Welcoming New Team Members and Saying Goodbye to Another

The annual Basic Search & Rescue Academy is underway, with 18 new members taking classes in skills such as personal safety, map and compass, GPS navigation, ATV operation, and tracking, with a mock search to be held at the end of the two-month training. 

Once students have completed the academy, including two Incident Command System tests, they'll be added to the call-out list and be eligible to respond to missions.

Sadly, as we welcome new members to the Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team, we're also mourning the loss of another, a four-legged team member named Nitro. Nitro, whose nickname was Peedles, was the oldest and most experienced of handler Cindy McArthur's four SAR dogs, and he did his job enthusiastically and with energy till the day before he suddenly succumbed to previously undetected liver cancer earlier this month. Nitro was 10 years old.

A NASAR-certified search dog cross-trained in area search (for live subjects) and HRD (human remains detection), Nitro had three live finds and three HR finds on missions during his career and countless other successful finds during trainings as often as three times per week.

Among his mission finds were a teen on the autism spectrum; an 83-year-old man with dementia who'd been missing for more than 40 hours; the verified location of the scent of human remains in a closet three years after the body had been removed, which led to the killer's arrest; and the location of eigh human bones buried in a pack rat's nest. Earlier this year, Nitro located two lost hikers in the San Francisco Peaks and also found a smear of blood on a pair of pants inside a locked trunk, later determined to be human blood through the use of Luminal by the Coconino Sheriff's Office CSI Team. 

Nitro received the 2005 Search & Rescue Dog of the Year award from the Association of Pet Dog Trainers and, in the same year, the Kingman Police Department Excellence Award for assistance in a homicide case, which he shared with Radar, another of Cindy's search dogs. Nitro also received the Good Gun Foundation Award for Search Dog Unit in 2007.

As Cindy said, "[Nitro] was the best SAR dog any handler could dream for, and I will miss him dearly.  Our SAR unit has lost one of it's most dedicated members."

Having worked with Nitro as Cindy's backer and also as a lost subject for her dogs, I too will miss sweet, loyal Nitro.

******

The search and rescue community recently lost another member of its family, DPS helicopter pilot Matthew Uhl who was killed in a car accident on September 20th when the vehicle he was driving was struck head-on by a Ford Explorer moving at a high rate of speed as the driver may have been attempting to pass other vehicles. Matthew was deceased on scene.

A DPS Pilot since 2006, Matthew Uhl operated the Bell 407 Ranger Air Rescue and was assigned to the DPS Central Air Rescue Unit in Phoenix. At the time of his death, he was en route to cover a shift in Kingman as part of the DPS Western Air Rescue.

On February 20, 2010, Matt Uhl and DPS Officer/Paramedic Eric Tarr rescued three-year-old Victoria Bensch who had been missing for nearly 15 hours after she wandered away from her Cordes Lakes home.

Uhl was also the pilot who flew the short-haul rescue of the severely injured canyoneer in Insomnia Canyon on August 13th that our team participated in. He will be sorely missed.

See DPS Pilot, Two Others, Killed in Head-On Car Wreck

Body Recovery at Bear Canyon Lake

Just catching up on some SAR mission stories from the past few weeks, including a call for the technical rescue team at about 7:30 on a Sunday morning for a body recovery—two, unfortunately—at Bear Canyon Lake in the Forest Lakes area.  I wasn't able to respond to that call, but a teammate of mine filled me in the next day. This is what he said...

"Six Tech Team members showed up, and because there was rain in the forecast, we loaded all the gear in the back of the Suburban instead of the pickup to ensure the rope stayed dry. We were told that an ATV had gone over a cliff, but as with most rescues, the initial information is often unreliable so we weren't sure how this one would unfold.

"We finally turned toward Bear Canyon Lake on a what was initially a decent dirt road, but it deteriorated quickly. When we arrived at the scene, we found a group of Forest Service and fire hotshot personnel and the Medical Examiner vehicle.

"Below us was an approximately 15-foot-deep ravine with a wrecked ATV and the bodies of two young men in their early 20s lying near it. It's always tragic to see young lives ended much too soon, and I could only imagine the pain the families were feeling.

"We realized we could walk to the scene from the edges of the ravine, so with the help of the hotshots, we  transported them up to the road. The Forest Service folks told us this was the 6th fatal ATV accident this year in the Forest Lakes area.

