Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of the Code 3, 2, 1 podcast. I am your host or one of your hosts, Prescott Natto. Nick will be with us next month, but I have a really exciting guest with me here today, Drew Clymer. Drew, welcome to the show. Could you tell us a little bit about who you are?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Sure. My name is Drew Clymer.
My, my job is, I'm the state Search and rescue coordinator for Vermont. So I work in under the DPS with the Vermont State Police and I'm also a volunteer on Stone Mountain Rescue and I am also on the State Task Force 1 USAR team.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: So.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Sort of I tell people I'm sort of a one trick pony.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: How Drew, all of those worlds kind of mesh in one very critical area. It's probably why you are where you are with all of your experience in the backcountry. Go way back for a second where what got you started with all this?
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's funny, I've been here in Vermont for almost 20 years and rolling back the clock quite some time.
A friend of mine who was on Mountain Rescue said you should really like look into this. And I'm just a, an avid, just this is so cliche, but I'm just an avid outdoor athlete, recreationalist. So ski, bike, ride, hunt, fish, hike.
You know, I'm just like anybody else who likes the outdoors and spend it, spends as much time out there as possible. And he said you should really try it.
And the time commitment wasn't there. So I had to wait a couple years until my kids got a little bigger. And then I had the opportunity to apply for Stone Mountain Rescue. And it was, it was, it was what I was craving, right. So I came to it as a, I would call a generalist. Right. So I had a lot of applicable skills that I could sort of enhance my training. And once I did that, I thought it was, you know, I was all in pretty active team, great group of people, remarkable organization.
Love it, love it, love it. And then four years ago, the founder of Stone Mountain Rescue, Neil Van Dyke, who actually founded Snow mountain rescue in 1980, he had the role of the state Search and Rescue coordinator. And I was helping him with the training and he mentioned that he was retiring.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: And.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: When I told my wife that, she said, you have to apply for the job.
And I would say that like in my 50s, I found absolutely what I was supposed to be doing.
So, you know, so that's, that's kind of me in a nutshell.
Oh, by the way, I'm happily married for 32 years. I have two wonderful children and two remarkable brand new grandbabies.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: So that's true. That is awesome. Kind of a story for any of our listeners to queue into. There is the fact that you started, just like anyone in Vermont or a lot of people in Vermont is just loving the terrain, loving the mountains, being a generalist and doing a bunch of different things.
Stow Mountain Rescue. Talk a little bit more about that organization only because from my limited knowledge, it's enough to know that Stowe is, is an incredible organization like you alluded to. But what kind of cool stuff does Stow Mountain Rescue do?
[00:04:07] Speaker B: So Mountain Rescue is, is unique. There's a fair few backcountry teams in the state. We're really lucky. We have an incredible resource of people that are willing to go into the backcountry to the aid, you know, of people they've never met and do prison labor type work, you know, just for the joy of doing it.
Mountain rescue is unique in the sense that we have a, we have, we have a very high technical standard as well.
So, and we, we train a lot to maintain that. So, you know, we're a high angle technical team, you know, winter and summer. We are, you know, we're a swift water team. We're an ice rescue team. So we, you know, we do.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Swift.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Water and flood rescue. We do high angle, we do technical, we do, you know, our, you know, our standard litter carryouts and technical terrain ice rescue. We, we have, we're really fortunate to be supported. I mean we're unique in the sense that we're a separate agency within, within the firehouse. We don't sit under the fire department. We're, we're our own licensed first responder.
We're very well supported by the community and we're very well supported by the town.
And we have just a remarkable group of people on our team. We have, you know, you know, there's guys who are just like me, who was just a generalist, do somebody's dad.
And then we have, you know, somebody on the team who is a 30 year instructor for the Mountain Warfare School, Special Operations.
We have a trooper, we have, you know, like, you know, a remarkable woman on our team is just, just like me, just a regular person who loves to be outdoors. So we have, you know, ex military, ex law enforcement, you know, naturalists and environmentalists and you know, chip engineers. We have, it's a, it's a really, really interesting group of people that are all pretty, pretty passionate about what we do and, and driven to maintain the standards that we have.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah, and that sums it up, Drew. It's everything that I've heard about and actually experienced now, a handful of trainings that I. And a few incidents that I've been able to witness. It's just sort of that awe moment of, oh, wow, these guys are the real deal.
