rescue on forbidden (seattle weekly article)

[forrest_m]

anyone else read this yet: "out of thin air" , cover story in this week's seattle weekly?

 

i thought it was an interesting, non-sensationalistic take on an accident/rescue in the mainstream press. he gives a pretty matter-of-fact description of the process from slip, to rescue, to hospital to rehab. kind of like an extended ANAM piece.

[Rad]

Yes, an excellent, well-written, sincere article. Thanks for the link.

 

Oddly, the faces are familiar:

 

NPS ranger Craig Brouwer helped me and my wife get NPS approval for a cliffside wedding ceremony in Stehekin in 03. He moved over to Marblemount that fall.

 

Dr. Lisa Taitsman is someone I went to high school with years ago and had lost touch with. I'll have to drop her a line.

 

Meanwhile, I'm counting my blessings for having safely gotten up and down Forbidden.

[terrible_ted]

It's cool to get the same story from multiple viewpoints. Chris 'fessed up about this trip a few weeks ago, so his version is pretty fresh in my mind. I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out how I'd deal with the same scenario. Your partner's mangled, you have one other person and a rope to either 1. climb up and hope to find help from the West ridge crowd (probably a decent chance of lining up a cell phone) knowing that you'd be climbing a new route under serious pressure without any guarantees of finding help OR 2. descending to a 2-person glacier re-crossing to retrace back to BB to find help, knowing that it will take most of a day to travel. A good exercise in risk management.

 

As a complete aside, I only found out this summer that the backcountry permitting process (where they ask for everything from phone #, license # time spent in wilderness areas, itinerary, etc...) for issuing camping permits does not cross populate the voluntary climbing register. Which means unless you also fill out the paper register, no one comes looking for you if you're 'waylaid.' Oops!

 

-t

[Ireneo_Funes]

Nice to see a story like that told without the typical sensationalism or errors regarding technical details. Thanks.

[sobo]

...And they let him keep the f-word in the article. How cool is that?

[TimL]

A very well written and insightful article. I bumped into Brian for the first time a couple years ago on the Ptarmigan Traverse. Hopefully his recovery will be quick and he will be able to return to the mountains soon.

[luwayo]

Brian considers himself an "ex-jock"? geez, i found him pretty formidable the first time i climbed with him

[tread_tramp]

Good article. I had a similar experience a couple summers ago. This sort of shit sure gets your attention.

[Skeezix]

Nice to see a story like that told without the typical sensationalism or errors regarding technical details. Thanks.

Not to take away from an otherwise excellent article, but there was one error: Pilot Tony Reece was flying under contract to the US Park Service --not the US Forest Service. Remarkable and fortunate that the firefighter team member knew to carry Miller UP to the ridge. Many folks' instinct would be to go down. But Tony needs ridges to have a clear approach. I've seen him land in remarkable places. He once picked me and a fellow up off a ledge on the face below the NE Ridge of Triumph. When I went to step into the chopper, I saw Tony staring up at the wall. Following his gaze, I saw the rotor blade tips missing the wall by inches. He is a highly skilled pilot. He regularly coils his long steel cable in the back of a pickup truck from the air. He has performed hundreds of rescues, dumped thousands of buckets of water, and shuttled too many slingloads of cedar blocks and trail crew gear to count. When he says the helo is an extension of his body, he's not kidding. Here's to Tony Reece:

[tread_tramp]

When I busted my feet on Chimney Rock we had no choice but to go down. And a good thing too. The Ledge I spent the night on was at 7,000, which is the limit

at which they like to do rescues with the Huey, which is what they came in with to help me.

[barkernews]

Solid. Well written. And sobering.

 

...makes me want to brush up on my wilderness first responder skills.

[Alpine_Tom]

Makes me want to stop doing solo outings.

[luwayo]

brings to mind some morbid stats (lifted from someone else's cut & paste job - don't know who compiled it). sadly it doesn't surprise me about the 1 in 5. As Brian Miller believes, "the numbers catch up to you". i hate that sobering thought.