"With our mission complete, we headed back on the dirt road where  the suburban suddenly stopped running. We ended up having to load all the gear into the pickup and left the disabled suburban with [our Coordinator and one team member], who waited for the tow truck. When we arrived back at the building, we were all stiff—not from the mission but from the five-and-a-half-hour drive.

"For us, the mission was complete. For the families of the victims, the agony of their loss was just beginning."

A Training Hike & Abandoned Camp in West Fork Canyon

There are certain places within the county that our team is called to time and time again, and over time, patterns begin to emerge. People tend to get into pickles often in the same places and under similar circumstances. So it's a good idea for those in search and rescue to familiarize themselves with these popular "people-in-pickles" spots, so when we're called upon to go find the lost and assist the injured, we know what we're getting into and where we're going.

I'd never hiked into West Fork Canyon from the top, so this training hike was a good opportunity for me to check it out. Four of us, led by assistant SAR coordinator Dave, who's very familiar with the area from many years of exploring by foot and flying over it as a helicopter medic, would hike and boulder at least 2.5 miles to the junction of West Fork Canyon and Casner Cabin Draw.

This is a place where hikers often go astray when thru-hiking West Fork from below. Many of those hikers don't carry maps and end up going up Casner Cabin Draw instead of West Fork. In Casner Cabin Draw, they come to a choke stone and can go no further. Then they're confused, tired, and darkness overtakes them in the rugged canyon. Eventually, they're reported overdue by a friend or family member when they fail to show up by the expected time (and often much later), and then SAR gets a call-out.

In addition to familiarizing ourselves with the canyon, we had another job to do on this training mission: We'd be investigating an abandoned campsite that had been spotted first by air during an earlier mission and then briefly checked by two SAR volunteers who'd later hiked in that same night to locate five overdue hikers (with no connection to that campsite).

It was a warm morning, but I resisted the urge to zip off the bottom halves of my convertible pants. I knew the canyon would be thick with vegetation, and there would be plenty of blowdowns to crawl under and over. And I was right. Had I been wearing just the shorts, I would have gotten even more scratched up.

The going was slow, not only because of the absence of trail, the countless opportunities to sprain or break an ankle, and the heat, but also because the canyon is so beautiful. We kept stopping to look around and appreciate how pretty it is.

As we hiked further, the canyon narrowed and the walls went higher. Wildflowers were blooming, hummingbirds were buzzing, and one pretty snake (non-poisonous) slithered past us after we disturbed its snooze in the shade of a rock. We saw bear scat but no bear. Dave told us about hiking this canyon with his dad when he was a boy. He also told us how he and a friend carried out (without a litter, so literally carried) another friend who became seriously ill on their hike.

Some pics and then more story...

As we went, we'd periodically pause to guess where on our topographic maps we were. We'd all look around at the terrain and compare it to the contours on the map, then point out our guesses to Dave, who'd guess as well. Then I'd map the coordinates from my GPS and see who'd come closest. It was a good exercise and a fun challenge. It was also fun to get it right!

After maneuvering our way through a section of large boulders, we came to the junction of the two canyons, also the location of the abandoned campsite. To me, it looked as if a party of as many as three people had decided, hey, let's try this backpacking thing, gone to Walmart and bought tents, sleeping pads, and other not-so-pricy gear, some of which was more suited for car-camping than backpacking, and set off on their first overnight hike. Then, after struggling through that rugged canyon with all that stuff on their backs, including some new clothes and new shoes, decided the next morning that all that schlepping wasn't as fun as they'd expected. So, they took only the bare minimum for the hike out and left the rest in the canyon. They'd left yucky garbage, deodorant, and cologne behind, too.

We interrupt this story for more pics...

We packed out their trash, usable and not.

At that point, we considered whether to add about 2.5 more miles to our already five-mile round-trip hike to go up Casner Cabin Draw to the choke stone. But the thunder was rumbling loudly by then, and it was already later than we'd anticipated, so we decided to head back.

It was a great day and a useful reconnaissance mission. The next time we get a call for overdue hikers in West Fork, I'll know more than just the first few easy miles from the bottom.

And in other Coconino County Search and Rescue news...

