "Sleeping spouses, unmoved by adrenaline, are awakened in the depth of night by a pager's piercing tone giving an emergency message ... and subjected to the noise of frantic dressing and departure. If the spouse wants the car, chauffeuring is necessary. During the day the tone shatters silence at the sermon, the movie and the restaurant. Dinners turn cold, picnics are cancelled, guests are left waiting. Bachelors should contemplate this neglect a spouse suffers.
"After a mission, the spouse is forced to listen to endless phone calls from other members, where details are dissected like a frog. Gear is spread across the floor as in a garage sale. Two-hundred-foot nylon ropes are cleaned in the washing machine, and hang for days drying in spaghetti coils from the basement ceiling.
"The spouse tolerates these annoyances with a patience worthy of sainthood. Members are aware of these qualities, for we take their spirit with us always."
How true. And Steve even gets up when those middle-of-the-night call-outs happen, to make sure I don't leave anything behind as I stumble about for my clothing and gear on the way to the door.
Just today, as Steve and I were in the middle of stuffing our faces with raw fish by candlelight at our favorite sushi restaurant, my pager went off. Immediately, I said, "Oh, it's okay, I'll skip it this time," but my husband knows me all too well. "No, no," he said, "It's totally okay. Go help."
As we've done in the past, we'd have had the rest of our dinner doggie-bagged and then driven home, where I'd drop Steve off, quickly change clothes, and head to the SAR building. But, as it turned out, that wasn't necessary this time, and we finished our dinner date. Our coordinator's message, which I listened to with a face full of maki roll, said this was a call for the technical team. If, in the spring, I qualify for that subset of our general SAR team, those kinds of calls will then include me, and more doggie-bags may be necessary.
Putting SAR Skills to the Test
Tracking was something I first learned during Basic SAR Academy, and I've practiced those skills time and again during previous missions, but never before have I officially been put on a "tracking team." Not until yesterday, that is, when one of our senior members pointed to me and said, "Is your stuff ready? Good, grab your gear and head to the staging area. You guys (referring to myself and two teammates) will be the tracking team." My mind immediately went into review mode.
At about 11:00 a.m., as my teammates and I drove to Doney Park east of Flagstaff to begin the search, I mentally ran through all the tracking basics I could recall. Things like, measure the stride heel to heel or toe to toe, and mark it on my hiking pole with duct tape. Do I have duct tape on my pole? Yes, check. Measure the length of the print, the width of the ball and the heel, and make a sketch of the sole pattern. I double-checked to be sure I had flagging tape to mark tracks and other clues, and I knew I had a flexible measuring tape and a Sharpie for writing on the flagging. Somewhere in my pack. Darn, I should have re-organized my pack the day before as I'd promised myself I'd do. But I hadn't.
That's been a weak point of mine. For all the backpacking I've done and all the gear management, I've been lax when it comes to reorganizing and replenishing my 24-hour pack following each mission. So mission after mission, it's only gotten more topsy-turvy and more lacking in certain items. Like food, for one. Shame on me. This time, that meant my stomach was growling for all my teammates to hear, and I had to take off my pack and quickly sift through the contents to find the measuring tape and marker. The one time I had to ask a teammate to borrow a Sharpie, I felt like a doofus. Never again!
Anyhow, when we got to the staging area, we were very briefly briefed and shown some tracks known to be—or at least presumed to be—the missing subject's. My teammates and I did the necessary measuring and began trying to follow the girl's movements. We went back and forth, round and round. We'd pick up the track then lose it. Find it and lose it again. Seemed she'd changed directions quite a bit. And given the fact that there were many prints made by different people in the immediate vicinity and some ground that was not the easiest on which to track, the task was quite a challenge.
At the same time, I realized that over the past 16 months, I've definitely gotten better at "seeing." I was able to pick up small portions of prints and detect shine, which is basically a track left as a result of flattening, leaving no evidence other than the way the sun or artificial light reflects, or shines, on the flattened surface.
Still, after a significant amount of time had passed, we trackers hadn't gotten out of sight of the staging area. We were making wider and wider circles, though, cutting for sign and attempting to find matching prints heading away from the area, to determine a direction of travel. In the meantime, other teammates were carrying out different assignments, including driving area roads and hiking to the top of nearby hills. The team tracking dog and members of our mounted unit came out as well.
We were looking for a juvenile who'd been missing since sometime during the previous night. As of early afternoon, the air was still but chilly, and we were intent on finding the girl before sundown. We knew she wasn't dressed warmly enough.
Eventually, assignments were changed as the situation warranted, and I ended up on a team asked to drive some unpaved roads and a pipeline. As we went slowly along, periodically spinning our tires on the snow-covered cinders, I leaned out of my passenger-side window, alternating between scanning the ground for prints and the forest for any sign of movement or anything that didn't belong. As for the latter, all I saw was a very old, smashed car with remnants of two very dead pigs in it. Um... interesting. But no footprints.
