Rescuing Andy

My friend Trey did some work for this website called Yonder Journal which looks like what would happen if National Geographic met Field & Stream in an Alaskan hookah hut near the end of a long winter night that had left them both a little raw and vulnerable and … well … you know. In other words, it's awesome. I recommend it.

Reading through some of the stories there made me want to write about other adventures. I don't have many such stories to share (I live in Dallas for crying out loud) but here's one that's fun to tell.

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In the autumn of 2011, I climbed a Colorado mountain, sat on the ground with my back against a log, and stayed there for nine hours in the snowfall watching for elk. I was camped with four other men — my father, brother, uncle and cousin. We were on a seven-day hunt in an area called Unit 80 near South Fork. We camped just below 9,000 feet and my predawn hump had taken me well up toward tree line. I watched for movement along the remains of a long-forgotten logging road and whispered a dozen prayers of thanks that my brother was still alive. Twenty-four hours earlier, that had been in doubt.

Unit 80 is a jagged swath of public land between South Fork and Wolf Creek in the Southwest corner of Colorado. Two tributaries of the Rio Grande descend steeply through its pines below sweeping meadows of alpine tundra.

My brother's name is Andy. On the evening before our first day of hunting, Andy had scurried to the point of a little rock outcropping not far from camp with a pair of binoculars. From there, he could see the length of a deep valley stretching at least five miles toward the south. Several parks on the far side of the valley looked like good places to take a stand and glass big chunks of land. That night around the campfire, Andy claimed his hunting grounds. Come morning, he was headed across the valley.

My father's name is Bary. That same morning, he and I left camp in the opposite direction via truck, toward a cirque at the top of the same valley. We had plenty of room. Our 10-mile radios couldn't always  span the distances we created; messages had to be relayed through Uncle Lynn who had stayed behind as camp cook. We stayed out all day. When it was too dark to shoot, we started walking back toward the road, and we started to hear radio chatter.

"Andy dislocated his shoulder," Lynn was saying. "He's stuck on a cliff."

7:45 pm
I catch up with Dad less than a mile from the pickup. He's standing at the apex of a bend in an abandoned logging road, holding up his handheld radio, trying to hear Uncle Lynn clearly.

"He did what to a cliff?" Dad is shouting. "You say he fell off a cliff?"

We get the message that Andy is safe for now, then we hustle back to camp for the rest of the story. Here's what happened:

Andy's descent to the valley floor that morning had been treacherous. He had to scoot down much of the slope on his butt, and that was with a good view for wayfinding. When he returned in the evening, it was nearing dark and he had trouble finding the same route. He knew he had descended somewhere in a narrow gorge cutting into the west side of the valley, but the farther he walked into the gorge, the steeper and more narrow its walls got…and the deeper became the shadows. He spotted a place where he thought he could scramble to the rim of the gorge. It was a climb of about 100 feet and it would be a challenge carrying a day pack and a rifle. He made good progress but then, 30 feet from the top, his right foot slipped. Because of his stance at that moment, most of his weight fell against his left handhold in a violent jerk. Andy has a bad left shoulder, an injury from high school basketball, and the jerk was enough to separate the ball from its socket. Frozen by pain and an awkward stance, Andy radiod camp and asked Lynn to send help. Then he waited, legs locked against narrow footholds and his good arm
— clinging  to a ledge above his head — quickly falling asleep.

Over his shoulder, Andy sees the valley below giving way to shadow. The sun is well below the horizon now. Twilight is fading. And Andy realizes he can't ascend the last 30 feet of gorge with his shoulder out of socket. He will have to set it himself, but he can't maneuver to a position to do that.


8:00 pm
The fifth member of our party is Whit, Lynn's son. Whit is 22 years old, six-foot-two, lanky and athletic. He is just arriving in camp when Andy's first radio calls for help come through. Whit had seen the gorge where Andy said he was going to descend that morning. He drops all his gear in the tent and races into the forest to help. It takes him only a few minutes to find the canyon rim above Andy. What he does next is remarkable. (Later, when the search and rescue team is unpacking ropes and harnesses to descended the same cliff Whit had, they are more than a little skeptical of his story.) Whit manages to clamor to a ledge just above Andy. From there, he lowers a length of "mule tape" which is, providentially, the only provision he happened to bring with him, to Andy whose clenched calves and forearms are shaking and weak with fatigue. Andy isn't sure he can hang on to the mountain much longer. Whit pulls him to the ledge and then hustles back up to the rim, but this time when he lowers the mule tape, Andy isn't biting. He tells Whit he doesn't think he can climb the remaining section. So Whit sits down to mark their position and wait for more help. Andy finally unshoulders his gear and goes about setting the socket. There is only the faintest blue light in the western sky.