I received a mission report from my teammate, who responded to the call for a litter evacuation of an injured hiker on the Humphreys Trail. He wrote:

"I left at 6:30 am this morning to get a backpacking permit at the Grand Canyon, then proceeded to do a 5-mile day hike on the Hermit trail. About 30 minutes after I got back, there was the call-out for the Humphreys litter carry. I responded directly to Snow Bowl [with another team member], and we both were transported by the Snow Bowl UTV to the trailhead. By this time, [a second call-out was made]. We arrived at the patient, and eight rescuers including a young hiker who volunteered to help, and Flag Fire and Guardian personnel 200 yards beyond the sign-in box. [The patient] was already packaged in their litter and was in obvious pain with an injured arm and ankle due to a fall. I called [our coordinator], who had not yet arrived on scene, and let him know we had it covered, and we slowly brought [the patient] down, stopping to administer Morphine 3 times. We loaded her on the back of the Snowbowl UTV and steadied the litter as it drove down slowly. When we got back to the parking lot, there were more than 6 SAR members waiting.  Fortunately it was a short rescue, because I was pretty worn out."

An Out-of-County Search: Coco SAR Assists Apache County

It was late on the night of our monthly general SAR meeting when our coordinator announced that Apache County was requesting our team's assistance with the search for a missing hiker. They were asking us to respond to their Incident Command the next morning for a two-day stay.

I looked across the room at Cindy, our K9 handler, with the "ya wanna?" question on my face. We'd talked about this search a few days earlier, when she'd gotten a call about it—a little advance notice that Apache County would probably be asking for her to bring her dogs, all four of which are NASAR-certified and cross-trained in area search (for live subjects) and human remains detection.

I needed to make sure I had someone to watch my own (non-SAR) dog, and I'd had other things I was planning to do in the next couple of days, but I was willing to go if she was. I'd go along as Cindy's backer.

So, we decided to do it. The two of us, four rather large dogs (at least, they seem large when they're all in the same vehicle), and a bunch of gear piled into Cindy's SUV the next morning and headed southeast. This was an area Cindy knew well from her childhood, but I'd only passed through a couple of times.

******

Helping with a SAR mission in a different county is an interesting experience. It's difficult, if not altogether impossible, to go without expectations of how a search will be carried out based on your experience with your own team and the norms you're used to. (Coconino County is fortunate, by the way, to have a full-time SAR coordinator. Most counties do not.) As a searcher, though, you report to whomever is in charge. If asked for, you give your two cents—your ideas and suggestions—and you get your assignment. Then you carry out that assignment to the best of your ability. And that's what Cindy and I and four hard-working air-scenting golden retrievers did.

It was a stormy day, and our assignment took us up to 11,400 feet on the open summit of Mt. Baldy, Arizona's second highest peak, and into the thick trees on the extremely steep slopes surrounding the ridge. I felt the adrenaline rush through my veins each time the thunder seemed to be coming back our way. The rain fell steadily, and we and the dogs were soon soaked and stayed that way for the duration. It was cold up there.

Cindy and her four search dogs near the summit of Mt. Baldy

Searching for scent along the treeline on the Mt. Baldy ridge

Searching the ridge after the thunderstorm moved off

We were searching for Frank Carl Patane, 60, from Tucson. Mr. Patane had disappeared on August 11th, after signing the Mt. Baldy trailhead register at 7:30 that morning. His vehicle was found at the trailhead a couple of days later by a deputy, when the hotel staff where Mr. Patane had been staying reported that he hadn't returned after saying he was going to hike that mountain.

Family members described Frank as an avid day-hiker who was inexperienced as a camper. He'd had surgery for a detached retina a month before this solo hike. They were concerned that his eyesight may have become an issue.

On the day Mr. Patane signed the register, a severe storm hit the area at roughly 11:30 a.m., an hour after another party signed that same trail register. They'd turned back due to the weather, having seen no sign of the man we were searching for.

The search continued intensely for 17 days, with multiple counties responding—ground-pounders, K9 teams, ATV teams, and mounted units. No clues were found.

The "chow truck," feeding volunteers from many counties during the search

Basic information on the missing person on the side of the Command Trailer

Incident Command / Base Camp

On our second day assisting with the search, Cindy and I were joined by another teammate from Coconino County. We grid-searched a large meadow with a narrow, muddy creek running through it, as well as a wooded area and some unoccupied buildings (one of which was heavily guarded by wasps) as thunder continued to rumble.

We search again the next day.

Cindy and the dogs and another backer (I couldn't go) returned to Apache County a second time the following weekend. They searched for two days during the final big push to locate Mr. Patane. Last I heard—and I've found nothing online to indicate otherwise—no clues have yet to be found.