Just as our team of three was about to leave the vehicle when it could go no further and head out on snowshoes, we heard a voice on the radio say, "I've got the subject." Yay! And she was basically okay. Yay again! She needed some medical attention but nothing that sounded too serious. A member of our mounted unit had made the find.
Oh, and those prints we'd been following? Well, not the right ones after all. It happens. What matters in the end is the happy ending.
And happy about a successful mission myself, I called my husband and asked him to meet me at a favorite Mexican restaurant not far from the SAR building. After a grande burrito (and a little of Steve's too), which made up my breakfast, lunch, and dinner rolled into one much-needed meal, I headed home and fixed up my backpack. Okay, now I'm ready for the next one!
At about 11:00 a.m., as my teammates and I drove to Doney Park east of Flagstaff to begin the search, I mentally ran through all the tracking basics I could recall. Things like, measure the stride heel to heel or toe to toe, and mark it on my hiking pole with duct tape. Do I have duct tape on my pole? Yes, check. Measure the length of the print, the width of the ball and the heel, and make a sketch of the sole pattern. I double-checked to be sure I had flagging tape to mark tracks and other clues, and I knew I had a flexible measuring tape and a Sharpie for writing on the flagging. Somewhere in my pack. Darn, I should have re-organized my pack the day before as I'd promised myself I'd do. But I hadn't.
That's been a weak point of mine. For all the backpacking I've done and all the gear management, I've been lax when it comes to reorganizing and replenishing my 24-hour pack following each mission. So mission after mission, it's only gotten more topsy-turvy and more lacking in certain items. Like food, for one. Shame on me. This time, that meant my stomach was growling for all my teammates to hear, and I had to take off my pack and quickly sift through the contents to find the measuring tape and marker. The one time I had to ask a teammate to borrow a Sharpie, I felt like a doofus. Never again!
Anyhow, when we got to the staging area, we were very briefly briefed and shown some tracks known to be—or at least presumed to be—the missing subject's. My teammates and I did the necessary measuring and began trying to follow the girl's movements. We went back and forth, round and round. We'd pick up the track then lose it. Find it and lose it again. Seemed she'd changed directions quite a bit. And given the fact that there were many prints made by different people in the immediate vicinity and some ground that was not the easiest on which to track, the task was quite a challenge.
At the same time, I realized that over the past 16 months, I've definitely gotten better at "seeing." I was able to pick up small portions of prints and detect shine, which is basically a track left as a result of flattening, leaving no evidence other than the way the sun or artificial light reflects, or shines, on the flattened surface.
Still, after a significant amount of time had passed, we trackers hadn't gotten out of sight of the staging area. We were making wider and wider circles, though, cutting for sign and attempting to find matching prints heading away from the area, to determine a direction of travel. In the meantime, other teammates were carrying out different assignments, including driving area roads and hiking to the top of nearby hills. The team tracking dog and members of our mounted unit came out as well.
We were looking for a juvenile who'd been missing since sometime during the previous night. As of early afternoon, the air was still but chilly, and we were intent on finding the girl before sundown. We knew she wasn't dressed warmly enough.
Eventually, assignments were changed as the situation warranted, and I ended up on a team asked to drive some unpaved roads and a pipeline. As we went slowly along, periodically spinning our tires on the snow-covered cinders, I leaned out of my passenger-side window, alternating between scanning the ground for prints and the forest for any sign of movement or anything that didn't belong. As for the latter, all I saw was a very old, smashed car with remnants of two very dead pigs in it. Um... interesting. But no footprints.
Just as our team of three was about to leave the vehicle when it could go no further and head out on snowshoes, we heard a voice on the radio say, "I've got the subject." Yay! And she was basically okay. Yay again! She needed some medical attention but nothing that sounded too serious. A member of our mounted unit had made the find.
Oh, and those prints we'd been following? Well, not the right ones after all. It happens. What matters in the end is the happy ending.
And happy about a successful mission myself, I called my husband and asked him to meet me at a favorite Mexican restaurant not far from the SAR building. After a grande burrito (and a little of Steve's too), which made up my breakfast, lunch, and dinner rolled into one much-needed meal, I headed home and fixed up my backpack. Okay, now I'm ready for the next one!
Where is Mark?
That's the question many people have been asking for the past 10 days. It's the question that's kept me up at night even when I'm exhausted from another day of searching. And I know everyone involved in the effort feels the same. We just want to find Mark, to give this story an ending.
I've started this entry over several times. While every mission I've been involved with—and there have been about 40 or so in my 16 months on the team—has been unique, this one was especially different for me. Not only did the initial facts seem to point to a fairly rapid resolution that didn't happen, but ground-pounders (rather, snow-pounders in this case) didn't find a single clue. At least, nothing that panned out. No matter how closely we looked, we didn't come up with a thing. And that feels... well, really bad.
At the same time, I was seeing Mark's family and friends, who were also searching along with SAR teams from around the state of Arizona, Forest Service personnel, K-9 teams, Civil Air Patrol, and the Department of Public Safety. But it wasn't the lack of a uniform that told me someone was a relative or friend of the missing. That was clear in their faces, even if they gave us a smile.