But that said, Drew, so. So you've got all of these people from various different backgrounds, levels of training and experience within the backcountry, search and rescue, things like that.
Now you. Before the show started, we were just chatting about the fact that, you know, a lot of people might not really know about search and rescue and backcountry rescue in Vermont. Everyone assumes, you know, we have mountains, so there's going to be backcountry rescues. But I don't think people actually understand what that is all about. Can you just shed some light to the listeners?
You know, is this sleepy Vermont where we get one or two a year? You know, are they.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: No, not really. So that's a fair question.
So I'll preface this by saying that mountain rescue, we do a lot of calls within our, you know, within the town of Stowe, but we also do a lot of mutual aid calls. So the backcountry rescue community is very, very keen to and very, very quick to support. Right. So, you know, account. A call on Camel's Hump will be. On Camel's Hump. Right. A call in Underhill in the back side of the mountain. We'll be supporting them.
Our swiftwater rescue capabilities are provided by the state. They actually provided us with two boats. They did that with a couple of different teams around the state so that we can respond for the state.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Wherever they need to go.
But backcountry rescue in. In this state, it's, you know, we draw people in.
We were reasonably remote.
There's a lot of outdoor recreation opportunities.
And so there's. There's teams spread from, you know, up in Montgomery, you know, over in Milton, sort of riding down Colchester. You know, you get to the camel's hump area, there's three teams that serve the camel's hump area. There's us, and then you drift down a little further south. There's KSAR and Rescue Inc. So there's a really great network of.
Of teams are available, will often get called if it's technical, like, you know, people are pretty clear about what they're comfortable doing, what they're not comfortable doing. And so when I say technical, like really austere environments, or they're going to be On a rope or, you know, that type of thing. So that's generally when mountain rescue get, you know, gets called out of town.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: That makes a ton of sense. I also drew, I love the mutual aid and the fact that what I am learning quickly is that the backcountry world is very similar to what a lot of listeners experiences with mutual aid. The word in general, whether you're an EMS provider, a firefighter, even a police officer, like, when you call for help from other teams, squads, departments, you're going to get it.
The same is true with the backcountry world. It's just to your point.
Stowe Mountain rescue in particular brings with it the technicalities.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And we're really. And we're really well equipped, and we're, you know.
So I'm gonna roll back. You asked a question, and I can give you an interesting statistic. So from the time that mountain rescue was formed until covet, our team always ran around 25 to 30 calls.
And then Covid came and we popped up into 42, and we were like, whoa, wow, that's a pretty remarkable uptick. And then 21, 22, 23, and 24.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Tom.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: We were pushing high 60s for number of calls somewhere 50, 60, you know, like, you know, we all of a sudden, our call volume just exploded.
And this year, interestingly enough, we'll probably end up back in the 50s or something like that. So when people wonder how often this kind of thing occurs, our call tempo and cadence just happens to be. I mean, and it's again. Right. People come to, you know, come here.
It just happens to be a lot higher than most teams in the state.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And to your point, after Covid, whether it be outdoor recreating being people's thing, you know, good.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Everybody was. Everybody had cabin fever.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Wicked. Yeah. And they chose to hit the mountains up for that whether they had had any experience or not.
So that leads me to my next question for you, Drew, which is this.
We see Vermont. I mean, here we are. It's fallen Vermont. We are a little bit post peak foliage. So maybe the tourists and leaf keepers are dwindling.
But I know the backcountry teams in my area have run somewhere between 14 and 16 calls, maybe even a half dozen of those in the past month alone.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: What. What is your experience been with backcountry calls? Either in pictures, either the leaf peepers who maybe walked up a steep mountain in crocs, or conversely, the people who are experts in their field and might be, you know, experienced mountaineers but have maybe had a stretch of bad luck.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Sure. So what we. What we like to say is one of the reasons we're also passionate about, you know, aiding somebody in the backcountry is it could be we're not immune to overcooking it, pushing a little too far, or just putting your foot down wrong. Right. So we. It could be any one of us. Any one of the people that volunteer for these backcountry teams.
It could be us. Right. So there's a bit of a kinship to the people that are out there enjoying themselves.
And it goes seasonally.
