Bullion Basin & Frustrating Pilots

This past weekend my Seattle Mountain Rescue (SMR) teammate and I ended up heading out on a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission close to Crystal Mountain Ski Resort, located in the foothills east of 14,410' tall Mt Rainier. The storms that hit over the week while I was in London for training managed to unexpectedly dump several feet of new snow and then trigger several avalanches across the Cascades. As a result, when I returned to the US and turned my cell on, about 50 text messages came rolling in dealing with several unrelated groups that had managed to get themselves into trouble, requiring SMR to head out to extract them and provide care starting as early as Tuesday. By the end of the week, one particular group who had headed out into the back country for a snowboarding trip up and over from Crystal Mountain continued to be lost with no trace.

So on Saturday, my teammates and I headed out at 05:30 in our fully loaded Expedition, arriving at search base around 07:30. After receiving our assignments and designating who would go with what team, we were inserted two ranges away by UH-1 helo to a remote and high angle search area. As we flew in, I was surprised to see the sheer number of avalanche that had hit this particular area over the last few days. Just about every slope and exposed run across several bowls showed some form of avalanche result, so given how long these three men had been missing coupled with all those slides made their chances of survival seem pretty slim. Holding on to hope, we learned that one of the three had just purchased an avalanche beacon the day of their disappearance.. so if he picked up batteries at the same time, they would have been the most fresh and possibly still capable of a charge. If we could pick up a signal, we would be able to vector in on any one of them and hopefully find them alive somewhere holed up and ready for evacuation.

Our team of 6 hit a very small LZ nestled in between pine trees and after breaking up assignments into teams of two (there were two SMR, two SPART and two Central Washington Mtn Rescue in our team) ranging from the base of an avalanche to straight up the center slope of an 800' face riddled with avalanche debris, we used our beacons and walked zig-zag to see if we couldn't find any trace of the missing snowboarders or pick up an emitted signal. We searched and searched with no results but occasionally one of us would pick up a ghost ping where our beacon would ping, we would look at each other with worried expression, and then spend 10 minutes combing that area with wands and cadaver dogs. All things considered, it seemed downright eerie. We came across the snowboarders "hut", a home made shelter carefully built by the three deep in the treeline and perfectly placed to take advantage of all these pure runs without having to worry about lift lines or other boarders. They had spent literally months working on this hut, complete with moss to plug holes in the wood sides for insulation, a cast iron stove (try considering that in your pack), tarps to cover the door and a well constructed and leakproof roof. It was well camouflaged to keep NPS Rangers from finding it given that the structure wasn't exactly authorized and it was located on National Park land. But given the level of complexity (the cast iron chimney even had a little home made roof to keep snow out of the top) and obvious frequency of visits (found a cord of evenly sawed wood and canned food with a receipt from November) for them to have missed their shelter as they traveled enroute didn't make sense. And yet there was no trace. So the more likely scenario was that they had triggered an avalanche on the way in, and through the week's storms likely had another one drop on top of them. If that had happened, it would be spring before any trace revealed itself. Grim, I know. But very strange and one of the reasons that we all spent so much time focusing on the ghost pings and probing of fields where it seemed likely they might have been.

It is funny how even in the darkest of times there comes a moment where you can truly relish life and where even simple, little things often overlooked when caught up in the day-to-day rush of things just pass you by. It happened in Iraq all the time. At the end of another day, every once in a blue moon my buddies and I would ascend to the top of a tower somewhere, smoke a cigar in the blast furnace heat and stare wistfully at an absolutely beautiful orange arabian sunset. There in Bullion Basin, thrown straight into this grim day where the odds of finding the boarders alive came a moment where Scott and I ascended straight up a 45 degree slope through chest deep snow to pop out on the very tip top of an icy ridgeline that held a stunning view of the east face of Mt Rainier. On an afternoon of mild temperature, no wind and blue skies, it seemed odd to be looking out at this beautiful scene staring awestruck at the magesty of a massive volcano so close, yet hear the constant clatter of search helicopters scouring the treeline 1000' below us and radio chatter of search teams coming up empty handed. Throwing down a handfull of Sour Patch Kids, Scott and I moved on, descending back into the trees and reenergized to continue along our search path.

Toward the end of the day we were told that the search was called off and we had 10 minutes to quickly descend to our LZ for pickup. We moved pretty quick, arriving at the LZ and calling the helo to let them know that we were ready to head back to base. That's when we heard another rescuer acting as relay who told us sorry, the pilots decided they were done and were heading home. I just stared at Scott in disbelief and shook my head, asking our SPART teammate to reconfirm what we had just heard. Thanks, pilots. So, as it turns out, pilots are the same all over the place! Not just in the Marines. How many times have I found myself on the short end of a helo ride where I ended up having to use black cadillacs for egress while the pilots were hanging out in the O Club hitting on nurses. Apparently at least once more.

Scott ended up laughing as I bitched and complained about pilots for the next 4 hours as we broke trail and post holed over 7 miles through hip deep snow to navigate 1,000' up, then across and over two mountain ranges to get home. In the fading light of day, I reached the final ridge and looked down into the new valley. Way, far off in the distance, about as large as an N gauge train model set sat the ski lodge bathed in orange glow. From where we stood in the dark, the trail wound down down down through tree stands and additional avalanche fields to the ski area and it took our collective team close to 5 hrs to get back to base. Chowing down on a meal that Steve had kindly saved for us, we packed up, loaded on board the truck, and headed home.

Ultimately, I don't know what happened to the three boarders. Scott and I talked about it and speculated as to what had happened to them, but with additional winter storms inbound and at least three more months of solid winter weather it may be late spring before anyone knows. Hopefully, in a remote long shot the three are holed up in a hotel somewhere sleeping.

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