SAR Coordinates - February 2003
SAR COORDINATES
February 2003
TONTO RIM SEARCH AND RESCUE SQUAD
P.O. BOX 357
STRAWBERRY AZ 85544
A self-supporting not-for-profit group of volunteer citizens
dedicated to improving safety in the Arizona wilderness.
Operating under the authority of the Gila County Sheriff's Office
John Armer; Sheriff
Commander’s
Corner
Congratulations!
Seven Squad members will be receiving their
certificates and patches as members of the Rope Rescue Team at
the February general meeting. I congratulate them as they have
successfully completed the four-day certification class in
January. Also I extend my thanks to Chris Christy for the time
and effort he put into this training for the sake of the Squad.
As I write this piece it is
near the end of January and we have not yet had the survival
course by Al Cornell; I am looking forward to it, not only as an
educational training but also as an entertaining exercise. Some
of the Squad members who attended AZ SAR in Prescott last
spring, took a similar course from Al and enjoyed it immensely!
The “Sleep-over” in the forest on 2/1 should also prove to be
fun!
It’s nearly February and we
have just completed our first major search in some time. I was
extremely pleased with the number of newer members and the
enthusiasm with which they turned out. I hope they realize that
we don’t normally bivouac in motels! This mission pointed out
the need for training in navigation (map, compass and GPS) as
well as line-search techniques and disciplines. Line-searching
is the most common technique utilized in protracted searches.
As many of you know, we have
acquired a newer truck (2001 Dodge) to replace the old orange
GMC, affectionately known as SAR 3. We still need to have the
utility box installed, but when we do, we should have a reliable
means of transporting the necessary gear to future missions.
I am still
looking for a member to step forward and volunteer to spearhead
fundraising for the year. This is a very important and necessary
function of volunteer organizations. Without some ideas,
planning and implementing which results in income, we soon will
be out of business!
Jim
Don’t forget; the
meetings this month are Feb 11th for the Board
and Feb 13th for the General Meeting.
Radio Reprogramming
Gila County has now changed over to the new
repeaters and radio frequencies. If you have a Squad issued
radio, it needs to be reprogrammed. Please contact Bill Pitterle
(468-8685) or Jim Martin (472-7211) to make arrangements to get
it done. The SAR frequency does not change so radios can still
be used on missions, however after reprogramming it will be
channel 11 instead of channel 1. We’d like to reprogram the
Vertex and Standard radios first. If you have a personal radio
for Squad use, we will help you get it programmed so that there
will be no cost to you.
Leaders and Legends
in SAR
Jane
Boyles
Bob Hartz, Deceased
Bob Hartz was Commander of Tonto Rim when
John and I joined in 1988. Meetings were held around
his kitchen table. That is how small the group was at that
time.
Bob was a hands on sort of guy.
He was Commander, training officer, treasurer when necessary and
jack of all trades. During this time the squad had an old
Ford Econoline van donated by the phone company that
he had retired from. Bob was a good mechanic and therefore
was continually fixing the van to keep it running. The
same held true for the old Kristi snow cat. Bob’s garage
was filled with spare Corvair engine parts that he had scrounged
for little or nothing to keep the snow cat running. We
were a shoestring operation. Our unfinished squad building
did not have heat and did not have garage doors on it for some
time.
The old Econoline was our command center.
He had a fold up metal chair and a drop down tiny table from
which to run radios, do paperwork, etc. He was the whole
command. The rest of us had to be out doing the
assignments. This was before the days of sophisticated
electronic equipment. Topo maps and compasses were our
tools. Some had portable radios. Those were pretty
pricey and few could afford them. We had to finance our
own way in the volunteer world.
Our fund raisers were not as professional
as today but a whole lot of fun. Underneath the ground
near the back of the Community Center lot was a fire pit.
At each craft fair Bob would dig out the pit and spend the night
down there keeping the fire going so we had a nice bed of oak
coals for our famous biscuits which were cooked in the big
Dutch ovens. We advertised our Cowboy Breakfast with a
sign across the highway and people came to the Rim Country just
to eat with us. The public recognized the worthiness of our
search and rescue efforts. The fellowship at that
breakfast was unbelievable. Chatting with the customers
was so much fun. We didn’t make the money that the
squad makes now but the Public Relations job that we did made us
“semi-famous”. Bob molded us into a cohesive team that
worked well together.
The squad building was dedicated in memory
of Bob Hartz, a true dedicated volunteer who, when he saw a
need, filled it with whatever resource he could find.
Often times that resource was himself.
