Lost in Winter

In the worst of inhuman weather, these are the humans who rescue the lost and injured

by Sue Rock

On a windy March weekend nearly three years ago, backcountry skier Nicole Chupka trekked with a friend two-and-a-half miles up the steep slopes below Castle Peak, traversed through some trees to an open bowl, removed the climbing skins from her skis and pointed them downhill toward the warmth of Peter Grubb Hut. The blustery afternoon weather had worsened as they climbed, and the skies had turned dark. On Chupka's third turn, the thick snow grabbed her right ski, sending her into a twisting headfirst tumble and completely splintering her femur.

"I don't remember it hurting that much as it broke, it just felt wrong," recalls the 38-year-old French teacher from Carmel Valley, California. On a walkie-talkie, her friend Judy summoned help from others in their group who had gone on to the hut. But after an hour of fruitless searching in deteriorating conditions and setting sun, their friends realized the seriousness of the situation and two of them raced down the mountain to the nearest road, three miles away, to look for help. Judy grabbed a shovel and started digging a snow cave; at 8:30 P.M. a trio of their friends from the hut finally stumbled upon the pair. With sleeping bags, Thermarests®, food, water and extra clothes, they tried to make Nicole—and the now-soaked Judy—as comfortable as possible. Then, they all squeezed into the shelter, out of the blowing snow and waited.

At 11:30 P.M., members of Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue (TNSAR) found the group. They bundled Chupka into a sled, gingerly dragging her over rough terrain for an hour back up to the ridge. From there, the team's snowcat transported her down the mountain to a waiting ambulance headed for Tahoe Forest Hospital around 2:00 A.M.

"I was incredulous," recalls Chupka, who required a plate, pin and eight screws to put her leg back together. "At first I couldn't believe I had gotten myself into this situation. Then, when they [TNSAR] came skiing through the trees with their headlamps shining, I thought 'Oh my God, they're here.' They were so prepared; everything was so well-orchestrated. They knew exactly what they were doing. Someone was always taking care of me emotionally while the other people were figuring out how to get me out of there."

Little did Chupka know that Nevada County officers had already attempted to reach her by snowmobile, but couldn't get through the 20-foot drifts, says Tony "Scoop" Remineh, one of the TNSAR team out that night. Gathered at its incident meeting point on Donner Summit, the team saw the two officers wading out through waist deep snow, "thrashed, soaked, no hats and post-holing," he recalls. "They had lost their snowmobiles and said we should wait, that it was the worst time ever to get a snowcat up." Undaunted, Remineh—who owns and operates several of the group's 12-passenger snowcats—headed uphill and managed to drop the rescue skiers at the apex of the mountain ridge. On the return trip down the 40-foot-wide ridge, with cliffs on either side, Remineh noticed a gigantic fracture that wasn't there on the way up and realized they were perched on a cornice. "We got out of there pretty quick," he says. Yet, even with all of its drama, the night was a fairly routine one for the volunteers who search for those lost in Tahoe's winter backcountry. There are a number of such groups around The Lake. TNSAR is comprised of North Tahoe and Truckee skiers; the El Dorado County Search and Rescue operates out of South Lake Tahoe.

"We wouldn't have the success we do finding people without these volunteers," says Deputy Mike Sukau, the El Dorado County Search and Rescue coordinator who oversees a 32-member group. The volunteers average ten "call-outs" each winter. Sukau's department also occasionally calls upon the 50-member El Dorado Nordic Ski Patrol, a volunteer unit affiliated with the U.S. Forest Service, to travel into remote areas accessible only by skis.

TNSAR was founded in 1976 in response to the death of a boy lost off the backside of Northstar ski resort during a blizzard. "We didn't do a very good job of finding him," says Doug Read, who cofounded the group with the boy's father, Larry Sevison, and others. "It became apparent that we needed to get better organized." Currently about 100 members strong, the team responds to about 30 requests for help every year, half of which turn out to be false alarms. Ninety percent of its searches are within a 50- mile radius of its Tahoe City base.

Representing a wide range of ages and professions, Search and Rescue volunteers are the angels of the outdoors, willing to trudge out in winter's worst weather on skis, snowshoes, snowmobiles or snowcats, to save those lost or injured. In addition to rock solid skills on backcountry ski gear, they're well versed in search management, first aid, radio procedures, map and compass and GPS navigation, avalanche beacons, wilderness survival, helicopter safety and snowmobile operations. They train year-round to familiarize themselves with every nook and cranny of terrain they'll need to cover quickly and, at night in a snowstorm, practically blind. They keep a 25-pound pack ready at work or home should their pagers go off.

Why do these people willingly put themselves in harm's way year after year? "The look on someone's face is an expression that is totally rewarding," says Remineh, a TNSAR member for 25 years. "To be the first human to someone who thought they'd die is amazing. I'm hooked."