 

Lifetime risks:

 

driver being killed in an auto accident......1 in 75

person dying of heart disease................1 in 6

smoker dying of related disease..............1 in 3

mountaineer being killed in the field........1 in 5

auto racer...................................1 in 90 (this person is more likely to die in a regular auto accident!)

hang glider..................................1 in 133

 

Safest sports: ping pong and badminton

[Alpine_Tom]

brings to mind some morbid stats (lifted from someone else's cut & paste job - don't know who compiled it). sadly it doesn't surprise me about the 1 in 5. As Brian Miller believes, "the numbers catch up to you". i hate that sobering thought.

 

Lifetime risks:

 

driver being killed in an auto accident......1 in 75

person dying of heart disease................1 in 6

smoker dying of related disease..............1 in 3

mountaineer being killed in the field........1 in 5

auto racer...................................1 in 90 (this person is more likely to die in a regular auto accident!)

hang glider..................................1 in 133

 

Safest sports: ping pong and badminton

 

That sounds sort of bogus. Is a mountaineer someone who goes out on weekend climbs a half dozen times a year, or someone in the Lowe / Viesturs level of professionals?

 

There must be tens of thousands of people in this country who consider themselves "mountaineers," and ANAM lists maybe 20 deaths a year.

 

I expect you're far more likely to quit climbing for any of the dozens of reasons people do, than to die doing it.

[ryland_moore]

Great article to read! I was up on the col sleeping to do NE Ridge of Triumph the next day with larry the llama and a few other ccers, when two rangers carried over Triumph about 2am and said that a helicopter would be landing in our bivy site at 5 am and we needed to be gone by then. It was Reece and they were headed to pick up the injured climber on N. Ridge of Forbidden. Reece came screaming inot the saddle, spun his little copter aorund and they were gone in a matter of seconds! Glad to see everything worked out well for him. Interesting read too. Not bad for a Mountaineer!

[Lowell_Skoog]

Here's to Tony Reece:

 

Here, here.

 

The article mentions that Tony has never had an accident during a rescue operation. I expect that's true. But he did have a little mishap once on Mt Baker, before it was designated wilderness, flying some heli-skiers on the mountain.

 

A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) and some of his ski buddies used to hire Tony to fly them to powder stashes in the Mt Baker area. This was around 1980, before helicopter skiing got "officially" started by Liberty Bell Alpine Tours in the Mazama area. On one trip they were landing at the saddle next to Colfax Peak and a downdraft sort of pancaked the helicopter into the saddle. Fortunately nobody was hurt. The way I heard the story, Tony radioed for help and the call was picked up by a news helicopter returning from another story. So Tony's little incident ended up on the evening news. Kind of embarrassing for a great pilot like him. I believe he quit flying heli-skiers after that. In 1984, much of the country they used to heli-ski was designated as wilderness.

 

But I digress. Tony is a great pilot. Thanks for posting the great article by Brian Miller. I know his recovery has been long and difficult and I hope it will be complete.

 

p.s. Here's some information about the book the Brian mentions in his story, the one photographed by his dad, Tom Miller. Like Kelly Bush, I was inspired by this book when I was just getting introduced to the Cascades:

 

http://www.alpenglow.org/climbing/ptarmigan-1953/index.html

[dbb]

GREAT link lowell. all those glacier comparison shots are amazing

[Lowell_Skoog]

Here's to Tony Reece:

 

You got me thinking...

 

A profile of Tony Reece would make an interesting article for the NW Mountaineering Journal. Another interesting profile would be Bill Fairchild, Washington's first (and only?) fixed-wing glacier pilot in the 1950s and 1960s. Both of them have had long and interesting associations with Northwest mountaineering. Or maybe a broader story, something like "Legendary bush pilots of the Northwest".

 

Here are some links with information about Bill Fairchild:

 

http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/ms/mhc-bios.html#mhc-bios-bill-fairchild

http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/ms/papl-bios.html#papl-bios-bill-fairchild

 

Any aspiring writers lurking out there? (I'll add this to the NWMJ idea list.)