Lost & Found: Reports from the Field

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Outside Magazine February 2002

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Lost & Found: Reports from the Field
Burning ropes, 400-foot free falls, illicit drug use, and other scary (but true!) tales (and barroom-worthy scuttlebutt) from the veterans who were there.
By Rob Story

1. STAR SEARCH
When an early-September blizzard left five climbers missing on Wyoming's 13,770-foot Grand Teton, park rangers Renny Jackson and James "Woody" Woodmencey slogged up 5,000 feet, breaking trail in knee-deep snowdrifts. They reached the Lower Saddle at 11,600 feet, and, faced with 100 mph gusts, they settled into a crude hut, certain that the next morning's mission would be a body recovery. That is, until Woodmencey stepped outside to shine a beacon for a second team of rescuers who were scheduled to meet them at the saddle. Glancing upward, he thought he saw a star above the peak. "Being a meteorologist," quips Jackson, "Woody determined it was not where a star should be. He flashed his light up, and got a blinking response."

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More of Rob Story's Reports from the Field, as told by the SAR veterans who were there. From body recovery and less-than-helpful searchees to celebrity rescues and hunting for nonexistent victims.

After the other team arrived, with high winds still pummeling the mountain, the rangers crossed into the icy Wall Street Couloir, where they established voice contact with one of the climbers. By that time, another victim had already skidded over the edge and died far below, and as the rangers moved upward, they unknowingly passed two corpses lying in hypothermic repose. The rescuers discovered Paul Johnson perched on a cliff band and Greg Findley, who'd shined the headlamp, 165 feet below him. They raised Findley to the cliff band and all six spent the night there before descending on ice-covered ropes to the Lower Saddle, where a helicopter picked them up. "I was worried about Findley," says Jackson. "But he was doing OK for a guy who was encrusted in snow and ice."

2. THE LAZARUS PRINCIPLE
"Our team once spent six days looking for a 69-year-old woman on Mount of the Holy Cross, Colorado. She'd gotten separated from her group and while she was moving through a boulder field, she'd slipped and fallen 70 feet. The temperature dropped into the twenties each night, and after six days the rescue squad assumed the worst. I told the sheriff to cancel the search, and I was walking toward the briefing room to tell the woman's family that she was gone when I got a call: The last helicopter searcher had seen a flash of color on the mountainside. The semiconscious woman rolled over at the exact moment that the helicopter flew past, and her arm dropped from behind a boulder and into the open, so that the red sleeve of her parka was visible. We'd been over that area three or four times, had search dogs within 50 feet of her, and we'd never had any indication of her. Now I never give up on searches." —TIM COCHRANE, VAIL MOUNTAIN RESCUE GROUP

3. MURPHY'S LAWYERS
One morning, while hanging out in his Yosemite Valley cabin, ranger Butch Farabee heard two people screaming for help in the mountains above. A climber had fallen while rapelling on Glacier Point Apron—a 300-foot 5.6 route on the south side of the Valley—and was now stuck (one broken collarbone later) with his girlfriend on a ledge the size of a kitchen table. After spotting the two with his telescope—which "was strong enough that you could read someone's underwear label from a mile away"—Farabee teamed up with Yosemite climbing legend Ron Kauk. The pair was lowered by helicopter to the Apron; then they rappelled down to the climbers. Says Farabee, "I was strapping up the guy's shoulder when we got a radio call: 'Do you know there's a fire above you?'" The victims hadn't put out the fire from their bivy the night before and the helicopter had stirred up the embers. Farabee worried that the safety ropes were in danger of burning. The helicopter returned to attempt a longline rescue, but it was too windy for the pilot to get close enough to them without driving a rotor blade into the cliff. Farabee and Kauk had no choice but to jumar up the route to the ledge below the fire and haul up the victims, moving quickly before the fire got out of control. They made it to the top of the Apron and were flown down to Yosemite Valley. "There were 300 people there clapping for us," says Farabee, "which, of course, is a great way to end a rescue."

4.GRANNY ON THE LAM
"I once tracked a woman in Joshua Tree. She'd started hiking with her grown grandchildren, gotten tired, and turned around. But when her family returned to the campground, she wasn't there. From her point last seen, I cut for signs and eventually found the place where she veered off the trail. By examining her footprints, I could see where she stopped and adjusted her stance, where she looked at a barrel cactus that'd been busted by bighorn sheep, and where she watched a phainopepla bird eat mistletoe berries. I began calling her Grandma. It's good for a tracker to establish a cognitive closeness to the subject. I could tell within a few paces where she was lost: Her prints became frantic. I saw where she sat down and drummed her fingers on the ground. I could clearly see her confidence level eroding. She'd forgotten she'd crossed into another canyon instead of turning back. Several hours later, I got a radio call that she'd found the road and had hitched to the visitor center. She was fine, despite doing the very worst thing for a lost person to do: keep moving. We'd intimately shared a path for a few hours, yet never met." —HANNAH NYALA, FORMER NATIONAL PARK SERVICE TRACKER

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