Here's another news article about the search, with a photos of Frank Carl Patane: Authorities Continue Search for Missing Hiker; More K9 Search Teams Join the Effort

An Extreme, Multi-Agency Technical Rescue

Photo courtesy of R. Marlatt

First an overview and then some personal comments about this mission, which may be one of the most technically difficult rescues our team has ever faced...

On Saturday, August 13t, 36-year-old Mike from Payson, Arizona, was canyoneering with several friends in Insomnia Canyon, a tributary of West Fork near Sedona. Mike was on the final 150 feet of a 350-foot rappel when he lost control, picking up speed, and fell about 100 feet. He struck a rock on the way down and then fell another 40 feet, ending up a total of 1,800 feet below the rim with multiple injuries. Two of his friends continued down canyon and made the long trip out to get help, while two others remained behind with Mike.

Once emergency services were notified of the accident, more than 25 rescuers from multiple agencies responded, including Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue, Sedona Fire District, Flagstaff Fire Department, Guardian Medical Transport, Department of Public Safety helicopters out of Kingman and Phoenix, and Native Air.

Two of the volunteers from search and rescue had to make eight rappels and three swims to reach the patient late Saturday night and remained with him, rendering medical care while other rescuers rappelled with the Stokes litter, additional medical equipment, and gear for setting up lowering and raising systems and main and belay lines. About 2,600 feet of rope was needed.

An attempt by a DPS helicopter crew was made at first light on Sunday to short haul the patient from his original location, but the slot canyon was too tight for the aircraft. So the patient was then raised by rescuers 800 feet to a ledge where he could be accessed for the short haul, which took place at 1 p.m. at Sunday, at least 24-hours after he'd fallen. Two rescuers accompanied the patient on the raise, while two others continued down canyon with the patient's uninjured friends. They had at least a couple more rappels ahead of them and then a lengthy hike out. They were met en route by fire personnel, who'd hiked in from the Call of the Canyon trailhead to assist them with carrying gear after their exhausting time in the canyon.

After the patient was removed from the canyon and flown to a hospital in Phoenix, where he's since been upgraded from critical to serious condition, came the arduous task for the rescuers of getting themselves and their gear out of the canyon, with a 1,000-foot elevation difference between their location and the rim. This involved ascending ropes one by one, hauling up both their own body weight and heavy gear with their spent muscles.

Several rescuers were able to make the difficult climb, but given the stormy monsoon weather that was moving in, the time of day, and their extreme exhaustion, six of the remaining rescuers were short hauled to the rim by DPS. DPS also assisted with this rescue by lowering a cargo net full of fluids to the rescuers and hauling off two nets full of gear.

Rescue personnel were also assisted by volunteer members of Coconino County C.E.R.T. (Community Emergency Response Team), who drove our weary group back to Flagstaff. Their help was much needed and appreciated.

Regarding the patient...

In a comment on a Hiking Examiner article, Mike's mother writes, "He did break both his heels, and his pelvis in six places. He also fractured his spine and had internal bleeding. The internal bleeding seems to have stopped. He will need to have more surgeries and procedures and it will be at least 3 months before he is able to walk again."

And now for some personal comments...

I'm so proud to be a member of this team and so proud of my teammates, who went all out on this mission at significant personal risk. Controlled risk, yes, and with as much attention to safety as possible, but no tech rescue is without risk, of course. And this one was a doozy.

Yes, I was on this mission, and I did assist, but my role was minimal compared to my teammates. I say that because, after descending approximately 500 feet below the rim on a handline (using a Prusik), when I came to the ledge at the start of the next 500-foot rappel, I made the decision that that's where I needed to stop. It wasn't an easy decision, and I agonized about it throughout the night as each of my teammates loaded up with gear in addition to their own packs, attached their self-belays to the second rope and their rappel devices, and one-by-one descended through the thick manzanita, their headlamps soon disappearing from my view. It seemed to take a very long time until the one on rappel would announce over the radio that he was off rappel and off belay. One said this was the nastiest rappel he'd ever experienced.

A 500-foot rappel. With heavy gear. With a self-belay. Through the brush and other difficulties. Was I ready for that? What would happen if I ran into trouble partway down? On my own. I didn't really have enough rope time under my belt—not with all that gear, all that distance—I thought to myself.  And if things didn't go right, I was putting not only myself but my team and, ultimately, the man we were there to rescue at even greater risk. No, I decided, I wasn't going down any further.