Leaf peeper season is generally pretty busy. I think when we were chatting earlier, I said that mountain rescue had three calls this weekend, and then it'll get into a little stick season. Right. And there. There may be, you know, it's kind of seasonal. Right. It'll be leaf peepers, and then we're in stick season.
And from the state, you know, perspective, lost people, you know, we could have some lost hunters. And then the snow comes in. And the uptick in backcountry skiing that we've seen, the popularity rise in the last few years has resulted in significant calls.
And I want to preface that by saying generally, the people that were going out for are not backcountry skiers. I'm doing air quotes on an. On a podcast, but they're not backcountry skiers. They're resort skiers that ski out of bounds to get, you know, fresh lines. So they're not, you know, they're not. They're not prepped. They're not trained. They're not equipped.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Right there.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: They don't know the terrain. They're not carrying extra clothing, food, water, headlamps, their own alpine gear. Right. So there's a lot of those types of calls in the winter.
Occasionally there'll be people, you know, that are, you know, pushing the limits up in, like, an area then like, the Notch, which is a rugged area deep in the winter.
And then we kind of carry all that through.
Through the winter.
And then mud season generates, you know, you get some call volume because people forget that when it's, you know, 50 degrees and warm, you know, at the lower elevations, when you get to the. When you get up high, it's still winter, Right. So there's this transitional time when people sort of underestimate the conditions. And then you come into the summer, and then you just have, you know, hikers and mountain bikers and all that kind of stuff. So it. It really follows the weather, you know, and the, and the, the types of rescues that we do. And then, you know, for the last couple years, fortunately, knock on wood, this year we did not. We had catastrophic flooding in July. Right. So the Swiftwater teams are in the water. So, yeah, can keep you pretty busy.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that just. It's funny, everything you just described in each respective season would 100% keep you busy. The other hat that you wear, Drew, is that of the state search and rescue coordinator, which is intriguing as well, because a lot of the rescues, and we'll talk about some of those rescues in a second here, but a lot of those rescues you just described earlier, you know, maybe something a simple carry out, maybe a little more technical, put the SAR hat on for a second and talk about searches. Because I feel as if there's a pretty significant difference between going up and guiding someone back down versus a search.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Right. So, you know, everybody sees sar, capital S, capital A, capital R. And I like to think of SAR as capital S, little A big R. Right. So a search is much different than a rescue. A rescue is generally what I call a fixed point rescue. We know what the problem is, we know where you are, we're on our way.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: It's pretty, you know, there's, there's a lot that happens in that short sentence, but we know where you are and here we come kind of thing. The search.
And my, my responsibility for the state is missing, loss, whereabouts unknown, overdue in the woods, backcountry, remote areas of waterways of the state of Vermont. Right. So anybody who is missing, lost, whereabouts unknown in the state of Vermont is the responsibility of the Vermont State Police.
And I work for the, you know, I work for the Department of Public Safety and I'm embedded with the state police.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: So.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: We do two types. There's two types of lost individuals that, that I could, that I call. Well, they're either heads up or an activation.
So an activation is when we pull in all the state assets, you know, the state police, search and rescue team, game warden, if necessary, the Air National Guard, and volunteer organizations. We rely. We can't do it alone. We rely extremely heavily on volunteer organizations. And that's generally for our, for our vulnerable population, which is autism, dementia, Alzheimer's, despondent, suicidal.
So that's like hit the, you know, nuclear launch code. Everybody, here we come. And then that happens, like, let's say depending on the year, like somewhere between 40 and 60 times a year. And then through the course of the year, I usually deal with about 80 to 100, what I call heads up. Calls, which is something where I'm contacted that there's a missing or lost person and I can resolve it with local resources only. And that group is generally recreationalists.
So, so yeah, there's, it's, there's a, there's, there's a difference in the, in sort of the subject profile and the way that it's addressed.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Now if you could talk to me about and you could pick either one, whether it be a search or even one of the rescues that you just did, even as recently as this weekend, because I definitely follow this Stone Mountain rescue on Facebook. Really appreciate what y' all are posting out there informationally. Not just like, you know, lessons learned, but also it is neat to see the activity of the teams give us a rundown of any of those incidents and sort of how they went.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: So, so I can give you. I don't have to dredge back into the memory banks too far.
Last week from a stateside, I had a search for a missing voter, search for a potentially suicidal individual, a search for a dementia subject and lost hikers. Right. That was, that was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday.