8:45 pm
Dad and I arrive at camp with a lot of questions. Lynn has already called search and rescue. There is much debate about sending one of us (probably me) through the dark to find the other two men. Whit left without a coat and now that the temperature is dropping, he's getting cold. Luckily, he also has a radio. We eventually decide to wait for search and rescue, but since we can't risk losing their position, we tell Whit to stay where he is and tough out the cold.


9:00 pm
Andy settles in, sets his shoulder, and makes himself at home on the ledge. It's about the size of a sheet of plywood; if he sits with his back against the mountain, his feet dangle over the edge, but he can lay prone if he turns sideways. We radio Andy that a search and rescue team is on the way and Andy decides that's enough reason to give up on climbing. He won't test his shoulder again; he'll wait for the cavalry.


9:45 pm
A Rio Grande County sheriff's deputy arrives at our camp. His name is Russ. He seems only mildly perturbed at being called out late on a Saturday night. He cheers up considerably when offered a cup of coffee and some of Lynn's venison chili.


10:15 pm
Rio Grande County Search and Rescue is a volunteer organization and our campsite is remote. It takes almost two hours for the first of the team to arrive. Slowly, several others trickle in. One of the first to arrive is Bill, the group's leader. Bill steps over to a folding table under a tarp and lamp where we've spread out a map. Andy has given us his longitude and latitude which his GPS can pinpoint to within 15 meters. He has also given us a verbal description of his location. He has the same map we're using which is also helpful. Bill is impressed. Andy might have been foolhardy to attempt that climb, but at least he was prepared and he's managed to keep his wits. He's cracking jokes about helicopters and insurance over the radio which, it's obvious, is new to Bill's search and rescue experience.


10:45 pm
As his crew arrives and the rescue nears, Bill assumes command of the situation. There's another abandoned logging road that circles nearer Andy's position than our camp. Bill decides that's a better place to start the hike toward the gorge. The team members all get back in their vehicles and head to a rally point on the road. There are more than a dozen of them now. Bill turns to me and says, "I need you to come with us. I want you to be our radio contact with Andy. He's comfortable talking to you. We'll relay all of our instructions through you."

We leave Dad and Lynn at camp. I ride with Deputy Russ whose classic rock Sirius station provides a bizarre soundtrack for the whole bumpy drive.

The team stops at a wide spot in the road while Russ and I drive farther east. If we're right about Andy's location, we should be able to drive to within a quarter mile of him. We're hoping Whit will be able to spot the light bar or hear the sirens from Russ's truck. Russ and I drive until the road gives way completely to forest. No luck. Whit never sees us. He can hear the sirens but can't tell which direction or how far they're coming from.

This is bad news.


11:00 pm
The senior members of the rescue team gather around a map laid out on the hood of a Tacoma pickup. They are debating whether we have Andy's location correct. It's colder now; the other members of the team build a small fire and stand around it rubbing their hands. Somewhere to our east, Whit builds a fire too. He's wearing only insulated pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. But the wind is fierce across the rim of the canyon and Whit worries about losing control of his little fire. He puts it out and shivers.

11:15 pm
Our plan was to have Whit walk out to the road, then turn around and lead us right back to Andy. But now the plan isn't so simple. We ask Andy to fire a shot while we all watch and listen. The report seems to come from the direction we expected but it sounds much farther away than we thought. There is confusion among the team about where Whit and Andy are.


11:30 pm
Bill asks me to tell Whit to walk uphill to the north until he hits the logging road.


11:45 pm
Whit has walked for 15 minutes and seen neither us nor the road.


Midnight
Whit still hasn't found the road. He has no provisions save the radio — no water, no flashlight, inadequate clothing. It begins to dawn on the team that we now have two rescues to execute.