Over the past 10 days, five of which I was in the field in Forest
Lakes, I wanted so much to hear that familiar tone of voice that comes
over the radio when a searcher finds something. You can hear it when a
SAR member calls Incident Command, and the rest of us stop in our tracks
to listen to what will come next. That didn't happen this time.
But no ending (yet) doesn't mean there's an end to hope. If you'd read as many search and rescue stories as I have in the past year and a half, you know that just about anything can happen. So I'll be keeping Mark Irby and his family in my thoughts and waiting for the day we hear he's been found.
48 Hours and Counting
This is an ongoing mission, from which I just returned after 25 hours in the field. I arrived on Saturday, January 3, as several of my teammates were finishing up their own 20-plus-hour shifts, still with a long drive ahead of them back to Flagstaff. I'll fill you in on more of the story once the mission is concluded, hopefully with a find, but in the meantime, this is who we're looking for, reprinted from the Coconino County Sheriff's Office press release:
Missing Person
"Mark Russell Irby is described as a white man, 51 years of age, 5/10, 175 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, and wearing prescription glasses. He was last seen wearing a denim shirt, blue jeans and 'Croc' style shoes, and riding a red Bombardier ATV with AZ license plate 36B-175. Irby is on medication for high blood pressure. There are no other known medical conditions. Irby was not dressed for the extreme weather or an extended trip away from home.
"Mr. Irby had been known to travel out of the Forest Lakes Subdivision to the west and travel trails between the subdivision and Forest Service Rd. 237. He was last seen when he left the home in the Forest Lakes area at about 10:00 AM Friday, January, 2nd.
"Anyone with information regarding the welfare or whereabouts of Mark Russell Irby is urged to call the Coconino County Sheriff's Office at (928)774-4523 or (800)338-7888."
When I left incident command today, Sunday, January 4, just after 10 a.m., there were at least 30 volunteers from three county SAR teams in the field, and another call-out has since been made for more volunteers to relieve them in the morning, to continue the search if Mr. Irby hasn't been located. I'll be rejoining the mission at 6 a.m. on Monday.
Also, a DPS helicopter has been flying, searching areas around the Forest Lakes subdivision.
It's now snowing heavily, complicating matters because any ATV tracks that may have been visible on Saturday are now much more difficult to detect. This is becoming a very frustrating mission, as search teams have checked and rechecked all logical areas and then some without locating any clues, which is unusual.
Today, Sunday, teams are literally going door to door in the subdivision, walking around each and every house. Many of them are seasonal homes. Searchers will also be checking snow and ice slides that have come off the roofs, some of which are large enough to potentially bury both a man and his quad. That is, if the quad could even have made it up to the houses. It would have been nearly impossible for the ATV to have crossed the huge berms along the sides of the roads and made it through deep snow on the unplowed driveways of unoccupied homes without getting stuck in the attempt. But there's been no sign of the red quad or the man who was driving it.
Let's hope this turns out well.
"Mark Russell Irby is described as a white man, 51 years of age, 5/10, 175 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, and wearing prescription glasses. He was last seen wearing a denim shirt, blue jeans and 'Croc' style shoes, and riding a red Bombardier ATV with AZ license plate 36B-175. Irby is on medication for high blood pressure. There are no other known medical conditions. Irby was not dressed for the extreme weather or an extended trip away from home."Mr. Irby had been known to travel out of the Forest Lakes Subdivision to the west and travel trails between the subdivision and Forest Service Rd. 237. He was last seen when he left the home in the Forest Lakes area at about 10:00 AM Friday, January, 2nd.
"Anyone with information regarding the welfare or whereabouts of Mark Russell Irby is urged to call the Coconino County Sheriff's Office at (928)774-4523 or (800)338-7888."
When I left incident command today, Sunday, January 4, just after 10 a.m., there were at least 30 volunteers from three county SAR teams in the field, and another call-out has since been made for more volunteers to relieve them in the morning, to continue the search if Mr. Irby hasn't been located. I'll be rejoining the mission at 6 a.m. on Monday.
Also, a DPS helicopter has been flying, searching areas around the Forest Lakes subdivision.
It's now snowing heavily, complicating matters because any ATV tracks that may have been visible on Saturday are now much more difficult to detect. This is becoming a very frustrating mission, as search teams have checked and rechecked all logical areas and then some without locating any clues, which is unusual.
Today, Sunday, teams are literally going door to door in the subdivision, walking around each and every house. Many of them are seasonal homes. Searchers will also be checking snow and ice slides that have come off the roofs, some of which are large enough to potentially bury both a man and his quad. That is, if the quad could even have made it up to the houses. It would have been nearly impossible for the ATV to have crossed the huge berms along the sides of the roads and made it through deep snow on the unplowed driveways of unoccupied homes without getting stuck in the attempt. But there's been no sign of the red quad or the man who was driving it.
Let's hope this turns out well.
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