Rangering, Search and Rescue, and Rocky Mountain National Park

Edited by Jodi Peterson

When a friend sent me an article about an accomplished mountaineer, Kate Matrosova, who had died in the Presidential Range of my friend’s and my home state of New Hampshire, I thought back to my career with the National Park Service and a piece I had written about SAR many years ago. Wanting to take a break for a week or so from writing about America's Thing With Race and Trump’s Thing With White Supremacy, instead of just publishing a pretty picture I thought I'd republish this piece that I wrote 20 years ago. So I hope you enjoy it, I hope you enjoy your week, and I hope you're not letting these challenging times knock you off balance.

Rangering at Rocky Mountain National Park

Jeff was found by hikers on the eighth day where he had fallen on Donner Ridge, a steep talus field on the side of Ypsilon Mountain. He’d hit and fractured his head, wrapped a t-shirt around the wound, sat down and died. He died on his first day out, but we didn’t know that, and we certainly didn’t expect it. Jeff Christensen, one of our own rangers who went missing while on a patrol in the backcountry of Rocky Mountain National Park was young, fit, smart and experienced. We’d spent 8 days searching for him. Resources from around the country were called in: Former Rangers from Rocky to cover normal front country duties while we searched the mountains; a specialized National Park Service incident management team; helicopters; and experts in everything from survival to ballistics. We hiked, flew, climbed, and literally crawled all over the entire Mummy mountain range where Jeff was patrolling. The terrain was steep, difficult and far from any trailheads. It was morning dark when we’d gather for our daily briefing and night dark when we straggled back in. The August weather was typical warm and sunny for the first few days of the search, but then turned. When we stayed out all night in order to resume searching in the same vicinity the next day, we encountered full-on winter conditions. And of course, with weather like that, we thought about Jeff.

Jeff Christensen. Courtesy of the National Park Service

The search for Jeff had barely ended when a hiker – a physician - went missing in the exact same area. For another 4 days we again covered terrain we were beginning to know well. This time we won. He was cold, hungry, frightened, and beginning to suffer rhabdomyolysis - kidney failure. But alive!

I got into rangering rather late in life at age 51. If I had started when I got out of the Marines that would have been just about retirement age. But instead I’d spent a lot of unfulfilling years in the business world or trying to run my own excavation business. When I’d gotten laid off from an information technology consulting gig a few years earlier, I’d thought long and hard about what Ed Abbey had said about himself: “I don’t want to do work I don’t want to do in order to live a life I don’t want to live.” That’d been me for a long time. I knew I was lucky to be rangering for the National Park Service. And luckier still to be a backcountry ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park. I loved everything about it, even the, sad, uncomfortable, physically and emotionally hard stuff. I’d finally found my niche. But searching for Jeff…that was different.

In early September, not long after searching for the doctor and well before any of us had recovered physically or emotionally from the previous several weeks, we got called to Longs Peak – 14,259 feet high – to rescue a climber with a broken lower leg. The initial plan was to raise him 700 feet from where he was to an LZ near the summit where a helicopter could fly him out. So while the team was flown to the summit, Paul Larson, an ultra-fit twenty-something and I were assigned to quickly hike up to the victim at around 13,000 feet, carrying medical gear and rescue equipment to assess the situation and provide medical attention. I couldn't even begin to match Paul's pace. Once on scene, Paul and I tended to the patient's injuries and tried to catch our breath. The team that was flown to the top set up rope systems and lowered 3 more rangers 700 feet down a sheer, vertical rock face to the victim and us to begin the process of raising him back up to load him on the helicopter.

Rescue work always seems exciting and adventurous when reading about it. But in actuality it's almost always just hard, tedious, unglamorous work. Setting up rope systems that span 700 feet and will safely carry a load of three – one patient and two attendants - plus a litter and equipment is a long and tedious process. By the time the patient and his litter attendants had been hoisted back up the cliff face using a manual winch, it was well after dark, the winds were howling, and it was sleeting. Team leader Ryan Schuster and the pilot confirmed that helicopter evacuation was no longer an option. Paul and the other teammate that had not been raised back up with the litter continued by foot to the top of the mountain to rendezvous with the patient and the rest of the team.

I was assigned to wait for Vern Miller, a paramedic that was hiking up from the trailhead with a full, heavy medical kit, before also heading to the summit by foot. It was well after dark when he finally reached me and together we headed up. The wind had picked up, and it continued to sleet, covering the rocks with a thin layer of ice. The route between where we were and the summit is only about a mile. But it's a steep mile, covered with loose and potentially deadly falling rocks; requires low-level technical climbing skills; and traverses narrow, outward slanting ledges with a thousand feet of exposure. Many hikers turn back in good weather and daylight when they encounter this difficult and visually intimidating last stretch. Some two hours later, Vern and I finally reached the top, shaken and exhausted.

