A First Snow's Mission

It's still Sunday. I got home from the "Drunk on Devil's Head" mission at 4:30 this morning. At five-something this afternoon, we had another call-out. Between the two missions, Steve and I enjoyed a midday dog walk, during which the sun was shining and it warmed up enough that I shed my winter coat and tied it around my waist. Sometime during the afternoon, however, while we were busy painting our bathrooms (too yellow, unfortunately), the clouds moved in, the temp dropped, and white stuff began falling for the first time this season.

And now I'm in a warm SAR vehicle, while several of my teammates are hiking in the precipitation, alternating between flurries and whiteout conditions throughout the evening. Three other volunteers have driven around to the other end of this five-mile section of the 800-mile Arizona Trail, which stretches from the U.S.–Mexico border to the Utah state line. The two lost subjects, a man and woman, are stuck between Sandy's Canyon and Marshall Lake.

This is a basic unprepared hiker scenario: no maps, no lights (save for the flash of a camera, we're told), improper clothing. But they do have a cellphone that ain't dead yet. So, when they got lost and it got dark, the couple called for help.

As a result of cellphone communication with a deputy, we pretty much know where the stranded hikers are located. In fact, they can see our spotlight from here at Incident Command and even heard the deputy yell when he walked a short distance into the forest. So, as the crow flies, they aren't far from here, but there's a canyon between us and them, and they can't safely move in the dark. They're also now wet and cold.

Fifteen of us are out tonight, so more than enough SAR as long as things go smoothly and no one gets hurt or overly hypothermic. That's why I'm toasty and snug in the vehicle along with two of my teammates, while four others are getting some exercise. The leader of the ground team just called in some coordinates on the radio, and I could hear him huffing and puffing.

Time passes as my vehicle-mates and I chat about this and that. I keep one ear on radio comms and the other on the conversation in the truck. Oh good, they have voice contact. And soon, the ground team reaches the subjects. They're going to warm the two up and give them additional clothing before hiking them out.

Turns out, they're closer to the other SAR vehicle near Marshall Lake, so that's where they're headed. The rest of us drive around to rendezvous there.

We wait for a while until the ground team arrives with the rescued hikers, who appear to be in their fifties or so. They look happy and grateful. I can't hear what they're saying, but I see their smiles, their single Camelbak (water pack) and one water bottle, the camera around the man's neck, their cotton sweatshirts. While I don't personally condone hiking with cellphones to the exclusion of other essential gear, it's a good thing they were able to make that call tonight. Otherwise, severe hypothermia would most likely have caught up with them before anyone else would have.

Another happy ending.

Drunk on Devil's Head

So I think there's a bit of a pattern emerging here. I tell you how unusually quiet it's been for a while, then beep, beep, beep! Well, it's more of a song my pager emits than a series of monotonous beeps... but my point is, the thing seems to go off not long after I make that sort of comment. That's what happened the other night after I finished the "PLB's and Plenty of Z's" entry. I'd been reading in bed (Lost in the Amazon, it's called), and my book had just settled on my face when I was jolted awake by that familiar little song.

The page-out was initiated by our team captain, also a volunteer, since Sergeant D is out of town. This would be a search for a 43-year-old male who'd driven up to the top of Mt. Elden, drunk (or had gotten drunk up there, perhaps) earlier in the afternoon and hadn't been seen since. The reporting party said the man was not dressed for the cold. It was now a little after 10 p.m. on Saturday, below freezing in town at 7,000 feet and certainly colder at over 9,000.

I've never driven up Elden Lookout Rd. before, just hiked to the top via various trails. And I think I prefer the hiking. The trails are fairly strenuous but not nearly as rough on the body as bouncing up that dirt road, which is more a jumble of boulders than actual dirt. As a passenger that night, I was holding on to the "oh-sh*t" bar with both hands. Even my seat belt wasn't enough to keep my head from bumping the roof of the vehicle a time or two. And that drive took us a while. I'm thinking I may have been able to hike up there faster.