Right. So it was kind of a crack. Like it really cracked off at sort of all different profiles of who the subjects were.
And they were all success. I mean, they were all resolve successfully, but not always with a happy ending.
And then, and this literally is, you know, this was in, this is in the last seven days. So and some of those you'll see on the news, you know, and they took.
And last week, interestingly enough, it took me from the very bottom of Vermont down in the area called Somerset, which is all the way down by brat to on Wednesday, the upper. These are searches. The upper barrier for my searchers search areas was the Canadian border, the slash of the Canadian border. They had to turn around at Canada and come back down. So that really was the whole state, like the whole state.
And then mountain rescue, we had three calls, two on Mansfield and one over on Spruce over the weekend. So, yeah, it was kind of a, it was kind of a wild and crazy seven days.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: So now and, and I'm, I'm curious because, you know, Drew, you know this, but for the listeners I am sort of recently backcountry has piqued my interest. I've loved the outdoors in Vermont for a long time, but the world of backcountry rescue especially, and I'm curious for you, Drew, because what you just described is just call after call after call of varying major searches, rescues, some, you know, litter carries, more technical terrain, things like that. Do you remember one of the first rescues that you went on and more importantly, the feeling of, of what it was like when it was resolved?
[00:22:29] Speaker B: I do.
I remember.
I remember distinctly my very first call with mountain rescue.
And, you know, here I am, like, I've, you know, I've done all the things I'm supposed to do and I'm accepted by the team and I'm got my backpack packed and it's sitting, you know, it's in, you know, sitting by the door and I'm ready to go.
And we got called out and it was, unfortunately, it was a terrible accident. And it was in the middle of the winter and it was a gorge rescue, an icy gorge rescue. And I remember looking around, I. My eyes must have been popped out of my head.
And one of the more senior members of the team, you know, saw me just, you know, not knowing, you know, what to do, like just your brain sort of, you know, everything abandoned me, right? So I was just like any other brand new person, full of, you know, you know, you know, drive and vinegar and ready to get this job done. And, and I remember watching what the team did.
Pretty technical. It was, you know, it was a high line over at Gorge. We're lowering a guy down with cameras to search the water. And I thought, I'll never, I'll never catch up. Like, I'll never be able to know the things that these guys know.
And, you know, fast forward. I'm a training officer for First Stubborn Rescue.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: And now you're seeing people.
Oh, like you?
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Yeah, the same, like blowback. Right. So, you know, if any of your listeners are first responders, you know, the adrenaline never, you know, the adrenaline, you never. That never stops happening. Right.
But you, you know, you revert to your training, your experience, and, you know, it's not quite as shocking. I guess that's the most important thing to some of the things we do now. You know, maybe a technical litter carry. And we had two of them this weekend.
And when I say technical litter carry, it only means that we're involving ropes to help control the litter in sort of really technical, like, steep terrain, not vertical, we're not hanging, but, you know, so that people, you know, are blown away and we just think it's kind of, you know, common. We just, we do it a lot.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: You do do it a lot. And it's funny because I'm realizing after a number of training evolutions and a handful of just opportunities to see how these teams operate, there's still that hierarchy that exists.
And I mean, that In a good way, because we had one of, you know, I consider myself very new to this world and the first training exercise I took part in, it's a, you know, it's a full scale exercise. We're going up to find the person, find them, carry them out via the litter. Turns out there's multiple patients in this simulated drill, et cetera.
And, And I'm all excited about it and I look and, you know, okay, team one, hasty team, they go up. They, you know, they've got their mission. Great. Team two, they go up and I'm watching as various team gear is removed from this pile of stuff. And I'm on team three, and I'm looking at the pile, the cache of goods that is left to bring up. And, and wouldn't you know it, that there's this wheel that's sitting there.
I just got a kick out of it. I'm like, oh. I instantly knew, I was like, that's going on my back, isn't it? They're like, yes, grab your webbing.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: All the more experienced team members just quietly walked away from the wheel.
Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. And it's, you know, it bears saying. And I, and I want to say this to anybody who's interested in getting involved in backcountry rescue. Don't let it be intimidating. These are great people that, and I've, I'm repeating myself. From what we've discussed before, these are, these are the kind of people that will drop their lives, right? Walk away from their jobs, get up from dinner, you know, not be where somebody else expected them to be at that time, to race out and do difficult, you know, difficult work just in the aid of another person they've never met. So I say that in the world that I get to operate in, like, I really do get.
