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MISSION REPORT 98-12: Cave Search, Dead Horse Cave, Skamania County, WA Member-hours: 10
Justin Matheson wandered away from his family after visiting Dead Horse Cave on the flanks of Mt. Adams on Saturday October 10th. A childhood head injury made his behavior difficult to predict. Family and friends searched the remainder of Saturday and all day Sunday before reporting his disappearance to the Skamania County Sheriff at dark on Sunday. When he had not been found by ground searchers or dogs by Monday evening, Bob Warric of the Skamania County Sheriff's office, who was serving as the Incident Commander, decided the entire cave should be cleared. (Two short 'through trip' searches had already been conducted.) The Forest Service provided Larry King's and Scott Linn's names as as cavers familiar with Dead Horse from their mapping efforts over the past several years.
Larry received the call on Monday, October 12th, at about 20:00. Scott was unable to help search due to recent knee surgery, but Mardi Keltner, who had also spent many days working on the mapping project, agreed to drive up from Corvallis to help with the search. Mardi and Larry arrived at base camp at 8:15 Tuesday morning, joining about 60 other people from various search and rescue organizations. We were teamed up with two experienced cavers from the Volcano Rescue Team, Kevin McCutcheon and Wade Glenn. We acted as guides to the confusing maze passageways of the cave, while Kevin and Wade helped search and (as EMTs) were prepared to provide medical care for Justin if he was found.
We thoroughly searched about half the cave, including the upper mazes, balcony passage, and most of the lower river passage mazes including the 700 foot extension. We exited the cave after about four hours, leaving the Masochist Maze and Misery Crawl unsearched. Justin Matheson was found on the surface 1/4 mile away about 10 minutes after we left the cave. He was in remarkably good shape after surviving the better part of 4 days and 3 nights in the rain and cold. CMRU participant: Mardi Keltner
UNIT ELECTIONS -results
Even if Oregon goes to voting by mail, you'll still have to attend the November Unit Meeting each year to cast your vote for Unit Officers. The 1999 Officers will be:
President: Jon Sears
Vice President: Don Lacer
Secretary: Joy Linn
Treasurer: Anne Greenwood
Member-at-Large: Jim Dagata
OMRC Delegate: Bob Freund
These new officers assume their duties on January 1, 1999.
TRAINING COMMITTEE - input
At its November meeting, the Training Committee will be putting together the Annual Meeting and Training Schedule for 1999. Your input is solicited in order to make next year's scheduled training events both interesting and complete. Contact any member of the Training Committee (Don Lacer is the committee chair).
HELICOPTER TRAINING - revisited
A year ago while recovering a body from Three-Fingered Jack, we worked with Heli-jet (a Eugene-based helicopter company) to rig and short-haul the subject from the west face of the mountain. Jeremy Adolf contacted Heli-jet to see if we could schedule additional training with them and was encouraged by the reception he got. Although originally scheduled for late Spring, the event had to be put off when the fire season began early in Florida and Heli-jet's aircraft and crews were busy. The session finally happened in mid-October.
We spent about three hours around, in, and under a Bell 206. First we were given introduced to the aircraft and how to load/unload ourselves and our gear. We practiced it without the aircraft turned up; and then we all got to load, go for a short flight, and unload (two at a time) - twice! Following the flight time, we were given an introduction to short-haul hook-up and disconnect. Then it was time to see how it all worked.
With a "Rescue Randy" (borrowed from McKenzie Fire) we first tried the Ferno-Washington litter with our standard spider on a 100 foot cable. It worked just fine - no spinning, no oscillation, just a smooth ride said the pilot - even with 40 knots forward airspeed. Then we tried a "Heli-rescue Bag" and finally put the Heli-rescue bag into a SKED and flew it around. In all cases, the load was stable.
Finally, we divided into two groups and Short-hauled the load between the groups allowing everyone to both attach the load to the cable and detach the load. And yes, you do get a "tingle" if you grab the load before it has a chance to "ground" the static electricity.
All in all, we received over an hour and a half of actual helicopter time. Even though it cost the Unit quite a bit of money to buy that time, our thanks to Heli-jet for making the training available and helping stretch the training dollars. All who attended learned quite a bit about working around and under helicopters.
CHRISTMAS PARADE - 27 November
Jon advises that CMRU has said it will participate in the annual Christmas Parade through downtown Corvallis. This year's parade will take place on Friday night, November 27. Details are somewhat sketchy right now, but when Jon gets more details, he will page us. Oh boy, I can hardly wait to walk down 3rd street with crampons, ice-axe, and roped to two other CMRU members!! - ed.
SKILLS WORKSHOP -
The Skills Workshop scheduled for Saturday, Norvember 21st, will tentatively be held at the horse barn in North Corvallis (on Elliot Circle) where it has been held in the past. If this location changes, notification will be paged to members. Bring your climbing harness, helmet, ascending/descending gear, lunch, gloves and boots. Topics areas to be covered will be: Fixed-line operations, litter rigging, raising/lowering system. It might also be good to review knots before the session. |
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