At any rate, there ended up being 13 of us searchers and rescuers on the mountain, including two deputies. When we convened at the tailgate of one of our pickups, a usual location for a team briefing, we learned some additional details:

Originally, there had been four in the party: the man who's now missing, his girlfriend, his brother, and a friend. They drove together to the top of the mountain, where they drank and they drank. Then they argued. Then, the brother and the friend took the vehicle and left the mountain. Bye-bye! Meanwhile, the now-missing man and his girlfriend continued to argue and walked southward, across an open area called Turkey Park, and apparently slid aways down the side of Devil's Head.

Just to give you an idea of the terrain, it's basically one long mountain with three peaks: Little Elden to the east, Elden in the middle, and Devil's Head to the west. Mt. Elden, the highest of the three, and Devil's Head are mostly separated by a grassy area called Turkey Park. You can drive right up to the top of Elden or, just below Turkey Park, take the other prong of the forked road and go to Devil's Head.

Anyhow, the reporting party this evening had been the missing man's girlfriend. The details were a bit fuzzy, but I think the man had slid further down Devil's Head than his girlfriend had (at one point someone said she'd actually pushed him)—or perhaps not but was maybe drunker than she was—and he couldn't get back up, either due to injury, inebriation, or maybe both. I'm not sure about any of that, but I do know the girlfriend climbed back up to Turkey Park, then walked all the way down Elden Lookout Rd., and somehow got a ride back to town where she called 911.

Okay, so before breaking into ground teams, we gathered around a clear footprint definitely made by the man we were looking for when he and his girlfriend had started walking southbound, first on the road and then overland toward the rim. He was wearing cowboy boots.

We then divided into several groups. One team of three had arrived a bit before the rest of us and were already headed to the area the girlfriend had described as where they'd gone off the side of Devil's Head. The rest of us were assigned to scouting the interior of Turkey Park—"purposeful wandering," as our leader for the evening described it—searching the perimeter of Turkey Park along the rim and searching the radio and lookout towers at the summit of Mt. Elden. We had no idea if the subject had perhaps left the area where his girlfriend had last seen him. We had no idea if he was badly hurt or if he was suffering from severe hypothermia. Or both. Alcohol only makes matters worse, of course.

I was on the three-person team doing the purposeful wandering around the interior of Turkey Park. We spread out about, oh, 30 feet or so and searched the tall grass and clumps of short trees, calling out the subject's name as we always do and looking closely in case he was there but unresponsive.

Eventually, Team 1, who'd gone to the general area last seen, found what looked to be a slide pattern. And, soon afterward, they had voice contact from below. I was actually a little surprised how accurate the girlfriend's description had been, given her altered state at the time of the slide.

Turns out, the man was not seriously hurt. Nor was he apparently stuck, at least not by then, because he walked up to meet the SAR team. After warming him up, the rest of the ascent was quite slow as apparently the man had to, uh, stop and dispose of some "cookies" shall we say (okay, barf) every so often. At the request of Team 1, other SAR members brought Gatorade down to the dehydrated guy. Eventually, he was handed over, wobbling, to a deputy, who drove him home.

I heard the subject was lucky he hadn't slid off the edge of Devil's Chair, which is a sheer cliff. I'm not familiar with that area on an up-close-and-personal basis, but if you see it from a distance, that's what the formation looks like: a big chair. All in all, things turned out much better than some of us had anticipated. A heavy-duty hangover is nothing compared to a broken neck.

Anyhow, that's how I spent Saturday night till 4:30 Sunday morning. No Zs that night.

PLBs and Plenty of Zs

I'm still here! Didn't want you to think I'd gotten tired of SAR blogging. No, there just hasn't been a lot of action lately. At least, nothing that's panned out.

We did have a call last Monday morning, I think it was, around 9 a.m. I was in Walmart at the time (yippee!), looking for stuff for our new house, when my back pocket started beeping a tune. A 200 (search) page for a couple of overdue woodcutters on or near the Hualapai Reservation, which is about a three-hour drive from Flagstaff.