LOCAL
WEATHER
Courtesy of Bill Pitterle 566
http://wjpitterle.mystarband.net/weather/wx.htm
ACTIVITIES
Commander Martin was able to get some photos of the airplane
mission in Coconino Co. and shared them with us. You can view
them in the digital version of the Newsletter.
FOR SALE
1994 Jeep Wrangler 4X4,
low miles
4 cyl, 5 spd, lift kit, 31” BFG
tires with American Racing wheels. 2 tops, 2 lock boxes and
alarm system. Nerf bars, receiver hitch and rear rack. Alpine
radio/cassette with sound bar & dual speakers. Warn 8000 winch,
high lift jack and rear cargo rack. Will throw in trailer to
carry a Quad. Price reduced to
$7500
OBO. Call Don Peters; 472-7457
Training Schedule
Scheduled Training Sessions (current)
1-Feb (Sat)
Survival Training – Squad Building – 0800 hrs (in charge: Jim
Martin/Al Cornell)
This will be a general survival class with field work somewhere
off Fossil Creek Road.
An over nighter is planned for the same evening (bring field
pack).
Planned
Training Sessions (after next general meeting)
15-Feb (Sat) Ropes
Training – time and location TBA (in charge: Chris Christy)
17-Apr (Thu)
First Aid Training – 1800 hrs – Ira Gibel’s house (in charge:
Ira Gibel)
Planned
Line Search training—Les Hulse in charge
Planned
Tracking practice—all levels—Les Hulse in charge
Member Profile
Tim Somsen 564
Tim was
born in Roswell New Mexico in 1951. Tim’s Dad was in the
Air Force, so his family traveled a lot. They spent time
in Hawaii, Illinois and Michigan. While Tim was in
Michigan he became an Eagle Scout.
After High School,
he joined the Navy for 4 years as a radio man and had a Top
Secret Clearance. One year of his tour in the Navy was in
Viet Nam.
Tim has two kids by his first wife. She passed away
because of cancer. Tim remarried in 1991.
Tim spent his first four
years of his working career at McDonald-Douglas as a computer
programmer. They were building F15’s. Then he came
to Phoenix working at Air Research, which became Garrett, then
Allied Signal and currently Honeywell. After 17 years there he
went to South Carolina working at Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Tim moved to Payson a year ago and telecommutes to South
Carolina. He works in Claims Processing, on an IBM
computer, using MVS, JES and Job Control Language to make the
Claims Processing production jobs run cleaner, faster and more
efficient.
Tim loves to hike and also hunts with a bow, rifle and
muzzleloader. He first heard about TRSAR from the Business
Expo in Payson. Tim wanted to meet good people and see the
country and realized this was the group for that.
We are fortunate to have
Tim on the Squad and look forward to knowing him better.
Changes
We have ONE new member
this month!
Joe Knoell
Payson
TRSAR Recruit
Anita L. Carnine
Four years ago, I would have said “you’re
crazy!” if somebody had told me that one sunny April morning I’d
be easing backwards over a cliff, my hands, elbows, and
knees knocking to the tune, “What Kind of Fool Am I?”
But there I was, 150 feet above Box Canyon, learning to rappel,
with my mentor, Jim Martin, reassuring me. “You know what
they call a person who does this? Dope on a rope!
Ha-ha-ha-ha!”
On that day, as a squad member of Tonto Rim
Search and Rescue, I was learning to be a Certified Rope Rescue
Technician.
What led up to this bizarre behavior was that
I was a fairly intelligent woman who was turning 50 and newly
divorced after a 17-year marriage. Living alone, bored,
sitting in front of the tv every night and feeling sorry for
myself, was making me want to throw myself out the window.
It occurred to me there might be a better solution to getting
out of this monotonous rut. I didn’t want to be “fat
and fifty.” What I needed was to do something challenging
and worthwhile. I didn’t realize at the time that I was
embarking on a completely new life.
There was no grand plan, at first I just
threw myself at things that were physical. I joined the
Payson Packers hiking club. With boundless enthusiasm, I
called the leader, who warned me that the Saturday group would
be hiking 9 miles. Since I worked for a living, I couldn’t
join the Tuesday morning group, which was divided into 3
subgroups, based on your endurance level. I had to go into
the Saturday group (which I later named Keep Up or Die). I
was a little nervous about the 9 miles but I could drive 9 miles
in a car in a few minutes. On foot it would be a little
longer. Big deal. When I arrived at the
meeting site and saw that the average age was probably 70, I
thought: Piece of cake!