So, the best I could do to help was go up and down the hand line with equipment and help with communication and whatever else might be called for up near the top.

Of course, this mission wasn't about me whatsoever, and I'm sure no one was really thinking about me but me. And I had to make a decision about my own limitations, regardless of the fact that more hands were sorely needed far below. Like I said, it was a very tough call for me. But I'll be continuing to gain experience on the rope, rappelling and ascending with my pack and extra gear, passing knots in both directions... and with someone else belaying me, at least at first. Eventually, I'll be ready.

And in the interest of not ending on a note about me, I want to reiterate what an awesome job Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue technical team did, along with all other responding agencies. You saved a life in really difficult conditions. You rock!

A Vision Quest Gone Bad?

That's what the note said that 43-year-old Michael Snarski of Thornton, Colorado, had left on his dashboard—that he was not lost; he was on a vision quest. The note was dated 7/24.

Two weeks later, someone reported to the Sheriff's office that the car was still there, parked at a pull-out about 20 miles south of Williams, AZ. That's when detectives asked for our K9 team, trained in human remains (HR) detection, to come to the site and check the vehicle. They'd smelled what could have been an intermittent, faint "odor of death," they said. Our dog handler, Cindy, then contacted me and another team member, often her backers on other missions, to accompany her and her four NASAR-certified golden retrievers.

All four dogs independently alerted on the trunk, but my teammates and I didn't smell anything in the air or coming from the car. Still, each dog gave an enthusiastic, distinct alert, a couple of them becoming what I'd call frustrated at not being able to get to the source of the smell, digging at the ground by the trunk and jumping up on the vehicle with their front legs.

A deputy called his boss for permission to have the vehicle unlocked and the trunk opened. Permission was granted, and we all waited, wondering what we'd find inside.

Once the trunk was opened, however, there was no visible evidence of human decomposition and no odor—or at least none detectable by our human noses. The dogs were again brought back to the car, one by one, and each now alerted on a specific area of the trunk.

"Show me," Cindy would say when they each alerted. And each dog jumped back up and touched the same spot inside the trunk with their paws and noses. Something related to human decomposition was there, but whatever it was, we couldn't see it, and we were not allowed to touch the numerous items in the trunk to look beneath them.

Later, after the vehicle was towed and law enforcement searched it, it was discovered that the dogs had indeed found something: a spot of blood about the size of nickel on a pair of pants.

Following more investigation, an extensive area search was planned. SAR volunteers from both Coconino and Yavapai Counties were called, including K9, ground, and mounted units. I'm sure everyone was expecting this would likely be a long, tedious search through difficult terrain. Even the command trailer was being brought out to the site.

K9 units arrived at the search area at first light, to begin while the air was still cool and the light winds would still be coming up out of nearby Bear Canyon. That way, the cross-trained dogs would be able to detect human scent if the missing person were down in that canyon. The wind would (and did) soon change direction as the sun rose, so we wanted to search the rim as soon as possible.

But the search didn't last long. As Cindy and I slowly made our way along the rim with two of her dogs, picking through thick manzanita over rocks and other pinion–juniper forest debris and one lethargic snake, another K9 team discovered Michael Snarski's body not far from the road.

He was sitting on a blanket, up against a tree, with full water bottles and a couple of uneaten, by then blackened bananas at his side. Facing west toward what may have been the sinking sun on his final day, he still had his sunglasses on. This is the last view Michael would have seen but without all of the SAR vehicles. His car had been parked where ours now were:

Remember the Telephone Game?

Sometimes search and rescue is a little like that game I played at camp when I was a kid. Someone would start out with a couple of sentences and whisper them into the ear of the next kid in line. That kid would then whisper to the next and so on, until the message reached the last person and they announced the message. Then it was compared to the original message, and nearly every time, it was at least a little, if not very, different.

I don't know the chain of communication in this latest SAR case, but by the time I saw the Facebook post by a local newsperson who listens to and reports on scanner traffic, it was "MAJOR MEDICAL: 3 APS employees have fallen from a ledge while working on a power box on Mt. Elden." I began changing into my mission clothes immediately.

Soon afterward, SAR was actually called, and I headed right out. This was going to be a long, difficult mission, I thought, evacuating three injured patients off that rugged mountain. Apparently, they were not on or near a trail.