It turned out to be a good drill, basically. Several of us proceeded to load tech gear, ATVs, the Ranger UTV, cubes of water, MREs and snacks, and full gas cans, then drove for about 15 minutes before the mission was 10-22'd. The woodcutters had been located near Peach Springs. So we did an about-face, returned to the SAR building, and unloaded and put away all the gear. And that's been about it over the past couple of weeks. I've had way too many full nights of sleep. I'm thinkin' something will happen soon.

Oh, and we did have another cancelled call-out on the afternoon of Saturday, October 25, just as we were finishing up a rather frustrating personal locator beacon, or PLB, training. (I'll get back to that in a sec.) It sounded like a pretty dire call at that. A girl—not sure if it was an adult or child—had been attacked by bees about four miles up the West Fork of Oak Creek, and she was having an anaphylactic reaction. It was going to be a tough litter-carry, possibly involving some wading in places where the creek fills the canyon. And word through the grapevine was that first responders (not sure if that meant medics, deputies, or civilians) were already "working a code." So we were thinking this might end up being one very rugged body recovery by the sound of things.

On my way across town to the SAR building, though, the mission was cancelled. At the time, I thought perhaps the girl had been short-hauled since her condition was apparently very serious. But I later found out she'd been given epinephrine and walked out on her own. Glad to hear that.

So, back to the PLB training. To read specifics about this and other types of devices used to transmit distress signals, you can visit the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking, or SARSAT, website. As for me, I refer to the thing that emits the distress signal as a "gadget," and the device responders use to track down the gadget (and hopefully the person/s needing help) as a "gizmo." Gadget and gizmo... got it?

So, first we had a classroom session. We learned about the different types of beacons—PLBs used for land-based applications, ELTs for aviation use, and EPIRBS for maritime use—and the basics of how they work. Seemed pretty straightforward at that point.

Then, we went out behind the Sheriff's office, where Sergeant D turned on the training PLB gadget, and we walked a couple hundred yards across the parking lot where we used the gizmo to locate the gadget. Of course, we could see the gadget from where we were standing with the gizmo. Straight line, no obstacles, flat terrain. I understood how it worked and figured, hey, this is easy!

And then it was time to take the gadget and gizmo into the field. We relocated to Fort Tuthill, where the plan was to take turns going off into the woods with the gadget with about a 10-minute head start, and then the rest of the group would use the gizmo to locate the source of the distress signal.

Well, the first time out, things went fine. Trees, yeah, but pretty flat. Now, the gizmo, by the way, makes a continuous, rather annoying sound—a constant, high-pitched, whiny beep—which the responders have to listen to the whole time they're searching. This first trial didn't take us that long so none of us mentioned anything about stomping on the whiny thing. Second time around, though: different story.

We were all over the place, with me using the gizmo for the first hour. At least, it seemed that long. But the thing couldn't seem to make up its gizmo mind. I was getting conflicting signals, first this way and now that. We were now in hilly terrain with lots of rocks and other obstacles, and I guess the signal was bouncing all over the place.

Eventually, I held the gizmo out to Sergeant D and asked (trying not to sound desperate), "Do you wanna try?" thinking at that point, I must be doing something wrong. I'm not sure what our leader was thinking, but he wasn't saying much as the rest of us followed him follow the gizmo.

A few members of our team, who'd been using the low-tech method of detecting a PLB signal with a radio set to a certain frequency and a body shield (if you really want an explanation, feel free to let me know in the blog comments, and I'll give it my best try), had disappeared. I hadn't noticed they'd walked off, leaving just me and another lady following Sergeant D. I looked around and didn't see them anywhere.

Eventually, Sergeant D radioed the others, and we learned they'd found the guy with the gadget a long time ago. What? The gizmo had failed us while the low-tech method had worked? When I saw where the guy with the gadget had been the whole time, I realized we'd passed pretty close to his location early on in the search. Ugh.

