HikeArizona.COM

This is taken from this mornings Morning Report from the National Park Service...my immediate thought was 'could it happen to one of the many HAZ hikers?


02-124 - Canyonlands NP (AZ) - Search and Rescue

At 6 a.m. on April 18th, Glen Sherrill, district ranger for the park's Maze
District, received a request from the Wayne County Sheriff's Office for
assistance in a search for three overdue hikers. Sherrill called the wife
of one of the hikers and found that the trio had gotten canyoneering route
information from a web site (http://www.climb-utah.com) and that they'd
mentioned a location called Leprechaun Canyon. Sherrill relayed this
information to the sheriff's office, then called Shane Burrows, the web
site owner, and obtained the password to gain access to the route
descriptions and maps from the site's 'Select Circle of Few' section.
Sheriff's deputies found the missing party's vehicle parked at the
Leprechaun Canyon trailhead along Utah Highway 95 south of Hanksville and
asked Sherrill's assistance in conducting the search. At 1 p.m., Sherrill
and two Wayne County SAR volunteers headed into the search area. Within an
hour, they'd made voice contact with the three hikers. A Utah DPS
helicopter arrived shortly thereafter and began ferrying other rescuers to
the scene. The hikers had reached a point in the slot canyon where they
could go no further downstream. They couldn't return up the canyon, either,
because they'd pulled their rope down after them. While trying to climb out
of the slot, one of the hikers slipped and fell about 40 feet, suffering a
fractured skull and other injuries. Since there were no natural anchors on
the slickrock. Sherrill set bolts for rappelling and a possible litter
raising. County EMT's then descended and provided treatment to the injured
hiker. At 5 p.m., a Life Flight EMS helicopter from Salt Lake City arrived
on scene. The helicopter's scoop litter was lowered to the rescuers in the
canyon, and they began the difficult task of moving the patient 40 feet up
the slot to the best point for retrieval. The two uninjured hikers ascended
the rappel ropes. The Life Flight crew dropped their short-haul rescuer
into the slot at 6 p.m. and he rigged up the stretcher. It turned out that
the slot was too narrow to accommodate both the rescuer and the litter, so
the litter had to be raised without a rescuer alongside. Rescuers on the
ground stabilized the stretcher with a belay line. Given the nature of the
terrain, this was a high-risk operation for both the helicopter crew and
the ground crew, as the pilot had to hover for a long time with his rotors
just a few feet from the wall of the canyon. The patient was lowered to the
bench after being extracted from the canyon, then transferred to the
helicopter and flown to Salt Lake City. He was admitted in critical
condition, but his condition was upgraded to 'serious' on April 21st. The
operation involved about 20 people from the Wayne and Garfield county SAR
teams, the counties sheriffs' offices, and Arizona DPS and Life Flight
helicopters. The 'Select Circle of Few' canyoneering routes are mostly in
or near Zion NP, the Hite area of Glen Canyon NRA, and the Moab area.
[Peter C. Fitzmaurice, CR, CANY, 4/23]

Thanks for posting this news item! We're posting this tiny note simply to bring this forum topic back up to the 'top of the list' so that others will be encouraged to read it. We hope other HAZ members reply to this topic so that this particular news report stays at the 'top of the list' for awhile so that it will get 'maximized readership.'

Having spent 5 months last summer in Utah's Garfield County, we know first hand just how strapped this particular county is on Search and Rescue resources. You really wouldn't believe all of the various kinds of trouble people get themselves into in that wild country. The costs of Search and Rescue missions there are relatively enormous in proportion to the County's available resources. Not only that but most of the SAR people are volunteers and they have to leave their businesses to participate in a SAR mission. So there's a double economic whammy, one on the meager county budget and one on the bottom line of the individual business person. Garfield County has 5,700 sqare miles and less than 5,000 people! Wayne's 'people per sq. mile' is even less. If the county seat, Loa, has 1,000 people, we'd be surprised. There's no tax base to speak of. You can imagine the 'cost hit' a rescue such as described in the article has on the counties' budgets.

ck1's tagline is 'Be safe.' Those are more than mere lip service words. Being safe takes an attitude, a way of thinking, an ability to know, recognize and respect your limits. Being safe often means you won't be able to begin, undertake, or even complete what you wish to do or what you started out to do. (More on that later.) But being safe will not only save you and your friends/family a lot of money and heartache, being safe often saves other people, complete strangers in SAR and various affiliated public service agencies, great risk, expense and lost income opportunities. THANKS again for the article!