Soon, nine of our volunteers rendezvoused with Flagstaff Fire Department personnel at the base of Mt. Elden along the gas pipeline trail. Two of our members, who had responded directly to the mountain while the rest of us loaded Stokes litters and other technical rescue equipment, climbed up to the power company workers, who were visible from below. There were actually seven of them up there.

When the rest of the responding SAR members arrived on scene, we and Flag Fire were informed that everyone on the mountain was mobile and could be walked down. What had happened to the injuries I'd read about online—a leg injury, a foot injury, and one complaining of "severe chest and stomach pains?"

Apparently, there was one guy with a reoccurring bad knee that was bothering him today but no leg injury. There was no evidence of a foot injury that I was aware of, and I was told the chest and stomach pains had been cramps from dehydration, relieved by the water and Gatorade brought up to them by the first responders on scene.

Those of us preparing to climb up were asked to bring mountain rope and other gear to rig some safety handlines as a precaution during the bouldering left to be done to reach the bottom. Some of the APS workers were tired and, though they'd been rehydrated, might be at greater risk of tripping and falling on shaky legs. We also brought extra helmets and headlamps in case it got dark before everyone was down.

In the end, the mission went smoothly, and all were in good spirits and good shape. No one requested or wanted medical attention.

From what I heard, the APS workers had, earlier that morning, left a couple of their vehicles at the base of the mountain, then carpooled to the summit. They were, as one man put it, on a "reconnaissance mission" to scope out an electrical line that was going to be built (or rebuilt maybe). "It wasn't one of the smartest things we've ever done," he said.

I'm not sure what exactly happened up there, but they didn't seem prepared—physically or otherwise—for a day on the mountain. I believe several of the workers had made it down or most of the way down to their vehicles at the bottom but had then gone back up to assist the other three. If there had been any kind of fall, I didn't hear anyone mention it. Who knows? Just glad it all worked out well and with daylight to spare.

Searching for Those Who Don't Want to Be Found

I could feel the sweat dripping down my neck and back and occasionally off the tip of my nose. It was late at night, but Oak Creek Canyon was holding in the heat and monsoon season humidity. I turned off my headlamp as my partner and I stopped for a brief rest, and in the absence of a moon, couldn't see the drop-off to my right.

We each called one of the missing boys' names. As we'd expected, there was no response from the darkness.

These were not "just" missing teenagers, though—they were runaways. Earlier that day, they'd taken off from some sort of camp for troubled or in-trouble youth, scrambling up a very steep slope, toward what we didn't know. Did they?

Randy and I picked up some human tracks, off-trail, soon after we'd arrived at our assigned search area along Route 89A in Oak Creek Canyon. But we lost those tracks amongst the thick pine needles and game trails partway up the calf-burning slope. We later wondered if the boys had stopped and hidden until the coast was clear, then gone back down to the road.

Picking and slipping our way back down ourselves, I stopped frequently to pull bits of forest debris out of the palms of my hands. Mental note: Wear my work gloves when doing stuff like this.

When we got to our vehicle, we drove down the road (up and down, actually, until we found the nondescript trailhead we were looking for) and headed up the Thomas Trail to the rim, calling and searching up-slope and down with our headlamps. We needed to be sure that the boys, though they had intentionally run away, hadn't gotten themselves into a bad situation —cliffed out, for example, or injured—in the process.

Meanwhile, other ground teams were searching by ATV and UTV up on the rim. Another pair of searchers was hiking the Telephone Trail, parallel to ours, maybe a mile away. All reported negative contact.

Before Randy and I had hiked back to the bottom of the canyon, we contacted Incident Command (IC) and found out that our coordinator had gone further down 89A to assist with a multiple fatality, head-on collision near Grasshopper Point and Midgley Bridge. Earlier, he had asked us to look closely for sign (footprints or other clues) at the top of the trail, but we saw nothing of interest around Thomas Point.

About an hour later, we slipped our sweaty packs off our sweaty backs. Randy then called IC on the radio for our next assignment.

"You can return to Flagstaff," our coordinator told us. "The subjects have been located."

Back at the SAR building close to midnight, we learned that a family member had contacted law enforcement and said the boys were safe... somewhere.

*******

Earlier last week, our SAR team responded to a call to search for a missing suicidal female. We were given the description of her vehicle, and our search area was based on information from a cellphone ping from her most recent call. We were instructed to contact Incident Command if we located the woman and/or her vehicle but not to approach. She was eventually located in that vehicle, alive but in need of medical assistance.