So, then Sergeant D took the low-tech method out of the equation, grabbed the gadget, wished the rest of us luck, and took off to hide. Basically, the gizmo took us in a huge circle, leading us to think Sergeant D was on the move with the thing the whole time. So, a moving distress signal, right? We even thought, based on the signals we were getting, that he'd gone back to the vehicles. But, when we got there, not only was there no sign of Sergeant D, but the gizmo was registering no signal at all. Nada. Dead.

Frustrated, we called Sergeant D on the radio, and he gave us coordinates. We used our GPSes to go to those coordinates, thinking we were looking for him and/or the gadget, but we soon realized he'd gotten us fairly close but not right to the spot. He continued to give us hints; we continued to try to follow the directions the gizmo seemed to be leading us in, but we wandered all over the place with no luck. Finally, thankfully, Sergeant D called the whole thing off. We'd apparently walked right by him more than once.

Was it the hills and obstacles interfering, making the signal bounce all over the place? Or was it us, the searchers using the gizmo, who were the problem? What I do know is that I was hearing that whiny beep in my dreams for several nights thereafter.

A Search for Moving Targets

We were sitting in a coffee shop again, my husband and I, when my pager went off. That's a common pastime for us on Sunday afternoons, when we like to relax and chat. At about 7:00 p.m., after several hours of that relaxing and chatting, we were just getting ready to peel our butts off the vinyl seats when I got the call-out for a rescue on Mt. Elden.

I thought I'd be the last one to the SAR building since I had to drop Steve off at home before driving across town. But only two of the eight volunteers responding were there when I arrived, and as it turned out, we all had to stand by for another hour anyway. Two tech team members were already on the mountain doing a hasty search, and, via radio communications, it sounded as though the rest of us might not be needed at all—just a couple of hikers without lights who'd lost the trail. However, a second potential SAR mission was unfolding at the same time.

And it was that second situation the eight of us responded to, ending up an hour south in Sedona instead of ten minutes away on Mt. Elden. Two stranded mountain bikers had used a cellphone to call for help.

When we rendezvoused with the deputy waiting at Midgley Bridge, he called the subjects and asked them to turn on their headlamps, which we immediately spotted in the distance—little pinpoints of light against the dark backdrop of a mountain. Well, this didn't look like a big deal, really.

Uh-huh.

Victor, our team leader that night who knows the area well, suggested the best course of action would be to hike from the other side of the ridge, from Schenbly Hill Rd. up and over the saddle, and descend to the subjects, then bring them back the way we'd come.

Steve and I had hiked that non-system, or what some call "social," trail, most of which is not on the map, a couple of years ago, and I recalled it being tough to locate in places on the other side of the mountain while fairly easy to follow on the side where tonight's subjects were. Obviously, though, the bikers had strayed quite a distance from the trail. But since I couldn't remember where to access the beginning of the trail on their side of the mountain, I didn't suggest an alternative to Victor's plan. By contrast, the access on Schnebly Hill Rd. is easy to locate because the route begins with a short out-and-back trail that is on the map, and that trailhead has its own parking area. (Hope that makes sense.)

So, the eight of us drove around to Schnebly Hill Road, which apparently hasn't seen any maintenance in years, and arrived at the trailhead about 40 minutes later. It was a rough ride, and I'm surprised none of the three SAR vehicles ended up with at least one flat tire.

Before beginning the hike, Victor divided us into two teams, designating me the leader of Team 1—my first time officially being named a leader. (I had to smile at that. How cool.) I'd communicate with Incident Command back at Midgely Bridge on 1-Baker, while another team member would keep her radio on the SAR frequency for communication between us and Team 2 when necessary. The other two members of Team 1 would keep their radios off for the time being, to preserve the batteries. Then the eight of us started up the trail together.

As we went along, we set out glow sticks in spots that were a bit confusing or might prove to be on the way back. At one point, we had to bushwhack around a stretch where the route would have taken us too close to a fall hazard. Erring on the side of caution as we're always supposed to, we picked our way through some cactus, coming back to the trail in a safer spot to continue the traverse.