I get to be around the best people there are.
But we're all newbies to begin with, right? So don't let anything I say intimidate you for wanting to do this. Show up, introduce yourself, get involved.
You know, all of this stuff will come with time.
And, yeah, it's just, it's just reps, right? And, and there are still, there are still times when you feel like, have I, I've never done, like, I, I've never done this before, right? So, yeah, so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really the adrenaline and satisfaction of doing the work. You know, people ask me, like, how long will you do it? And I'm like, I'll be this broken down, decrepit old guy on a, on a walker with tennis balls on the bottom. And they'll be like, really? Drew, I think, I think you, I think we have another job for you. What I do want to say is we can't do it alone.
And so if anybody ever got interested and they felt like they were getting like a less important task, every.
You're talking about small group operations.
Every task is important. Right. Every single task is important. It's not always the one that's like the flashiest, but it's every single task that somebody can be given in an operation like that is important. And something I really want to go back to a couple subjects ago is backcountry rescue in the state of Vermont is volunteer.
Everybody that goes out to do this is a pure volunteer.
And we don't charge for search and rescue in the state of Vermont. So, you know, you kind of, you push all those things together and you think, man, that's really a remarkable group of people.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Not only a remarkable group of people, but the thing that was impressed upon me and true to form, like I have yet to cut my teeth on the, you know, 15, 18 hour rescue. I know it's coming and it'll probably be in the dead of winter.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: But I, I will say, you know, I think the big difference when it was impressed upon me is that, you know, my fire department career has, has been through some long fires for sure. But a long fire is like five hours or something like that, right. That's a long call. Right.
A long call in the backcountry is the entire weekend into the Monday following making sure, you know, and that's not even the debrief with a lot of that being on the mountain or wherever.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: And you know, the one thing to keep in mind, and it's why you sort of impress upon people both recreationalists and the, and the backcountry rescue teams, it's a five hour fire. I can't imagine.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: I've never been involved with something like that.
Huge amount of work. Right. You know, all of that. But you're also right next to the truck. Right. So a rescue that begins with a two and a half hour hike, it sort of really puts an emphasis on personal preparation. Right. Are you ready to do what you need to do? Because your work doesn't start until you get there.
So that's, and there's the camaraderie of the backcountry rescue teams is, is really strong.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: It is. And I'm, I'm, I Think each day, each training, each person I meet, you know, I've, I've been trying to pick everyone's brain who will, you know, allow me to do so. And they've been so kind to your point of just, you know, ask the question, talk to the human. And they are just that as humans, even if they are extraordinarily brilliant in the world of technical terrain, swift water rescue, things like that.
Drew, what makes search and rescue unique in Vermont?
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Well, one is the volunteer aspect of it and two, I would say the local element. If you get into both search and rescue as you go out west, you know, it's run, it's, it's county based. Right. It's run through sheriff's departments, that type of thing. But the fact that there's, you know, there are groups of individuals generally embedded within fire departments, you know, throughout the state of Vermont. So that, that's sort of that local element. But I want to, yeah, that's the word. I want to use that local element and that it's all volunteer.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: It's something that Vermont, it is, especially into your world in the state, you know, you know that there's a lot of organizations out there that out there meaning out of state, that have the advantage to pay people. They have. It's a state run system entirely. And good, good on them. Yeah. But I think Vermont, even, even I look at the fire service and you know, 80% of firefighters in the state of Vermont or more even, are volunteers.
And do I wish that I had the magic wand and could wave it and say now all backcountry rescue providers and firefighters and EMS providers are paid and are paid, you know, commensurate to their skills and experience. Sure. But we all know that to your point of not charging for backcountry rescue calls, there's a very distinct reason. Can you just shed some light as to why Vermont chooses not to charge?
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Well, I think it's a longstanding, I think it is a long standing philosophical decision with the state.
You know, our neighbors in New Hampshire who are absolutely without peer in backcountry rescue, they'll charge. They will, you know, they, they do have the ability to charge and they will charge.
I think the, personally, I think the, and I'm speculating now, I think never had this discussion with anybody, but if somebody thinks that they're going to be charged for a rescue.