J&S in RR

Great article Colin:

We need to, without being negative, ask ourselves 'what's the worst that can happen here?' and 'If we got in trouble, what would our escape/rescue plan be?'. On Sunday, while waiting for the Rogers Canyon hike group at Elvira's, the waitress was quite concerned about their delay. She must have asked me six times if I thought they were ok, and if I should call someone. I was sure they were ok and had just gotten a later start than planned. Still, I learned two things: 1.) I could have driven my truck rather than my sedan out there. In the rare event that someone needed to go to the trailhead to see if their vehicles were still there, my Altima would not have made it even close; and, 2.) I had no one's home or cell phone number to do a status check. (This would not be a bad idea for future group hikes. Imagine telling the sheriff, 'I don't know his name or phone number, but his handle at HAZ is Fritzski. I know his dog's name though.....')

The answers are not always intuitive. In the Grand Canyon, for example, it may be more prudent (and faster) to hike down to the river for help than up to the rim. Commercial river runners carry vhf radios tuned to 121.5 mhz which is the frequency for aviation emergencies. Commercial jets overflying the canyon from southern California can pick up messages and relay river milepost information to rescuers.

When I hiked Paria Canyon I begged my companions not to break a leg, as rescue would be so difficult. The skills sets needed for wilderness medicine, orienteering and survival may not be fun, but are critical when needed. One only needs to listen to the heartbreaking frantic tape of a 911 call from a parent who just found their child at the bottom of the pool, and does not know how to perform CPR, to understand the cost of not being prepared.

Not a happy story, but a necessary reminder. Thanks for sharing it, Colin. -Randy

Every time we set foot outside our houses we change one risk for another. Many folks don't think there is anything different at all.

We have a place down here just east of Tucson with steep canyon walls and a huge water fall called Tanque Verde falls. The rock is very slick around it and every so often someone does an unintentional 'Greg Louganis' off the side. The last time I hiked up to the bottom of the falls there was an I.V. bag laying there. That was just a few weeks ago. A sign at the trail head warns that many have died.

It can happen to anyone at anytime. Anyone can get themselves into a tight situation. Even a very intelligent person. I tend to become so invovled in the sights and colors that sometimes I do things that maybe I shouldn't.

Sometimes being in a group makes us feel more secure.

With the millions of extra folks here in the desert, there are sure to be many instances of this sort.

Be careful out there!

I cannot agree enough with the necessity of being trained in the fine skills of CPR and First Aid. I have been trained in both numerous times. A number of years ago I was a school bus driver, and we were given mandatory training in both areas. I am grateful for it.

I have never had to use my CPR training - and I pray fervently that I never will be called upon to do so. But my First Aid training has come in handy on many, many occasions. Nothing life threatening or of a criticaly serious nature - but serious enough to cause concern.

The Red Cross offers classes for these skills at a relatively inexpensive price - and really, when you think about it - you really shouldn't put a price on having the ability to save a life. Plus it ain't a bad way to spend a Saturday or two.

Very excellent posts you guys!

[quote='olesma']I cannot agree enough with the necessity of being trained in the fine skills of CPR and First Aid
I have never had to use my CPR training - and I pray fervently that I never will be called upon to do so.
[/quote]

olesma's post got us to thinking about CPR. We've also had the training many, many times. We always carry an airway, mask and gloves when we are hiking. But we got to wondering if there was something on the net that might help give us a mental refresher on CPR. The AHA and its affiliates kinda keep all the processes and procedures a 'little close to the vest,' so to speak. We really rooted through the national AHA site and its Arizona affiliate and we couldn't find much of interest. We kept getting duds on our web searches. Revisited the subject 3 times until we finally found this great link:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/cpr.htm

REALLY great site in terms of explaining the process and putting the 'reminders' into a logical sequence. We especially like their little animated gif with the hands compressing the heart. You gotta check it out.

Anyway the 'official' procedures for CPR have been known to change over the years. Now the rules are to call 911 FIRST and THEN start CPR. (Real nice IF you have a cell phone signal! Not so nice if you don't.)
Even if you don't get a chance to go play with Resucsi-Annie once in awhile, we'd recommend reading that website on a fairly frequent basis. If you've had the training and played with the dummy a few times, you know about the head tilt and the airway stuff. It's just great to have a little website that provides such a great online refresher.

J&S in RR

Yikes, of course this could happen. If I wasn't injured I would be VERY embarrassed. Much like Bruce Babbitt probably was a few weeks ago when they sent a search party looking for him when he was a couple hours late from a hike. And, his pioneer family knows Arizona.

Safety measures are really simple and I always try to adhere, telling people where I'm going and when I'm expected back and practicing trial safety. Solo hiking is so much fun, but I prefer to be with one other person, at least.

BTW-were we late from Rogers Canyon?? I thought we were right on time, we guesstimated we'd be out between 4-5pm and we were.

I told Elvira's we'd be there around 4:00....We got there at 6:00

That's an excellent post ck1. You gotta take your hat off to the men and woman of these mountain recue teams. A lot of them seem to be on a volunteer basis and how bad off would those people have been without them coming to their aid?