*******

Recent SAR Stories News posts:

New Search and Rescue Reading and Ongoing Searches

Search and Rescue Reading and Writing

The Mountain Locator Unit and Other Emergency Signaling Devices

Search and Rescue Community Outreach

This past week, members of the Coconino County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team visited the kids at Pinewood Camp in Munds Park for the second time, teaching them about SAR, the ten essentials (gear), map and compass and a little alternative navigation, how to NOT get lost and what to do if they do get lost, and a bit of backcountry patient care and litter evacuation. A good time was had by team members and campers alike.

Fourteen kids participated in the program, ranging in age from seven to 14. During the initial overview of what search and rescue is all about, there were lots of questions—bear encounters was a theme that kept coming up—and requests for SAR stories from the area.

After a few stories, we divided the kids into two groups and had some fun with navigation, equipment, and hands-on simulated patient evacuation with the backboard and Stokes litter.

Here, Pete does show-and-tell with the ten essentials from his backpack...

Meanwhile, Al and Dave teach some navigation to the other half of the group....

Next, we did a bit of pretend SAR. In this photo, the injured subject has been located and packaged in the litter...

The kids help Bob, Pete, and me evacuate our patient (who was a very enthusiastic actress)...

After the groups swapped places and had a chance to do everything we'd planned, we did a little impromptu technical rescue demonstration with an imaginary cliff...

After we wrapped up and the campers left for lunch, the camp host said it had gone really well and the kids must have had a great time because they didn't even once ask about their usual snack break. We were then invited back for next summer.

One of the ongoing requirements for being a member team of the Mountain Rescue Association is doing community outreach and P-SAR, so we'll be doing more presentations and interactive programs in the future, for both children and adults.

CoCo SAR News

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

From a recent media release from the office of Sheriff Bill Pribil:

During the June meeting of the International Mountain Rescue Association (MRA), held in Eagle Colorado, the Coconino County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Technical Rescue Team received full accreditation as a certified member of MRA. The MRA was established in 1959 at Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood, Oregon, making it the oldest Search and Rescue association in the United States.

The MRA is an organization of teams dedicated to saving lives through rescue and mountain safety education. The goal of MRA is to improve the quality, availability, and safety of mountain search and rescue. With over ninety government authorized units, the MRA has grown to become the critical mountain search and rescue resource in the United States.

The highly respected Mountain Rescue Association accredits teams involved in mountain rescue and has very high standards for performance in the areas of wilderness search, technical rock rescue, and snow and ice rescue. A team applying for full accreditation must pass an evaluation in each of those disciplines. Arizona lies within the Mountain Rescue Association’s Desert Mountain Region along with the state of Nevada. Within the Desert Mountain Region there are only three other fully accredited teams including the Southern Arizona Rescue Association, Central Arizona Mountain Rescue Association, and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Search and Rescue Unit.
 
On March 6th and 7th the Coconino County Sheriff’s Technical Rescue Team completed the Snow and Ice accreditation exam. The team was evaluated on winter rescue techniques. The evaluation included a field exercise in which an avalanche with three victims was simulated. The team was observed in the field by evaluators from the Southern Arizona Rescue Association, Central Arizona Mountain Rescue Association, and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The team's knowledge of over the snow travel, snow anchors, avalanche safety, winter survival techniques, winter rescue pre-plans, wilderness medical considerations and patient transport, and winter rescue equipment use was tested in the scenario.

With this last of three evaluations completed the Coconino County Sheriff’s Technical Rescue Team achieved accreditation in the three disciplines required for full accreditation.  The Wilderness Search accreditation was passed in August 2010 and the Technical Rock Rescue accreditation was passed in October 2010.  Coconino County Sheriff Bill Pribil said, “The Sheriff’s Office and the residents of Coconino County are truly blessed to have more than one hundred dedicated volunteers who spend countless hours training on an annual basis and who are willing to place themselves in harms way by venturing into hazardous terrain or inclement weather conditions to help there fellow man or woman.”

In other CoCo SAR news...

Yesterday, as I was listening to the scanner, I heard about an injured hiker on Mt. Elden. At first, SAR was put on standby by Flagstaff Fire Department, who were the first on scene and taking over incident command.

