Press release from: Clackamas County Sheriff's Office
SPECIAL FEATURE:
Learning to Climb
Dedicated volunteers teach Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office deputies how to ‘dance’ during rescue operations on Mt. Hood.
By Patrick Sherman, Clackamas County Sheriff's Office
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Video: SAR Training (.mp4 file)
Photos: [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ]
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On the first sunny day of summer, on the rugged, snowy flanks of Mt. Hood, three Clackamas County Sheriff’s deputies volunteered their time to learn how to dance.
Rocky Henderson — a member of the all-volunteer Portland Mountain Rescue — was their dance teacher.
“I want you to get to know the dance, the feel, the rhythm of climbing,” Henderson told them. “I want you to get to know the sequence of steps — how to coordinate the movement of your hands and feet.”
Lieutenant Matt Ellington, Sergeant Scott Napoli and Deputy Scott Meyers were learning this “dance” — the basics of mountaineering — from an accomplished teacher. Henderson, a former president of the Mountain Rescue Association, has participated in more than 100 mountain rescues, beginning with the Oregon Episcopal School tragedy in 1986.
“It’s important to maintain your balance and coordination at all times,” Henderson told them. “Breathing is a part of that. You want to make sure you never get out of breath.”
By law, the sheriff in each of Oregon’s 36 counties is responsible for all search-and-rescue operations within its borders — but in Clackamas County, this poses a unique challenge. Mt. Hood is the second most frequently climbed mountain in the world, behind only Mt. Fuji in Japan, which is the site of a religious pilgrimage.
This fact, coupled with the other outdoor recreation opportunities the county affords, makes the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office the busiest search-and-rescue agency in the state. It completed more than 150 missions last year — an average of one every two or three days.
Training for a ‘long-term payoff’
With its limited budget and staff, the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office relies on a cadre of dedicated volunteers to perform much of its actual searching during rescue operations. These include groups such as Portland Mountain Rescue (PMR), Pacific Northwest Search & Rescue, Mountain Wave Emergency Communications and others.
Sheriff’s deputies, including Ellington, Napoli and Meyers, are typically limited to the crucial role of search coordinator — huddling inside an incident command vehicle, studying maps and directing searchers in the field by radio.
Henderson’s training broadens a coordinator’s understanding. “I think it’s important for our search coordinators to know what our volunteers, especially PMR, go through,” explained Napoli. “We also want to learn the geography and the landmarks of the mountain. I think that’s important, so that when we’re talking to them on the radio, we can visualize where they are.”
With this goal in mind, the three deputies volunteered their own time to develop some fundamental skills with Henderson — and then to climb Mt. Hood. For his part, Henderson was glad to have the deputies as his students.
“I think this is going to have a long-term payoff with search and rescue on Mt. Hood,” he said. “It’s going to be a real benefit just to have these guys be familiar with the terrain and just knowing what’s out here.”
Walking Lessons
The lesson started even before the group left the parking lot, with Henderson telling the deputies how to correctly strap their crampons — claw-like attachments to grip ice and snow — to the soles of their boots.
“You want to make sure the straps are nice and tight, and any extra is wrapped around the outside of the boot,” Henderson said. “Plenty of people have been injured or killed because they hooked up their crampon on the straps on the other boot, and that tripped them up and they fell.”
Next, he introduced the ice axe, a short-handled tool that resembles a diminutive miner’s pick.
“The worst thing you can do in any accident or fall is let go of your ice axe,” said Henderson. “That thing is your safety net — it never gets out of your hand.”
Once they were out on the snow, the deputies began by learning to walk again, using the ice axe to steady themselves as they traversed a steep slope.
“When we’re climbing, we use what’s called a ‘rest step,’” he told them. “You rest between each step, so you don’t ever get out of breath. You want to be able to maintain your speed of climb indefinitely.
“If you push yourself and you get tired, that’s when you’re going to make mistakes. Lactic acid builds up in your muscles, and you become less coordinated.”
Moving downhill, Henderson advised them to keep their legs apart, like there was an invisible bar between their ankles, to avoid tripping.
“Keep your weight over your feet,” he said. “Fight the urge to lean backwards.”
The Art of Self-Arrest
Having mastered the basics of movement, Henderson next taught the deputies a skill that sounded peculiar to police officers: self-arrest — although it involved neither criminal behavior nor handcuffs.
“Basically, self-arrest is how you stop yourself if you’re sliding down the side of the mountain,” he explained. “You put your weight on the axe pick, driving it down into the ice. Be sure to lift your feet, though. If you catch a crampon on the surface, that’s how legs get broken.”
The final lesson of the day involved rope — as the deputies learned to tie off to one another in order to guard against falls. Henderson led them up and down the snow-covered slopes, practicing turns and maintaining proper spacing.
Then, without warning, he shouted “Falling!” and threw himself down the side of the hill. Simultaneously, all three deputies dove onto their ice axes, driving them deep into the snow — stopping Henderson’s tumbling descent at the end of a taught length of nylon rope.
Recovering himself, Henderson laughed: “I might get on a rope with you guys after all!”
By Dawn’s Early Light
At 3 a.m. the next morning, the Ellington, Napoli and Meyers met up with Henderson and fellow PMR member Bob Brownback. From Timberline Lodge, a tracked snowcat carried them to the top of the Palmer snowfield, 8,000 feet above sea level.
Their goal: to reach the summit of Mt. Hood, still 3,239 feet above them.
Ellington looked out into the darkness and saw the mountain was already crowded with climbers.
“There were so many people climbing — you could see their headlamps everywhere,” he said. “It was like ants crawling across the snow.”
As the sun peaked over the horizon and its first rays of fell on the mountaintop, the deputies beheld a unique and unexpected sight: the shadow of Mt. Hood, a near-perfect triangle, stretching out for miles across the countryside below.
Apart from the spectacular vistas, the climb also gave the deputies a new appreciation of incidents that they had participated in as search-and-rescue coordinators from base camp.
“While we were going up, I was thinking about all of the different accidents we’ve had on Mt. Hood,” Ellington said. “I’d see one particular location and think, ‘That’s where the search for Brian Hall and Jerry Cooke ended,’ or ‘That’s where the helicopter crashed in 2002.’”
The party reached the summit at 7:45 a.m. and stood for a moment with all of Oregon at their feet before starting back down the mountain.
“The whole thing was professionally and personally rewarding,” said Ellington. “I learned a lot about the mountain. The next time we have a search up there, I’ll know what it takes to get there, and what kind of resources we’ll need.”
[END]
Contact Info: Jim Strovink, Detective