12:30 am
Whit appears. He gave up on finding the road and started heading west toward us, fighting blindly through thick brush and steep terrain. When he appears in someone's headlamp beam, he gets hugs and handshakes all around, from people he has never seen before. Whit probably saved Andy's life when he pulled him to the ledge. And he certainly saved himself; before he appeared, the rescue team was at a loss as to how to find him.


12:45 am
Andy is relieved to hear that Whit is safe, but there is bad news to follow the good. Bill leaves his huddle around the Tacoma and walks out into the dark where I'm chatting with Andy on the radio, trying to keep his spirits up.

"I've made a decision not to go after Andy tonight," Bill tells me. "I need you to tell him that we're delaying the rescue until daybreak. It's too risky for me to send my team out there in the dark if we don't know where we're going."

I can hear something in Andy's voice when I give him the news. Maybe it's fear. Maybe frustration. Maybe it's some of the self-recrimination that kept popping up and I would have to beat it back and tell him he made an honest mistake and we needed him to keep his head and not descend into despair or panic. His voice cracked and he asked about another scenario, but he knew Bill was right. Within seconds, he recovered and said he could tough it out. But when I suggest that we turn off the radios to save battery and just check in every hour on the hour, he responds with, "How about every half-hour?"


1:30 am
When an emergency call goes out, all the available volunteers are expected to respond. Tonight there are more volunteers available than usual. By the time Bill calls it, there are 17 of them stomping their feet around the little fire on the logging road. Bill selects four of them to perform the rescue and tells them to be at our camp at 6:00am. The rest he dismisses. Two of the select crew — a boyfriend and girlfriend who had driven all the way from Del Norte — head home to get a very short night's sleep. Bill and the other two accept our invitation to crash at camp. One of them takes my bunk, another takes Andy's, and a third sleeps in his truck. I lay a sleeping bag next to the campfire but only spend about 30 minutes in it that night, none of them asleep.


2 am
Andy has plenty of water and a little food. He has firestarter, but no fuel on the rocky ledge. He has the radio and GPS both with plenty of battery. Most importantly, since he has been out since early morning, he has warm clothing. All-in-all, he is well-outfitted to spend a night outside, which is good because the forecast is chilly. October at 9,000 feet is never balmy. I tell him the low will be in the teens, but no precipitation is expected.


2:30 am
Andy checks in. He has an update on his gear and the temperature. It's windy on the ledge.


3 am
Andy checks in. Doesn't say much.


3:30 am
I can't raise him on the radio. When he checks in he says he dozed off for a few minutes.


4 am
One or two words about the cold.


4:30 am 
...


5 am
Coldest part of the night. I remind Andy that we're an hour away from assembling the team.


5:30 am
Two of the guys wake up. Andy sounds more lucid.


5:45 am
The couple from Del Norte arrives early, which is remarkable since they couldn't have slept for more than two hours.


6 am
There's a faint light in the sky. Lynn is up making breakfast but no one is interested yet. Bill takes another look at the map and decides not to drive down to the logging road. We'll walk from camp following the route Whit took when he ran toward Andy the evening before.


6:30 am 
Seven of us set out — five rescuers, Whit and I. It's a relatively easy hike and we take it fast. Eager.

7 am
The sun has broken wide and warm over the mountains across the valley by the time we get to Andy. It takes the rescue team less than 15 minutes to rope up, rappel to the ledge, put a harness on Andy, and help him to the top. There are deep sighs and a few tears. We send the news back to camp via radio and Lynn invites the whole crew back for biscuits and gravy.


8 am
The couple from Del Norte are both uber-fit marathoners from Wisconsin. They have never had biscuits and gravy. Lynn shames them for this and piles their plate with enough calories to take them to Kona and back.

Andy is effusive. The team soaks up the gratitude as quickly as the biscuits soak up the gravy. Then we pose for a group photo, shake hands all around, and say good-bye.

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No one got a shot at an elk that trip. Andy didn't hunt very heartily after that. On the afternoon of the day Andy was rescued, it started to snow, and by the time we broke camp, Unit 80 was buried under three feet of it. We sloshed off the mountain with broken gear, wet clothes and wasted elk tags, but grateful that the weather held, that Andy kept his wits, that Whit turned adrenaline-powered-mountain-goat for a few minutes, that God seemed to be watching over us, and that Rio Grande County Volunteer Search and Rescue comes through in a pinch.