Soon, we ascended an open slickrock face to a flat area not far from the saddle. At that point, our two teams split up. Mine would stay put while Team 2 went up and over. Team 1 would stand by in case backup was needed and eventually take over when the subjects were retrieved. They'd be handed off to us for the descent to the vehicles.
 

Maybe that second part—the hand-off—was merely to make my team feel more useful, but there really was no need for all eight of us to continue to the subjects, especially because the going would get rough off-trail. So, my group of four made ourselves comfortable and enjoyed a beautiful, still night filled with moonlight and shooting stars.

While one of my teammates, new to the unit and rearing to go, was very fidgety and not happy about staying behind, I was quite content. I've learned over time that we all perform a function during a mission, even if we have to sit tight for a while. Sometimes, waiting as backup becomes vitally important. Even searching an area with a low probability of finding a subject, or driving perimeter roads while other team members are searching high-probability areas, is crucial to a mission, even if it means just ruling out, or "clearing," those places. Besides, after not hiking this route for quite some time and my memory of the details being fuzzy, I felt the four team members who continued on were best skilled to deal with a potentially technical situation, especially with it being darker on the other side of the saddle despite the bright moon, in the mountain's shadow.

As it turned out, I'm glad I was on the team who stayed put. Monitoring radio communications between Team 2 and IC, I could hear they were encountering some difficulty. When they left the trail to try to access the subjects, Team 2 soon found themselves in a tricky spot with significant fall hazards. And, in the meantime, the subjects had become moving targets, apparently now trying to self-rescue. Despite phone calls from the deputy and verbal communication between Team 2 and the subjects, shouting back and forth, the two men who'd called for help were not listening to those who were trying to help them.

At that point, Team 2 had gone far enough down the other side in rough terrain that backtracking would have been more difficult than continuing a descent toward Midgley Bridge... with or without the subjects. The fidgeting member of my team kept asking me to call and see if he could go join Team 2 since he's from Sedona and felt he knew the area better than they did. When I refused to make that call, he asked why we shouldn't just go back to the vehicles then. But I felt we should stay where we were until Team 2 or Incident Command instructed us otherwise. We had radio communication, so they'd let us know.

At the same time, I didn't feel it necessary to interrupt Team 2, as they were obviously busy negotiating hazardous terrain. So, I had a wee bit of a tug-of-war, shall we say, with the one teammate who, like every SAR member, will have to get used to taking direction from those with more experience. I got instructions from Victor, and my new teammate would have to live with a few decisions from me. So there.

After listening to Team 2's increasingly frustrated transmissions for quite some time, Victor told IC they'd decided to hunker down and stay put till daylight, when it would be easier to see. They were still in voice contact with the subjects who had by then split up. Meanwhile, my team was instructed to return to the vehicles on Schnebly Hill Rd. and drive back around to IC at Midgely Bridge, where we'd see what our next assignment would be, if any, for this mission. On the hike back to the vehicles, we collected the glow sticks we'd set out on the way up, after first confirming with Victor that his team wouldn't need them.

When we arrived at the bridge more than an hour later, nothing had changed. There was some talk about our Team 1 hiking another trail to try to get close to the subjects from that way, but we and the deputy decided that wasn't such a hot idea. Comparing the location of the subjects and the nearest point on that trail, the distance between the two was significant given the terrain. Instead, we decided to make a run into town for coffee and snacks, then return to IC and wait.

To make a long story a bit shorter, I'll wrap this up by saying that one of the two subjects made his way to the SAR members still in the field. At that point, he just wanted water for himself and his buddy, and SAR gave him what he asked for. Victor then decided to assist the mountain bikers down to the trail my team had briefly considered hiking up, though the two men would have to carry their bikes.

Once on the well-maintained trail, Victor and his two teammates left the subjects to ride or walk their bikes out on their own. Team 2 arrived at the road maybe 10 minutes before the subjects, wet past their knees from the creek crossing. SAR waited until they arrived and were being interviewed by the deputy before we departed for Flagstaff.

