|
|
|
DEM #01-087 April 30, 2001 |
The Unit was contacted by the Pierce County Department of Emergency Management at 4:00 p.m. on Monday the 30th of April. They requested as many Mountain Rescue Volunteers as possible for a search in Snohomish County.
Two 33-year old hikers, Mike Barbadelata and Alex Pawoff, both from Seattle, had left on Saturday morning for a hike to the summit of Mt. Dickerman, They had planned to return on Sunday evening. Before they could complete their hike the weather turned bad and stranded them about 700 feet from the summit at about the 5,000 foot level. They were in good condition and well equipped. The had also carried both a cell phone and radio with them and were able to talk to search base. Mt. Dickerman is a fairly easy hike but has some trails off switch backs that lead to dead ends at the edge of 1000 foot cliffs. It is no place to be stumbling around in a whiteout. They were told to stay put. Members of Snohomish Search and Rescue did a search Sunday night but the search was suspended due to avalanche hazard.
Four members responded to the call out: Mike Mixon, Ed Hrivnak, Phil Fortier, and Darin Brenner. Mike and Ed met at the Cache and Phil and Darin went directly to the search base. When they arrived at 6:00 a.m. at the search base they were told to gear up and start up the trail to the summit as soon as possible.
A storm Sunday night had dropped two to three feet of new snow which made the going fairly tough. Around 10:00 a..m. a rescue helicopter from Snohomish County spotted the subjects through a break in the clouds. They were told to descend to a flat clearing and stomp out a landing zone for the helicopter. The helicopter was a small two seat aircraft so the pilot could only take out one at a time. After lifting the first subject to search base the weather closed back in. The ground teams were told to continue; however, the weather opened up again just long enough to extract the second subject. All of the ground teams were then told to return to base.
Tacoma Mountain Rescue |
 |