SAR-We Have A Mission

By Jim Koehler

An incredibly fascinating and detailed account of the author's own experiences as a Search and Rescue (SAR) volunteer in the state of New Mexico, USA.
After retiring from an engineering career, Jim joined the Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council (AMRC) in late 1997. That involvement has provided him with some of the most satisfying and rewarding times of his life. He is now a hiker, aviation crash explorer and writer. Join Jim as he recounts some of their most memorable triumphs and tragedies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books for Pleasure
• Release date: Sep 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781553490890

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SAR-WE HAVE A MISSION

By

Jim Koehler

Copyright James Koehler 2001

All rights reserved

ISBN # 978-1-55349-089-0

Published by Books for Pleasure at Smashwords

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the members of the Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council who introduced me to the world of wilderness search and rescue. In that world, the pay is poor but the rewards are priceless. After all, who can put a price on a human life and what can be better than the satisfaction of having saved one?

The western face of the Sandia Mountain Range on the eastern edge of Albuquerque is a mass of cliffs. This picture, taken in winter, shows snow and rime ice on the communication towers at the top of 10,678 foot high Sandia Crest. This rugged desert mountain range is the source of most search and rescue activities near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Introduction

This book describes my experiences as a Search and Rescue (SAR) volunteer in the state of New Mexico, USA. After retiring from an engineering career I joined the Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council (AMRC) in late 1997 and have been a volunteer field worker ever since. That involvement has provided me with some of the most satisfying and rewarding times of my life.

I have endeavored to make this narrative as non-controversial and positive as possible while still being factually accurate in my descriptions of the SAR missions discussed. Any errors, omissions or opinions expressed in relating the events are my own and I assume full responsibility for them. The missions ranged from trivial to important, humorous to tragic, and from saving lives to recovering the dead. Throughout all those events my colleagues in the AMRC and the other SAR teams I have worked with have gained my greatest admiration and respect; I have enjoyed working with them all. We have all worked together to insure that the SAR motto, That Others May Live, is more than just words.

Jim Koehler

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Acknowledgments

My undying thanks go, of course, to my wife, Elaine, for her patience with the late-night call-outs and other inopportune absences occasioned by SAR missions. She usually never knew what I was doing and when I would return, but she always had faith in me and was there for me when I returned. Her supportive discussions and hearing me out about each SAR event were very important to me.

I have also appreciated the comments and encouragement of my son and of David Gruber, Adjunct Sociology Instructor at Butler County Community College (Andover), Kansas, who reviewed the manuscript. The comments of Melissa Howard, my editor, were also very inspiring. Albuquerque author Dave Jackson and geologist Gerry Cabiniss, both fellow New Mexico Mountain Club members, were also very helpful in making suggestions about the book and acting as informal geology consultants. I also appreciate the advice I obtained about searching for publishers from author Hal Clifford. Hal’s book, The Falling Season, about his own SAR exploits as a member of Aspen Mountain Rescue in Colorado, USA, is, to me, a classic. I am grateful to John Maio, a SAR Incident Commander of great experience and respected judgement, who reviewed the text and suggested several additions. I also thank many others, who encouraged me in my efforts but prefer to remain nameless.

Disclaimer

SAR—We Have A Mission, is a collection of short stories based on the actual missions of a search and rescue volunteer. Places, events and situations are real but conversations have been edited and names have been changed to protect those involved. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

About the Author

Jim Koehler was born in New Jersey, USA, in December 1936. He lived there until 1958 when he obtained his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Rutgers University and entered the United States Air Force with an ROTC commission. After 43 months in the USAF, he went into civilian life in May 1962 where he entered a 35-year-long engineering career. During that time he also completed an M.S. in mechanical engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, and more graduate work at Arizona State University and Syracuse University. He married Elaine Woods in 1962 and they now have two grown children. Jim and Elaine retired to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in July 1997 where he soon became involved with the Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council. He is still a SAR field volunteer with that organization.

Jim’s literary credits include several technical articles in the Rutgers Engineer while in college where he was also managing editor of that publication. He has also authored several outdoor articles which were published in Adirondac magazine and the Appalachian Trailway News.

SAR—WE HAVE A MISSION is his first book. He hopes this book will enlighten people about the motivations, feelings and experiences of the many SAR volunteers who donate considerable time, money and energy to saving lives in the wilderness.