The helicopter had flown in supplies to augment the space blanket and extra jacket most of us normally carry in our packs. The folks on top had already claimed most of the sleeping bags, ground pads, and tarps. I found a climber’s waist-high sleeping bag, a small blanket, an undersized tarp, a spot among the rocks and puddles and tried to get some rest. 70 mile per hour winds and sideways sleet made it an unpleasant night for everybody, including the patient. I tried to stay curled up to retain body heat. But after the arduous day, I tended to cramp, so I’d stretch out to relieve the cramps. That exposed me to the cold, so I'd curl into the fetal position again until the cramps became severe. My head and feet were mostly exposed. At some point in the wee hours, I finally got frustrated and uncomfortable enough to get up and re-arrange things. The wind snatched my blanket and flew it off of the mountain. I was already cold, so it didn't seem like much of a loss.

Finally, the morning light appeared. The wind was still howling and we were totally socked in with cold rain and near zero visibility. I knew that we weren’t going to be flying the patient out – that we’d be carrying this guy off of a dangerous mountain under dangerous conditions. We all had a really hard day ahead of us. The only way off of the summit where we had any chance of evacuating the patient was down the North Face route, a walk-able, but very steep, 2000-foot slope, totally covered by large, loose, rocks. We spent a couple of hours getting our gear together and pretending that the weather would break. Eventually Ryan instructed us to begin setting up anchors to assist us in safely lowering the patient. For the most part we were only able to walk for forty feet or so before we had to set the litter down to rest or re-adjust ourselves to clamber up or down some 7 or 8-foot rock ledge. At one point, Chief Ranger Mark Magnuson, strong and still fit in his forties, but tired, looked at the youngest team members energetically setting up anchors and muttered, “Someday they’ll know what it’s like to be old!” Being older than Mark, I muttered something about age under my breath as well. But I was smart enough to not let the Chief Ranger hear me.

Eventually, after almost a full day of lowering the litter in this manner, we got to the section of the North Face that, for a few hundred feet is near vertical. We set up another lowering system and in another two hours we finally had the patient in the hands of Team Two, who would complete the litter carry another hour and a half or so down to the helicopter. The patient was within 90 minutes of being flown out and we only had to walk 6 more miles and 4,000 vertical feet to get home. We could feel the energy and adrenaline dissipate. I’d begun to fantasize about warmth, food, and sleep. One of several lessons learned that summer about just how tough all of us were - or weren’t - in hard, hazardous conditions was how soon we’d want the comforts of home.

When we finally rendezvoused with team two, the relief team, we wolfed down sandwiches they had provided us and headed down the trail towards home. Team Two still had to lower the patient another 700 vertical feet further down the same steep and loose rocks that we had been on all day, and then transport him another half a mile across flat terrain covered with huge, difficult to traverse boulders. Once again, weather and luck were not on the rescuers' side. There are two Landing Zones at the Boulderfield and team two headed for the higher, closer LZ. But the winds were too strong for the pilot to land at the upper LZ and now it became a race to get to the lower zone before it was too dark to legally fly. Team Two missed that window by minutes and the apology in the pilot’s voice and the polite frustration in the voice of team two's leader as he bid the pilot farewell were obvious and sincere. The patient was going to be carried the entire way off of Longs Peak.

My team finally arrived back at the trailhead about 9 that night, 33 hours after we had headed up. Team two limped in with their 200-pound load and transferred their patient to the waiting ambulance around 3 a.m. The patient had been on his back and immobile in the litter for some 40 hours. At one point the exhausted and exasperated patient asked if the litter team could be a little gentler. Cindy Purcell, the team medic, having lost her normal sense of humor and grace responded simply, “Wanna walk?” I have to believe that he was grateful to finally see a hospital room. Personally, I was grateful to see food, a tub of hot water, and a beer or three. Although I’d been fantasizing about food, that night, I was too tired to eat. The next night however, I treated myself to two complete restaurant meals! Chicken Marsala both rounds. And I didn't worry about being a piggy.

Those three were only that season’s major SAR’s. In between there were dozens of more minor incidents. We evacuated a woman who fell and slid on loose rocks and dislocated and fractured her foot so badly that the bottom of her tibia pressed against the skin of her leg nearly breaking through. There was the 65 year-old employee with chest pains who had managed to get about 5 miles up one of the steepest trails in the park. We treated him, carried him to a helicopter-landing zone, and flew him to a hospital where he recovered from a heart attack that he probably wouldn’t have survived alone on the trail.