After a 10-hour mission that we thought would take less than half that time, we signed out and headed for home just as the sun was coming up.

A Mock Search... And Then Some

It's like following a horse race. Team 1 gives their coordinates to Sergeant D over the radio, and I, listening in, plot those coordinates on my map. Then Team 2 gives their location, then Team 3. Team 2 is in the lead! They're gaining on us! Not that we're moving.

What the heck am I talking about, you ask? Well, I'm sitting near the edge of an alpine meadow, a couple hundred yards above the Kachina Trail. Joe is here, too, reading his thick computer programming textbook. I suggested he bring something to read because I knew we'd be out here a while. We're "lost," you see. Oh, and I have a leg injury, though I'm not really sure which part of which leg is injured. I'll come up with that once we're found.

Sergeant D left an envelope for me at the SAR building yesterday, with "Confidential information for Deb" written on it, sealed with yellow evidence tape. It felt so... official. In the envelope was a copy of the briefing the new unit members and their experienced instructor-members would be given for today's simulated mission. Sergeant D also gave me coordinates for the place where Joe and I should wait ... and wait ... and wait.

The two of us arrived at the trailhead at noon today for our head start and hiked 2.7 miles to this location, following the digital compass on my nine-year-old Magellan GPS. We positioned ourselves a bit farther from the trail than the coordinates indicated, far enough that passers-by wouldn't notice us but close enough that we could keep an eye out for SAR. If they walk by but don't call out or blow a whistle, we're not gonna yell. Heh-heh.

It's a beautiful yet chilly day up here at close to 10,000 feet, and now, at 4:30 p.m., I feel the air getting colder. Joe and I move a bit further into the meadow, to escape the growing shadows creeping our way and soak up what's left of the sunlight.

We're just about midway along the Kachina Trail. One group of searchers started from the western end, where Joe and I parked. Another group began at the Weatherford trailhead on Schultz Pass road, requiring more than a mile of additional hiking to get to the junction at the eastern end of the Kachina Trail. Those two groups are working toward one another, while the third group, who drove in on a Forest Service road, are hiking north, up an old two-track. They should intersect the Kachina Trail not far to the west of our location. It'll be interesting to see (or hear, rather) which way they turn once they get there. And there's now been a fourth team designated, made up of two unit members who parted with one of the original teams and are now heading back to Incident Command because one of them is experiencing some "mountain sickness."

We also know from radio communication that two tracking/trailing search dogs and their handlers are in the field, too. But I guess their noses don't know what—I mean, who—they're sniffing for, because they have no scent article of mine or Joe's. Must be the dogs in training I heard about, belonging to a couple who are new to the unit.

I hear my watch beep: 5:00. And soon I think I hear a distant call. It's faint, but who else besides SAR would be yelling out here? Joe and I listen closely. Yep, that must be them. We let them get closer, until we can clearly hear them calling Joe's name. I give Joe the nod, and he yells back.

And then... silence. A long silence. Joe and I look at each other, puzzled.

We later find out that when Joe called back the first time, the teams, which by then were all within earshot as they closed in on our position and one another at roughly the same time, froze. I could just imagine them all standing there, holding their collective breath, listening as hard as they could. I would have had a giggle-fit watching that.

Joe and I stay mute too. Ha!

Finally, someone breaks the silence and gives another yell. Joe responds, and then—and I'm laughing as I write this—they all start yelling like mad and blowing whistles. Such excitement! Poor Joe, he has to keep calling back and calling back. "Hey!" "Over here!" "Hey!" Meanwhile, I'm just sitting here in the tall grass. I mean, I can't yell, my leg is broken. Yeah, definitely broken. Maybe even a nice icky compound fracture.