Once Flag Fire personnel and Guardian medics reached the patient, who'd suffered a head wound with loss of consciousness on the Elden Lookout Trail, and packaged her in a litter, they did request SAR assistance. Team members responded directly to the trailhead and hiked up to rendezvous with the evacuation team already on their way down, providing extra hands to relieve those who needed a break on the rugged carry-out. (I was unable to respond due to other commitments.)

Also, on July 27th, SAR volunteers, myself included, will be giving a P-SAR (preventative search and rescue) presentation at Pinewood Camp. We'll be working with kids ranging in age from 4 to 14 and will give them an introduction to SAR (what it's all about), teach them how to NOT get lost, what to do if they do get lost, basic map and compass use, and some hands-on show-and-tell about equipment (the ten essentials). We'll make the three-hour program as interactive as possible and are currently working on a plan for the afternoon.

Coconino County SAR members also gave a presentation on July 20th at a local church.

I'm told that interviews for prospective team members will begin shortly. Following interviews, new volunteers will take part in the Basic Search and Rescue Academy beginning this September, learning skills such as map and compass, GPS navigation, man-tracking, ATV operation, backcountry preparedness and safety, ICS (the Incident Command System) and more. Upon completion of the academy, new members will be put on the call-out roster and be able to respond to missions and ongoing training. If you're interested in becoming a search and rescue volunteer with Coconino County, you can fill out an application with the sheriff's department.

Way Over The Edge -- A Technical Recovery Mission

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

Do you know how heavy 900 feet of half-inch rope is?

Neither do I, exactly. At least, not in actual pounds. But I've felt how heavy it is as I've tried to belay someone on the end of it. Actually, at the point where a stronger teammate took over, when my arms were starting to shake and the sweat was dripping off my chin—it was about 100 degrees out there under the desert sun—there was far less than 900 feet of rope already over the edge.

When my hands were free of the tandem prusik belay, I moved over to the main line and attached another rope to the 600-footer we were quickly using up (I tied the standard double fisherman's knot to join the two) and then maneuvered through the knot-passing process when the time came.

And down, down, down our teammate went over the edge of the 1,100-foot cliff at Horseshoe Bend, retrieving evidence. That had been our assignment for the day: to retrieve some items that had been spotted from the rim, believed to belong to a missing person. But as that task was being carried out, things changed when our teammate detected something more than just evidence. It was intermittent and faint at first, so down, down, down we lowered him, communicating via radio until he found the human remains.

As physically demanding, hot, and uncomfortable as the task sometimes was for those of us up on top, we knew our teammate, who was on his own below the rim, had the most difficult job of all... in more ways than one. Those of us tending to his lifelines from above frequently commented amongst ourselves about the long, grim task he was faced with.

Originally, the mission was expected to be fairly brief and wrapped up by noon. As it turned out, we didn't get back to Flagstaff until after 9 p.m. But we were glad to help bring closure to that search and that family.

Here are some photos from that day's long technical recovery mission near Page, Arizona...

The tech gear is loaded and ready.

 

An NPS ranger shows my teammate some of the visible evidence below.

 

 

We use the truck as an anchor for the main and belay lines.

Randy works the edge, keeping an eye on our teammate below and communicating with him.

The DPS helicopter drops a cargo net to our teammate for the recovery.

The helicopter moves closer to the cliff and our teammate's location.

Rather than raise Joel back up 900 feet, he's short-hauled to the rim.

In other Coconino County SAR news...

From July 5th: Another find for the SAR dogs

I received this mission report from Cindy, the K9 handler:

"Last night at 2030 hours, the dogs were called out for a search on the San Francisco Peaks off the Weatherford Trail.  We deployed from the center section of the trail, with the assignment of ascending to the summit starting at 2200 hours (appx 10,000'-11,000' elevation). 

"After 3 miles and 1.5 hours of hiking, all 4 of my search dogs started to show alert signals telling me they were working scent.  Each time they came to a specific point in the switchbacks we were hiking during our ascent, they would all begin to work up in elevation off trail then return to the trail.  From this behavior, I was able to inform the strike team that I expected the subjects to be above us directly each time the dogs began to show their alert behaviors. 

"Just another 2 switchbacks up, they all left the trail in a beeline straight up an extremely steep grade, cutting the next switchback entirely, directly to the subjects and gave simultaneous final responses.  Both of the subjects were cold, shivering and wet from the light rain but, after some warming and a change of clothes, they both walked out with our strike team's assistance.  They had no food, water, rain gear and the light they had was from their i-phone."