Chapter 1

Pick-off

It appeared to be another quiet July Fourth weekend in Albuquerque, New Mexico, until my recently acquired beeper sounded at about 10:00 p.m. When I called the mission hotline, I heard the voice of Ian, our at-large Albuquerque Mountain Rescue Council (AMRC) board member, on the tape.

This is Ian, we have a mission!

A teenager had been hiking at a location 36 miles north-northeast of Albuquerque named Tent Rocks, with a friend, his own girlfriend and her father. They were on a mesa and the fellow had tried to take a short-cut down. He ended up 100 to 150 feet above the mesa bottom on the very steep wall. He was now in a place where he could go neither up nor down and was hanging on by his fingertips.

Upon reaching the assembly point no one was there. However my AMRC teammate Brad arrived shortly thereafter and we drove out to base camp together. I had been to Tent Rocks twice before and knew something about the place. The area, now a National Monument, is made up of the effluent of a huge volcano that had erupted over a million years ago, spreading ash and other debris all over northern New Mexico. This material, called tuff, is a mixture of rock and soil that seems more like dried clay than dirt. Over the years wind and water erosion have worn away the earth to form what appears to be a series of ice cream cones set upside down on the ground with their points in the air. Some of them are still being formed along the sides of the mesas in the region and it was on one of those mesa-side formations that the subject now found himself.

Tent Rocks, as seen looking down from the top of a slot canyon. These formations resulted from the erosion of material called tuff deposited over northern New Mexico from a large volcanic eruption more than a million years ago.

We arrived, signed in and were briefed. The mesa was approximately 400 feet high and some SAR teams from Santa Fe were already there at the top and bottom. Sam, the State Police SAR Resource Officer, was also on site. Recognizing this to be a technical mission, he and Everett, the incident commander, decided to call for Mountain Rescue. Thus, George, Ian and other AMRC team members were also on site and in action. Rescuers obviously could not climb up the crumbly mesa walls to reach the subject so it was decided to have a climber rappel down from on top and pick the subject off the wall. Then the two of them would be lowered the last 100-plus feet to safety. To that end a climber was already repelling down. It was just before midnight so the climber had to depend on his head lamp for light. So did the others atop the mesa who were setting anchors for the rescue ropes. To make things more interesting, an electrical storm was in the area and the frequent lightning flashes and thunder did not bode well for the rescuers up high.

Brad went to help the rescuers on top of the mesa while I migrated to the bottom of the cliff to help George and Ian direct operations there. I was told the climber on his way to the subject was Orville, a free-spirited young businessman who flew hang gliders and paragliders as a hobby as well as manufacturing equipment to use with them. He was also a former professional medic, a desirable skill for the first person to reach a subject. I had never seen him climb before and had rarely seen him at team practices so I was curious to see how well he would perform.

At the cliff bottom George was in voice contact with the subject, who after hanging on to the cliff since late afternoon, was beginning to show signs of strain.

When are you going to get here? he would ask over and over, and George would patiently assure him that these things take time to do right.

Meanwhile, Orville was slowly working his way down in the dark. He did not have an easy task because he had to locate himself above the subject and that required setting up redirection anchors on his rope to get to the man. By now the rain was also beginning to fall and the slope became soggy. There were also rocks buried in the soil which would break free due to rope movement or Orville’s foot placement. Several rocks even came all the way to the bottom where George, Ian and I were keeping onlookers away from the base. The threat of lightning was a concern to all exposed people, but by counting the time between the lightning strikes and the following thunderclaps, we could estimate the distances to the strikes. Assuming a time interval of five seconds to a mile we knew we were temporarily all right. We could only hope that things stayed that way.

It was frustrating to work at the bottom where we didn’t have the benefit of much action to keep us busy. But, as Ian later pointed out, we performed a big service by managing the traffic, talking to the subject and giving advice to Orville and the people on top through our radios. We also had access to lights that other rescue teams had brought to the cliff base and had a great view of the scene.

Eventually, Orville made it to the subject and was able to secure him to a daisy chain on his harness. From that point, Orville repelled both of them down 15 feet to a ledge where he could stabilize the fellow. He was not injured so that meant giving him some food, water, a helmet and other clothing. By this time the subject had been without any sustenance for many hours. I later asked Orville what he said to the subject when he reached him because of his mental state. In conditions like that subjects have been known to lunge at the rescuer and thus cause other problems.

I was very direct with him, Orville said, I told him not to move until I said he could, and things worked out OK.

With a stabilized subject the pressure was off somewhat, but the mission was far from over. The rain