Outdoors/Adventure

The Alaska search and rescue thin line

After the rescue, safely back in Anchorage and more than a little embarrassed, Alaska Department of Fish and Game public information officer Ken Marsh was contemplating a simple question: Cell phone good or cell phone bad?

Back in the day, Marsh confessed, he never would have thought of heading off into the woods without a lighter, a jacket and a compass. And yet that is exactly what he did on Thursday evening after work in Anchorage. He drove out north of the city into the Susitna Valley to look for a moose. The evening was warm. He wasn't going far from his truck parked not far off a road west of Wasilla. He really didn't expect to get a moose. And, of course, he had his cell phone if something went wrong.

As it turned out, something did go wrong, and he made one of several calls that last week sparked necessary -- but not necessarily vital -- rescues in southcentral Alaska. They were the sort of non-rescue rescues that are increasingly tying up Alaska rescue personnel and state resources. They were the sort of rescues that have helped to inflate the search and rescue budget of the Alaska State Troopers by about 60 percent over the past decade.

Given the huge distances in Alaska and the limited number of people trained for what are commonly called SAR (search-and-rescue) missions, these were also rescues with the potential to tie up life-saving assets that might be needed elsewhere. A trooper helicopter earlier this summer took a long nine hours to reach a group of National Outdoor Leadership School students after they were attacked by a grizzly bear in the Talkeetna Mountains in large part because it had been tied up in a futile SAR operation in the Fairbanks area earlier the same day. Two of the NOLS students mauled by that bear had suffered life-threatening injuries. They were being treated by fellow students who could only hope and pray rescuers would arrive before their classmates bled to death.

Fortunately, help did come and all did survive, but it was close.

NOLS officials later pondered whether the rescue had been delayed by a rescue system bogged down with marginally necessary, unnecessary or even bogus calls for help. These problems are not unique to Alaska, say those involved in SAR. All across the country, the convenience of the cell phone and the creation of the personal locator beacon (PLB) are taxing rescue assets. SAR personnel say that too many people who should be taking care of themselves are instead calling for help.

Technology, a marvelous crutch

Marsh admits he is one of those who should have been able to take care of himself. He wonders, frankly, what he was thinking that night he went moose hunting. "I probably had a little sense of security with that cell phone," he said. "I always carried a lighter."

ADVERTISEMENT

Always, that is, until recently. Technology is a marvelous crutch.

Marsh wasn't the only one to use it in recent days in the Anchorage area. Less than a day after Marsh called troopers, Barbara Wright dialed them from the Twentymile River near Portage to report she was worried about her son, 31-year-old Josh Hoeldt from Eagle River. He'd dropped his mom and her husband on the river to make camp, then pointed his riverboat back downstream toward the Seward Highway bridge to pick up his wife and kids. The Twentymile is not a particularly dangerous river, but when Hoeldt failed to make it back to camp his worried mom called for a search.

"AST searched the area using AST Helo-1 from approximately 2339 hours until approximately 0300 hours," troopers later reported. "Due to increasing fog and lack of light the helicopter had to leave the area. The following day prior to resuming search efforts, a family friend located Hoeldt at a cabin on Twentymile River. Hoeldt and his family were not in distress. Hoeldt reported on his return trip to the campsite with his family, darkness prevented him from continuing. Hoeldt and his family spent the night at the cabin with plans to resume the trip in the morning."

Helo-1 is a Eurocopter AS 350. The contract cost to charter such an aircraft in Alaska ranges from about $1,500 to $2,000 per hour. The cost of flight time alone to search the Twentymile area with a helicopter departing from Anchorage would be in excess of $6,000, though it costs the state Department of Public Safety less. Government agencies, unlike business, do not need to generate profit. Still, the costs eat away at the approximately $600,000 troopers have budgeted for search and rescue in Alaska this year. The Hoeldt family was not charged. No one in Alaska is charged for SAR operations.

Search and rescue is considered a government responsibility, like the enforcement of traffic laws. Fortunately, troopers can offset some of the costs with volunteers, an option unavailable in traffic enforcement. Historically, about 75 percent of the SAR in Alaska has been done by volunteers. Troopers try to use them where possible.

Lost and found in Southcentral Alaska

A few days before Helo 1 was sent to pick up Marsh, a trooper dispatcher got a call from a man saying he and friends were lost along the South Fork Eagle River Trail in Chugach State Park, just north of Anchorage. The caller said he was with three other men and three teenagers, and that it had gotten dark. Troopers sent Alaska state park rangers and three teams from the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group (ARMG) to look for the lost hikers.

"At approximately 0900 hours (the next morning), while the three ARMG teams were actively searching the area, the seven hikers walked out on their own returning to the trail head," troopers later reported. "All

seven hikers were accounted for and uninjured. All seven hikers were from Anchorage. They were identified as Chang Yang, Sai Thao, Boonchan Yang,Vang Lor, Bee Yang, Tang Thao, and Keng Thao.

In the days before cell phones, few would even have known the group had gone missing overnight. Technology has, however, altered the equation forever -- for better or worse. Just days after Marsh made his call from just west of Wasilla, troopers got another call from just east of that community. There was a report 44-year-old Mary Weir from Palmer was missing near Jim Creek.

