SAR effort for Derek Mamoyac on Friday 10-17-08.
(Click on photos to enlarge)
Thursday evening Matt and I at the county shops. After dropping-off a set of radios at the fairgrounds for use at the ski swap, we got underway around 8pm with Matt driving the truck and me following in my car. We drove to Portland for the night. Matt had pre-arranged accommodations with his friend, and I stayed the night at Drew’s flat in Portland. After a quick brewski we hit the sack around 10:30pm. Matt was knocking on Drew’s door at 3:30am as he promised. We drove to Troutdale and refueled the Jeep on the way to Hood River. At Hood River we refueled once again and headed up 141 towards Cold Springs Campground.
We had a small moment of excitement when Matt entered a merge in the road from the left and a log Truck came barreling down from the right directly thereafter, horn blaring, seemingly unable to stop. Matt’s quick evasive action into the on-coming lane prevented the Jeep (and Matt) from getting creamed by the log truck. It is also exceedingly fortunate that there was no on-coming traffic because it appeared that there was no room for Matt to take evasive action to the right. Drew and I witnessed the event unfold directly in front of us.
We arrived at Cold Springs Campground before dawn. The camp was just beginning to stir as Mary and the other Corvallis members arrived. Eugene MR was also present. We had a briefing around 7:30am and received an assignment to go up the climbers trail to the Lunch Counter, and then up to the summit if the weather conditions allowed. Apparently no unit had yet made it to the summit. Eugene MR was also dispatched to the Lunch Counter, and then routed to search the slope west of the Counter. Mary ran Ops, and Tim, Jill, and the others received search assignments in the area of the trail around the mountain to the west at an elevation of around 6,000feet.
After packing provisions for an overnight bivy, Matt, Drew, and I headed up the wide gully between Crescent Glacier and South Butte. We spread out wide (around 100 yards apart) as we headed up the gully with Matt in the center, Drew on the far right, and myself running a GPS track on the far left. There were numerous nooks, crannies, and improvised bivy spots sprinkled between the boulders and clusters of small, twisted trees all over the approach to the Lunch Counter - far too numerous to thoroughly investigate without a small army. We did our best to check the more obvious of these on the way up. The quantity of these spots, along with the shadowing effect from the sunlight, made the POD for a subject wearing black very low. At one point I could have sworn I saw a black mummy bag next to a rock, but closer inspection revealed only a shadow. There were also numerous boot prints of varying size, type and age.
We made good time, considering the area we had to cover, and arrived at the Lunch Counter at about 2:00pm. There was a strong chill wind from the west and a large lenticular cloud over the summit.
This was when we heard over the radio that the subject had been found on the trail to the west at about 6,000 feet elevation by a dog team. Derek was reported to be in fair condition despite an ankle injury and his multi-day ordeal. Mary requested use of our unit’s litter and directed us to head down and toward the subject for a possible litter evacuation. In the meantime Ops worked on getting a helicopter evac. We took a break, ate, drank, and then headed down and to the west.
The weather cleared as we descended and Pikers Peak created a bit of a ‘draw’ to the summit. Media helicopter(s) were buzzing overhead in short order. Ops managed to arrange a helicopter evac during our descent, but we continued toward the subject in the event that the weather changed or darkness prevented a helicopter evacuation.
We got within about 1.5 miles of Derek’s location when the rescue helicopter arrived at 5:10pm. At that point we stopped and listened to the evacuation progress over the radio.
Derek was hoisted into the helicopter, and once it was clear that the helicopter evac was successful, we headed back to SAR Base. It turned out to be a 14 mile day with 4,600 feet of elevation gain and a moving average of 2.1 MPH over 6.5 hours time.
We arrived just as darkness fell and slinked into SAR Base. The rescuers that were with Derek arrived back a little over and hour later. The media welcomed them. There was no coffee available, but we did get some Oreos from Tim. (Thanks Tim!) As soon as we got unit’s litter back, we all headed back to Corvallis. Matt and Drew alternated driving the truck back. We took a couple of snack/wake-up breaks along the way back and arrived home about 2:30am.
Many thanks to all who participated, and to Mary King who did a great job directing the search effort and handling an enormous amount of radio traffic.