And, and you said, you follow our Facebook page and the woman that writes our Facebook page, Stella, who's one of our, you know, tip of the spear team members It's a no judgment zone. Right. It's. So we don't. You know, I laugh because my wife always says, well, how does that happen? And I'm like, it just happens. I don't know. And clearly you go out and there are people that are just under prepared and their mishap was predictable. Right. But then there's plenty of people that just go out and it just happens.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: You just put your foot down. Wrong. And next thing I have a, you know, you have a spiral tip fracture, and it just happened. You weren't unprepared. You weren't.
You didn't do anything wrong. You weren't above your ability. So it really varies pretty greatly. But I think not charging it gets people to call when they need help because time, you know, bad news doesn't get better with time.
And nobody's in trouble until it's dark. Right. So now you have increased risk to rescuers. Right.
Potentially, you know, a more negative outcome for the subject. Right. So that's. I. I like to think that's why we don't charge. Right. So that people don't hesitate to call. Because there's a lot of things that can be, you know, taken care of pretty quickly, um, with very little risk and exposure to the rescuers. Whereas, you know, as time, you know, the subject condition can deteriorate. Right. And then it's dark and it's getting colder, and there's just, you know, there's added layers of risk involved.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: So let me, if, if I may, take us back a few months to a call where, you know, in the realm of calls that kind of stand the hair up on the back of your neck a bit.
The teams on Camel's Hump got called to some kids who were lost.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Can you give us a little bit of. Little bit of a rundown on that? Just because, you know, hair sticking up on the back of your head is one thing. You were. You and the rest of the teams were in it. And I'm sure at some point the nuclear launch codes were prepped and ready.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: They were.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: They.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: They had all been entered and, you know, the send button had been hit. So a couple of kids involved in a camp up on Camel's Hump were supposed to do a short orienteering exercise and didn't return. And the camp counselors had done sort of a cursory search for them.
You're talking camel sumptuous, right? It is.
It's pretty rugged. And they were. They were up pretty high in an area adjacent to some of the More, you know, cliffy sections up there.
And so that came in as a call to the state and you know, we activated our, we activated our north and our south SAR team.
You know, we were immediately on the line with the Air National Guard.
We had some weather over the mountain.
It was pretty bad weather. There was some thunderstorms in the distance or lightning storms in the distance.
You know, we, we brought in, you know, our volunteer canine teams and our trained search teams and, and then all of the local agencies that service that area as well. So that was a lot, right? That was, that was a lot.
Fortunately, you know, the kids, one of the kids really, you know, my, my horror by the thing that was chewing me and I was there as the, in my state role.
What if we only find two kids, right? Where's the third kind of thing? Like, so you're hoping that they stayed together and that they didn't get themselves into like sort of technical, dangerous terrain and that they're okay. You know. It was in the summer and it was raining, but the weather was, it was still reasonably warm. So there was a thousand one things were, that are going through our heads.
You can't create a more urgent response than that particular situation.
It's just, you can't make, you can fabricate anything you want. Three kids lost high on a mountain in pending bad weather. You, you can't make it up. That was that, that one was pretty serious. So we deployed.
I think at one point we had probably 60 people on the mountain.
We had air sent search dogs, we had trained ground searchers, we had local teams doing hasty. We had the Air National Guard, we had the Vermont state troopers, the SAR team on the mountain. You know, it was, it was pretty, pretty wild. And again, a kawa like this, like I said before, we can't do it alone. This collaborative sort of remarkable effort made by all these people. I think initial voice contact was made by a dog team that was pretty far away. But the acoustics reached the kids and the kids started calling out and they were know heard by another canine search team that was in the area.
They were able to vector in on those kids. The kids actually had done a couple good things. They had stopped moving before dark. The one, the one, the one young woman had kept them together, right? Had kept them calm, bless their hearts. They didn't hear us calling them because they got themselves in a spot that they were comfortable enough and I guess tired enough. They went to sleep all night and they were just waking up when they heard searchers screaming for them.
The Air National Guard had just gotten a clear weather window.
Their rotors were turning.
So, yeah, it was.
Talk about gratitude. It was just a remarkable effort by everybody with a really positive outcome. The kids were great.