Within the first mile and a half, I was
‘feeling it,’ but my feeble pride wouldn’t let me stop. I
pressed on tightlipped, ignoring the festering mass of blisters
that were popping up in two’s and three’s. I was grateful
for the lunch stop, but by the time I hobbled to a rock and
hacked off my boots and socks, taking three layers of skin with
them, and opened my peanut butter sandwich, the leader was
stretching and kicking his legs in Hitleresque fashion for the
hike back. Just another 4.5 miles.
At the wobbly, bloody end, I heard a sweet
elderly female voice call out to me as I staggered to my truck,
“Soak your feet in epsom salts, dear, it’ll toughen them up!”
They never expected to see me again, but
somehow, I returned the next Saturday. And the next and
the next. I kept suffering from painful blisters. I
looked like a mummy from the ankles down, my feet layered with
moleskin bandages. But I did everything my new friends
told me to do, including replacing my hiking boots.
I finally got ahead of the curve and took a look at these
energetic, smiling hikers who were healthy and very much alive.
I felt like one of them.
Sometime later, in a Country Western dance
class, I met Jim and Janet Martin. He was a dog handler
and a volunteer for the Tonto Rim Search and Rescue Squad.
Wow, I thought, this would be a worthwhile challenge. I
imagined myself a savior of humankind, easing suffering and
tending to lost souls. Anita (Florence Nightingale) Carnine.
I went to the first meeting with the completed application in
hand. By this time, I’d been hiking with Gray Power for
over 2 years. I’d backpacked with them into the Grand
Canyon, Havasupai, and Aravaipa.
I discovered on my first search with the
squad that I could keep up (sort of) with Roger Miotto, but
there is much more to being effective in search and rescue than
just keeping up. For the skills needed, there is training,
training, training. I had to learn how to use a
compass, read a topo map, and use a GPS. A person could
spend a lifetime practicing search techniques. And there
was lots of stuff to buy. A cell phone, pager, day pack,
night pack, tent, sleeping bags, cold weather gear, hot weather
gear, batteries, bear spray, water bottles, flashlights, fire
starters, knives, blah, blah, blah. Duct tape! The list is
endless. I had so much stuff I decided to trade in my
pick-up truck for a Nissan Pathfinder so I could keep my gear
locked up. Becoming a hero was going to take awhile.
I didn’t know how to work the SUV’s 4-wheel
drive until I had driven 60 miles to a mission and was stopped
at a roadblock. They didn’t ask me, did I know how to
operate a 4WD, they asked, did I have it, which of course I did.
So, in my quest to help search for a 15-year old lost hunter, I
got past the roadblock and drove onto a deeply rutted, muddy
road to hell, reading for the first time the 4WD instructions on
the visor.
Psychologically, I always felt like I was
trying to stay vertical while flailing about on thin ice.
But, my team members were people who were alive with the desire
to extend themselves in the service of others, including me,
thank goodness. They were people who were brought together
by a love for the wilderness, jokesters who enjoyed each other
and life, who took in stride the cold, heat, stress, rocks,
climbs, and 1 a.m. missions. It was exhilarating, and I
wanted to be just like them.
It took awhile for me to figure out what to
put in what pack, which pack to take, what to store in my
closet, my SUV, my pockets, on my floor. My bedroom floor
was always strewn with SAR stuff. When a page or a
call came in, I would yank on my shirt and pants in a panic, try
to eat, gulp down water, pack a sandwich, pull together the
right gear, get the directions to the command post.
I’d get my shirt on backwards, dart around with my arms flying
in the air. Once, I drove past a command post 3 times
before finding it, arriving with a dead radio battery.
There were great moments: the
late-night search in the Mazatzal Wilderness for a defiant
15-year old run-a-way stoically refusing to be found. In
the middle of the night, I, along with Dave Beckstead and Scott
Reger, responded to a request to assist flood victims in a
neighboring county. And, near Ashurst Lake, the two
brothers who were found just before dark, in cold harsh
conditions. They may not have survived one more night.
And my own (finally!) find, along with Chris Christy, of a young
woman who got separated from her friends and was wandering along
Diamond Point Lookout Road.
When a rope rescue certification class came
up, I, as usual without thinking too much about it, decided, why
not! The summers in Northern Arizona bring hikers,
swimmers, and fun-seekers from the parch of the Southern Arizona
desert to our cliff-side hiking trails, canyons, and slippery
rocks. Rope rescue appealed to me because one thing was
sure. There was a person who needed help and we knew
exactly where that person was. All you had to do was
get down to him, and help him out, quickly and safely.
Anita (Spiderwoman!) Carnine. What I didn’t realize, in an
innocently ignorant way, was that, once again, there was more to
it.