Not long after the Longs Peak incident we were called for an elderly man who had fallen just two miles up the trail and dislocated his shoulder. Just two miles. I make no claim to be the fastest hiker, the best EMT, nor the most technically proficient rescuer. But I can work hard and carry heavy loads. On this day, however, with only a light load and still exhausted from the previous several weeks, I thought seriously about sitting down and resting after only a mile or so. And I’d have done exactly that if my fellow rangers hadn’t been around. In the middle of that, we received a radio call about a car that had gone off the road 20 feet over a steep embankment and was teetering above a non-breathing patient. A 32-year old man had stopped his car to take a picture. He and his wife stepped out and left their two-year-old son asleep and strapped into his car seat. When the car started to roll, the man tried to jump back in. But he wasn’t fast enough. The car rolled over him, crushed his head and very nearly cut through his chest, in front of his wife. The two-year-old slept peacefully during the entire event.

I might tend to think too much, and during the search for Jeff I thought a lot, trying to resolve various feelings of conflict. Not one of us wasn't in conflict about whether to hope that Jeff was suffering, but alive, or to hope that he was no longer suffering. Which do you hope for? Not one of us didn’t cry when we unloaded Jeff’s body from the helicopter that flew him out to us in the alpenglow of a beautiful, summer, mountain evening, as we passed him along from one set of out-stretched arms to another. I’m sure that not one of us didn’t feel some guilt over the over-time pay that we kinda depended on as seasonal rangers. And not one of us didn’t stand in awe as the quiet of that moment was broken by three coyotes playing and yelping joyfully at that scene – reminding us all that, despite everything, life goes on. The world doesn't stop to pay respects to your grief.

Jeff taught me and all of us that we could do way more work than any of us ever thought possible. The search for Jeff was the hardest sustained work that I had ever done. The third day, coming out of the mountains, I almost cried my legs hurt so much. But there were feelings of conflict amongst us: Not a one of us didn’t question if we were the right person with enough of the 'right stuff' for the job…if we were strong enough, fit enough, tough enough. Tough enough to go out again. Tough enough to go out into really hard conditions in really difficult terrain. Tough enough to walk 50 extra feet to look over that ledge instead of just staying on the course we were on. I’m sure that not one of us didn’t feel guilty about collecting hundreds of dollars in overtime pay for doing work that normally we relish when it doesn’t involve a friend that is either dead or dying, and that we kind of depend on as seasonal rangers. I thought about donating it, or giving it to Jeff’s parents. In the end, I kept it and considered it one more gift from Jeff. And then I felt guilty about that.

Searching for Jeff was also, in many ways, the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. We were doing what we were trained to do. I’m sure that Jeff would have understood our conflicting emotions. I’m sure he would have applauded the camaraderie that developed…the heroic efforts of the volunteers - the 97 pound volunteer down from Cheyenne carrying a pack that weighed maybe half as much as she did……the guests that initially prayed for Jeff and, as time went by, prayed for us and our safe passage…the sense of doing our job and doing it well. Even the overtime. I’m pretty sure that Jeff would have said, “Hey…I fell. I whacked my head. Have a good time…I still am. Get over it.”

I learned a lot. I learned that it is really difficult to prepare for winter storm weather when you are sitting in warm August sunshine. It's easy to think, "Heck, I don't need the weight of this piece of gear. If it turns that nasty, I'll just tough it out." I learned that 55 is not the new 30 and that I have to acknowledge my age. I learned that fitness matters a lot, but so do mental and physical preparedness and some degree of toughness matters to. But I also learned that no matter what, after a while, you need warmth, shelter, dry feet, food, and rest. The mountain environment can kick anybody’s ass any time it wants with nothing more than a shrug.

And I learned, or I at least wondered - and not for the first time - if we humans aren’t too attached to life…if we just don’t hang onto the idea of life a bit too firmly. Maybe we fret over it too much. I still have not resolved that question, although I ponder it often, especially as I get older and closer to my last hike. Maybe we should let life go just a bit easier. I am finally realizing that life is a constant series of lessons in letting go … It always ends the same way. Not that we should have put less effort into the search for Jeff. We did it right. But maybe we shouldn't have been so attached to the outcome. I don't know.

If searching for Jeff was the hardest sustained work I’ve ever done, then the rescue on Longs Peak was maybe the hardest short-term. But working and suffering alongside my friends, partners, and fellow rangers had many rewards. The camaraderie is indescribable. Rangering doesn't always have a happy ending and when you're cleaning out backcountry privies, you're not always smelling roses. But I love it. I reflect on Ed Abbey and I know that I am lucky to be able to do work I want to do while living a life I want to live.

I know that these are dark days for many. I’m grateful that I’ve had so many great, sunny days and friends that now can serve as a bulwark against darkness.