Soon, we see search and rescue—two field teams almost at the same time—emerge into the meadow below. They don't spot us right away, though Joe is now standing, waving his arms as he calls back. And now I hear, "There he is! Up there!" And the mass of people and two bounding brown dogs start moving our way. Within about five minutes, I'm being licked and slobbered on (by the dogs, that is), and as the third team catches up and joins the rest, Joe and I are soon surrounded by about 20 people. Gee, such great attention.

They ask me if I'm cold. No, I say. But Al, one of the experienced members along to provide guidance, looks at me sternly and says, "Oh, yes, Yes, you are."

Oh... okay, I'm cold. Very cold. Yes, new members, the subject needs some of your spare clothing. Yeah, that's much better. Am I hungry or thirsty? I look at Al. Nooooo, not hungry or thirsty. I just ate and drank recently, thank you (which is true). And Al tells me I have a fractured right ankle joint. Ouch! A dog just stepped on it. If this were for real, that woulda hurt.

New member Tom, an EMT, uses a SAM splint, bandannas, and two thick sticks to secure my broken ankle. Then I'm plopped into the litter, and Ken gives a demo on patient packaging.

Now, of course, I can't scribble on my notepad, so into past tense I go...

Part of the group heaved me into the air, as others struggled to attach the wheel beneath the litter. After some technical difficulties, we started to roll ... and bounce ... and jolt. It's kinda funny, looking up at all those faces, listening to the jumble of communication amongst people not used to working together and not used to transporting a person in a litter. At the same time, I was rather comfy and could have taken a nap, actually, had I not gotten dumped out, forced to hike on my miraculously healed ankle after everyone had had a turn handling the litter.

By then, the sun had set, and we proceeded single-file to hike out, our headlamps glowing like a moving line of luminaries along the trail. We chatted as we walked, older members and new ones getting to know one another. I heard some SAR stories shared, and everything was hunky-dory... until, boom! Down goes Laura, one of the new recruits. Uh-oh. This time, the ankle injury was real.

Now Tom the EMT wasn't pretending as he evaluated and splinted another ankle. After a very brief, unsuccessful attempt at an assisted walk-out, we got another patient-packaging demonstration. With a about a mile to go to vehicles, we all took turns on the litter, our real patient apologizing along the way. What an unfortunate way to begin a search and rescue career.

At midnight, I finally arrived home, about four hours later than I'd expected.
 

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In my last entry, I'd mentioned how our pagers hadn't gone off in a while, so I was having a premonition things were about let loose. Well, twice in one day, on that same day, it did. Two injured hikers on two mountain trails. Twice, a bunch of us, including a number of new members who'd just received their pagers, responded to the SAR building, anticipating long litter-carries. Twice the missions were 10-22'd, because Guardian medical personnel ended up going in and getting the victims before we arrived. Well, now the new folks know firsthand what "hurry up and go home" means. It happens.

Don't Tell, But...

There's a little training exercise planned for the new members who are just finishing Coconino County's Basic SAR Academy. Their pagers will go off tomorrow—not tellin' when—just like it's a real mission. They'll respond to the SAR building, sign in, sign out radios, load gear, and respond to Incident Command, which will be at the Kachina Trail parking area up on the peaks.

And who will they be lookin' for? Why, li'l ol' me and my teammate, Joe. We'll be sitting out there, all bundled up (it's supposed to be cold and windy, and we'll be at an elevation of over 10,000 feet) with goodies to keep us warm and occupied. We'll bring books and dinner too, because who knows how long we'll be waiting to be found. We'll also have radios so we can eavesdrop on the searchers' progress.

When they eventually find us, one of us is going to require a litter carry. Joe and I will draw straws, arm wrestle, and fight about who gets to be the injured one, but I sure hope I win. I've been a fake patient before, and riding in that litter makes me feel rather icky (meaning nauseous).

This whole mock SAR mission is dependent on the fact that no real mission takes precedence. It's been vewwy, vewwy quiet for a while. In fact, when I returned from a recent trip to Colorado, I was surprised to find I hadn't missed any missions while I was gone. Hm, makes me think the elk poo is about to hit the fan.