You know, there's a lot of teaching moments and learning things that you can, that you can, you know, try to make sure those things got things. Those things don't happen twice.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Drew, what's the feeling that goes through your head, in your mind when you hear on the radio, we've got them?
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Truthful, I usually kind of tear up and cry a little bit.
Um, I'm just so, I'm just so grateful. I'm just so relieved. You know, you're a little stressful and I just kind of let all the emotions just, you know, just dump. Right. I just dump all the emotions. And then I would say like an immense gratitude, you know, for the people. You know, that was, you know, we were going up on the Banforth Ridge. It was, it was a three mile hike to start searching.
The immense gratitude for people that will shoulder their packs and hump up there and just start to work.
So, yeah, I think the, like just dumping the emotions in this immense sense of gratitude for the people that, that do the work.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: And then dealing with the families, I'm sure.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's, you know, that in my state role, that can be the good part and the bad part. Right. Because, you know, you, when you extinguish hope. Right. That's a, that's a pretty awful, that's awful.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: You never give up hope until the subject is found. But, you know, so that, that's a tough part. But, you know, if you want to talk about job satisfaction, you know, return somebody's 11 year old to them.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: And you've been there. You're a dad. I'm a dad dad. You raised kids in Vermont in the backcountry. It's just, I'm sure all of that. Yeah.
Floods into your brain for any of these calls.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: So one of my final questions for you. What, what, what keeps you going after all these years?
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
There's a, just an energy and a drive and a motivation to do this work that I hope never, never wanes at all. You know, it's, it's being purposeful. It's being, you know, make no mistakes.
Especially with mountain rescue, we get to do some really cool stuff. Right.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: So.
But I, I just, I just think, you know, one, it's purposeful. Two, it's a lot of fun. It's in, you know, Is it, you know, you're a first responder, right? You know, you're either called service, you're not, I can't imagine not, you know, not serving in some capacity, just sort of in my DNA and which I would say one of the other really key elements is that camaraderie, that affection or bond you develop with people when you go out in really crappy conditions and do really hard work and are successful.
It's, it's like a drug that's probably not a good thing to say on a podcast, but it's like, you know, it's, it's, you crave it.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: It's something you look forward to, good, bad or indifferent. I, I, all of our listeners who are even remotely involved, whether you're a physician, a first responder, backcountry or not, it's, people understand.
Now, for those that may not quite understand what you had alluded to this before, but I'll land the plane this way.
If you had advice for people that are dabbling in the world of backcountry or would like to get more involved, what would your advice be to those people?
[00:44:48] Speaker B: One do will be one of the most rewarding opportunities you have.
And yes, it's going to be physically demanding and it's going to be draining on your time, and you may not have the high call cadence that some of the other.
You know, I don't know who listens to this, right? But, you know, some teams have two or three calls a year and some teams have 40 or 50, and nationwide that's even more so that some teams out west might have 300 calls. Right. So it's, it's difficult, but maybe it goes back to that, that saying about, you know, things are difficult or more rewarding.
You'll meet amazing people, you'll do great work. You'll, you know, you'll have the opportunity, you know, to be there for people, you know, in the worst moment of their lives. Right. And, and, and, you know, that's, you know, it's, it, all of it together feels really good. Sometimes it just, while you're doing it, it's just like, oh, good Lord, I'm smoked.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Right?
[00:46:02] Speaker B: But, you know, you complete the job and you have great people around you to help you, help you get through. And yeah, I would say if you've even considered it, if you're an outdoor recreationalist, get involved, ask somebody, be a pest, hang around, show up at a meeting.
It's a pretty, we're always trying to recruit, right? So I think I don't think I'm alone in that.
You know I'm always sort of, you know looking at people like they'd be great and yeah, it's really good stuff. It makes you, you know it it's, you know as an outdoor recreationalist you don't realize how close you're always dancing to the line until you get involved with rescue. Right. Because nobody plans for it to go wrong.
So yeah, I don't know if I answered your question but I would say I couldn't encourage people more to get involved.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: You absolutely did and I appreciate you very much. I appreciate your time this evening and really I appreciate your time and what you do. So thank you so much for appearing on this podcast with us.
For any of the listeners, I encourage you all to tune in next month for whatever Nick Carson has in store for you. In the meantime, stay safe out there and thank you so much.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: Sa.