She "had driven an all-terrain-vehicle away from her campsite in Jim Creek and had not returned," a trooper report said. "On 9-11-11 at approximately 1855 hours, Mary was located by helicopter. Mary was

transported to Mat-Su Regional where she was treated for minor injuries."

Weir probably would have survived the night without the helicopter going to rescue here. The story is the same for Marsh. But the problem hinges on that word "probably." Troopers say they cannot not do SARS,

and Marsh confessed he could not not use his cell phone.

"Better the headline read: 'Dumbass rescued,'" he remembered thinking as he dialed 911, then that someone end up finding his body where he died of hypothermia. That was not likely, he added, but it was within a range of possibilities.

"I made some boneheaded blunders," he said.

Experience doesn't always help in a thicket

Marsh is not some Alaska neophyte, either. He is an avid and now middle-age angler and hunter who grew up in the 49th state. He is a former outdoor editor for Alaska Magazine. He was a fishing reporter for the Anchorage Daily News back when that newspaper published an awarding winning Outdoor section. He's spent many a night camped out. And there was a time when, if he'd shot a moose just before dark and spent hours butchering it, he'd have recognized his predicament come the inky blackness of night. He'd have started a fire, settled in, and spent the night dozing and waiting for the dawn.

Only it's hard to start a fire without some sort of fire starter. So, on this night, after getting the moose tended to and the meat spread out to cool, Marsh started back in the direction of what he thought was his truck, knowing that if things went really, really wrong on the hike, well, he had that cell phone. A compass might have been more useful, he added. The Point MacKenzie Road slices across the east end of the Susitna River valley from Wasilla to tidewater just across Cook Inlet from Anchorage.

ADVERTISEMENT

From anywhere near where Marsh had killed that moose, a straight line east would have hit the road. But it isn't easy to walk a straight line in the woods, and it's almost impossible in the dark without a compass or a landmark. Marsh didn't have either.

"The problem is there are no landmarks," he said. "It's flat country."

Many are those who can sympathize. The lower Susitna River valley is an easy place to get lost, not dangerously lost but all twisted around as to where you are, which is exactly what happened to Marsh. Unsure of where he was, his glasses fogging, his shirt soaking with sweat, he followed the pencil beam of a headlight (he'd had the sense to bring that) in the direction he thought would take him to his truck.

"I was getting deeper into timber instead of out of it," he said. "But I just kept busting through until I found an opening in a muskeg."

On the way in to where he'd planned to hunt, he'd had to cross a big muskeg. So when he hit a muskeg on the way out, he was relieved. Then, he started looking around more carefully and realized he didn't recognize any of it. There are a lot of muskegs in the Susitna Valley and this was clearly the wrong muskeg.

"I've been doing this for almost 50 years now," Marsh said.

Experience now was telling him the obvious. He was nicely lost.

About 10:30 p.m., he accepted that and called a friend. "He offered to send someone to find my truck and honk," Marsh said. Marsh thought about it, but finally decided he was so far from his truck he wasn't going to hear the horn. He thought about what to do next. The temperature was falling into the 40s. He was lightly dressed and soaked with sweat. He had no way to start a fire. He'd likely survive the night, but it wouldn't be comfortable.

ADVERTISEMENT

He remembers thinking that "this was an after work lark that was really stupid," and "I'm either going to spend the night out here or call for help now."

Marsh called for help.

Alaska State Troopers noted his location and first sent a patrol car out to make some noise Marsh might be able to follow to the nearest road. "They ran their sirens," Marsh said. "I was too far away. I couldn't hear them."

So sometime after midnight, troopers called in Helo 1. Marsh waited, worrying about his phone battery running out and avoiding the calls from his worried girlfriend. About 1:30 a.m. he quit worrying when the helicopter finally arrived to pick him up and delivered him to his truck.

"The troopers were real nice," Marsh said. "I was farther lost than I even thought I was. I'd been going the complete opposite direction."

The next day Marsh returned to pack out his moose. He says he learned a lesson -- even several of them.

"There was a lot of prevention that could have happened," he said. He notes a personal sense of complacency. "It wasn't a conscious thing," he said. "Hopefully I'd have been better prepared, but I didn't go into the field thinking I'd actually get a moose this time."

He expected he'd just sit in the woods looking for moose until shortly before dark and then amble back to the truck in the last of the daylight. Shooting the moose changed the timeline, and when the timeline changed, everything changed.

"I'll take the jacket and the lighter" next time, Marsh said. "This was just a real good reminder. It's nice to be able to laugh now … but I don't think everyone knows yet. I'm not advertising this."

It's embarrassing to get rescued, and maybe it should be in an age when it's so easy to call for help. Embarrassment might be the only thing preventing people from calling for rescues at first discomfort because technology has made it really easy to place a call.

That said, Marsh added, technology might also help make it unnecessary to place a call. He's looking at new 4G smartphone with built in GPS and an electronic compass. It's hard to imagine getting lost when assisted by those navigational aides, he said. Or at least it's hard for Marsh to imagine getting lost with those navigational aides.

Troopers note there are plenty of people out there clueless as to how to use the GPS in their phones.

Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

ADVERTISEMENT