There was more training: knot tying (bowline,
figure 8, pressik, overhand, butterfly, fisherman’s bend, Munter
hitch, clove hitch) There was more to buy: pulleys, pressiks,
webbing, chest harness, seat harness, ascender, brake bar,
carabiners, ovals, helmet, gloves, rope. (But not life
insurance, it’s too late for that.)
I wasn’t thinking about my lofty hero goals
that sunny spring morning, nor did I notice a crow lazily
catching wind gusts overhead as I inched backwards toward the
edge of the cliff. I was being belayed (which means that
should I slip and not manually catch myself due to the loss of
my brain, there is someone on top of the cliff who will mind the
belay system, that is, stop me from plummeting to my death).
The only sounds I heard were my team members’ voices at every
step. From the moment I got on my rope gear, the seat
harness, the chest harness, the figure 8, carabiner, and was
checked out by my new number one taunter, an ex-Marine Chris
Christy, who, for once, looked at me with compassion and said,
“Be brave and trust your equipmen,.” I was given advice
by my team members.
“Don’t look down.” “Just look at your next
step.” I took one step back, then another.
I felt myself getting tied in. “Relax and have fun!”
My feet were involuntarily kicking up dust. “Don’t let
the pressik lock...unless you start dropping to your death.”
My bladder felt weak. “Remember, you guide the speed of your
descent. Put the rope behind your butt to slow down, and
bring it to your side to speed up.” “Don’t
get into a 90 degree angle until you’re right on the edge.
Just move your feet right to the edge. Spread your feet
more, even with your shoulders.” “Ok, put your right foot here.”
“Good.” “Put your left foot into that rock.” “Now! Go 90
degrees, your legs perpendicular to the side of the cliff.”
“Just take one step down at a time.” “There’ll be a spot
where you can’t touch the side of the cliff anymore.
You’ll just hang there, it’ll be great!” (Hang there?
Huh? What?)
Sweet Jesus, I did it. One shaky step and
then another. I didn’t look down, ever, especially not
down the 150 feet that led to the boulders and water below.
I looked at one rocky spot where I would place my foot, and then
the next. I reached the place where the cliff-face
disappeared and I was on my own, hanging, free, guiding my own
descent, realizing that it was easier to do this than fiddling
around trying to find my next foothold. It was
fun! I felt utterly graceful and brilliant, for about 10
seconds.
I got to the bottom, jubilant, filled with
indescribable joy, and quickly realized that this would be a
skill I would need to practice again and again. Just one
skill. There would be many more to learn and practice, and
finally master, to achieve the goal of proficiency as a rope
rescue technician. My new rope rescue instructor was Chris
Christy, the ex-jarhead, who had little patience for my
struggles with fear, self-assertion, inertia, cowardice, and my
feminine sensibilities. He was a man who rooted for me
silently, but who taunted me loudly to improve my skills.
I never felt more inadequate. I wanted to whine and carry
on that this came easily to guys because they took shop or math
or auto mechanics in school while I played the flute and
practiced knitting.
But I knew he was challenging me to do what I
said I wanted to do. And there were absolute standards
that had to be met. So, I saved my breath and quit
sniveling, and got on with learning it. Identifying
anchors, rigging mechanical advantages and lowering systems and
raising systems, high directionals, patient packaging.
This feeling is like no other. This
feeling of service to other human beings. It has made me
work harder and more efficiently, to stay current with my office
workload so I don’t miss a training, or a mission, or let down
my friends. There are times I would prefer being a pretend hero
strutting around in my official looking uniform, driving around
with my official looking license plate, instead of continuing
this dream to be an effective search and rescue volunteer,
because the reality of how you achieve that effectiveness is by
doing uncomfortable things at inopportune times, over and over
and over.
As I have hung in there, my team members have
encouraged me. Mostly, they are guys. But there has
been one woman in particular, Vynette Sage. She has
encouraged me without hand-holding. She has been a
steadfast, ethical, strong role model for me, and I have slowly
felt a new feeling of worth.
I was not blessed with an unusual amount of
intelligence or talent. No one has ever called me a
quick study. Rather, I have learned that, if you want to
achieve something that is more than you’ve settled for in the
past, if you want to go beyond that which comes easily to you,
you don’t do it with one bold action. You keep after it,
one small step at a time. You don’t give up.
I haven’t sewn on my rope rescue
certification badge yet. It will take more
self-study and lots of practice. Summer is just around the
corner.
.
Thanks Anita for
sharing your experience.
Thanks to all who
contributed to this issue of the newsletter.
Please continue to
share for the enlightenment of all.
Mike
