|
|
|
DEM #98-2511 December 13, 1998 |
The Unit was contacted by the Pierce County Department of Emergency Management on Sunday the 13th of Dec. The Requested at least 10 mountain rescue volunteers to help Snohomish County search for two men lost on Mt. Pilchuck Ten TMRU memebers responded they were: Russ Brinton, John Miner, Cliff Lightfoot, Brian McGinty, Tony O'brien, Cheryl Wells, Juan Ridout and Chris Berryman. They were told to meet at the cache at 4:00 A.M. so they could be at the search base in Snohomish county at 7:00 A.M. What follows is a compilation of two mission reports the were email to me by Russ Brinton and John Miner.
The two Seattle men, ages 21 and 25 were snowshoeing high on Mt. Pilchuck, Mt. Pilchuck is not a beginner snowshoe trip there is steep, avalanche prone terrain along with exposed slopes to the weather that are often windpacked, making it almost necessary to have crampons at times. They were unprepared, inexperienced and did not leave a plan of what they were up to.
Their objective was the lookout. They got to the pass and were traversing around the other side when it got late and they ran into some questionable snow conditions. They tried to traverse around when one of them fell. The weather had moved in, with clouds and snow. They realized they were lost, so they decided to continue down this drainage. They were now on the south side of the peak. They made it below the snowline, where they spent a cold night.
Two hasty teams from Snohomish County had gone in on Sunday night. One team went straight up the old ski area toward the summit, the other team followed the trail up. One of the teams located tracks, which they (both?) followed to the 4200' level where they had to break off the tracking (terrain, weather, etc).
Our mission was to go up and check out the summit where a lookout is located (possible bivouc for them?) and to see if we could pick up the tracks where the others left off. There had been 2-3 inches of snow during Sun. as evidenced by the buildup on the subjects vehicle. (A plow was brought in to clear the road to the end (old ski area) for the base of operations).
The search on Monday consisted of Mountain Rescue personnel only, with teams coming from Tacoma, Everett, Seattle, Olympic. We started up the trail (about 8:35) during our ascent, we heard on the radios that the helicopter had spotted tracks on the south side of the mtn, starting at about 3800' (we were at approx 3200' at the time) So we adjusted the mission to include possiblity of finding and working the tracks the helicopter had spotted. We went up to the end of the tracks and just as we were to continue our ops, we got word that the subjects were definately found and to return to base. All searchers returned to base by a direct descent of the ski area -- an interesting exercise on sno-shoes!!
Tacoma Mountain Rescue |
 |