"We get to do amazing things that most people don't," says Keely Rogers, Nordic/winter assistant team leader of El Dorado County Search and Rescue, based in South Lake Tahoe.

A search usually starts with a 911 call, typically late in the day, reporting a friend or family member overdue or injured. The team's leader is paged, then, if the sheriff's "hasty search" (in which 75 percent of actual searches are eliminated) turns up no clues, the rest of the group's members are paged with the details of where to meet and what to bring.

TNSAR has conducted 201 searches to date, rescuing 359 people. Only 17 percent didn't survive, the majority of those victims perishing in plane wrecks. The group typically dispatches a dozen of its "A-list" skiers, "although we always have a different combination of people out in the field," says Remineh. "We get in a circle, spend five to ten minutes discussing the situation with the reporting party (RP), five to ten minutes discussing strategy and then we're gone. We have a high ratio of finds to fatalities because we're fast. We're in and out and back in bed before anyone even wakes up in the morning."

"A lot of times the Sheriff will call us and say 'Do you think you should go out? It's really a nasty storm,'" says Read. "If it's a nasty storm, we need to be out there right away or else we're not going to find the track. To us it's not that dangerous, because it's what we do. We like to go out and ski in the weather."

Unfortunately, a small percentage of rescue efforts do turn into recoveries. Three winters ago, a group of twentysomethings were backcountry skiing off Carson Pass, near Kirkwood, when, despite his friends' pleas, one of them decided to descend an extremely steep chute. The rest of the group, which had taken an easier route down, heard only noises from up above but couldn't reach him. By the time El Dorado County Search and Rescue arrived with ice axes and crampons via helicopter drop, he had succumbed to his injuries. It took the team 13 hours to recover his body, which was wedged tightly into the rock face as a result of his fall. "It was brutal," remembers team member Keely Rogers, who was manning the command post that night.

Although there is no exact profile of the typical victim, the majority of searches are launched for resort skiers and boarders who have headed out of bounds looking for untracked snow. Most are male. The top trouble spots on the North Shore are: Five Lakes Creek between Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley; Emigrant and Coldstream canyons bordering Sugar Bowl; the Grubb and Ludlow Huts; and the Mount Rose area. Around the South Shore, people tend to get in trouble near Lover's Leap and Sayles and Huckleberry canyons adjacent to Sierra-at-Tahoe.

Increasingly more affordable high technology has changed the character of searches over the past several decades, enabling many victims to alert authorities and guide their rescuers themselves, via cell phone or walkie-talkie. Of course reception is pretty spotty in the backcountry and batteries eventually run out. In some cases lost individuals have bought equipment like avalanche beacons and GPS receivers but haven't bothered to learn how to use them, although several searchers have coached their victims remotely how to do so.

TNSAR searchers now carry GPS devices and communicate with crew in a van using a laptop loaded with mapping software to better track the ground covered. They carry laptops on their snowcats, hooked up to GPS systems with digitized USGS maps so they know exactly where they are at any given moment. That came in extra handy when searching for a downed plane last year on the backside of Mt. Lincoln near Sugar Bowl. In a complete and utter whiteout they drove the cat blind to the summit using only the laptop to guide them. But there the GPS failed them and "we were sitting on a pointed cone and couldn't tell which side was the cliff," recalls Remineh. After a hairy 50-foot traverse, the GPS reoriented itself.

While Chupka and some other victims gladly donate funds to the rescue organizations, they are not required to. Discussed with greater frequency, however, is requiring victims to pay for part of their rescue costs, which can quickly mount in an all-out search. While individual Search and Rescue volunteers purchase their own gear, a team's heavy equipment costs plenty to purchase and maintain. The groups rely heavily on annual fundraisers to keep them in the black. Read organizes the 30-kilometer Great Ski Race from Tahoe City to Truckee every winter as TNSAR's principal fund-raiser. The El Dorado Nordic Ski Patrol hosts the Echo-to-Kirkwood Race, and El Dorado Search and Rescue gets a check for helping out at the Death Ride. All three groups also encourage would-be new members to get involved—no experience necessary. While the front-line skiers are the team's public face, also vital is the work of volunteers who handle dispatch and communications, equipment operation and upkeep, training, education, bookkeeping, newsletters and fund-raising.

While some rescue victims act embarrassed or even mad (especially if a wife or girlfriend has called 911 for a husband or boyfriend who doesn't consider themselves lost) the vast majority are hugely grateful. "They're very thankful, very cold, very scared and very hungry," says TNSAR's Director-at-Large Randall Osterhuber.

Thankful for a second chance to enjoy the outdoors, Nicole Chupka will likely have that March afternoon on her mind when she returns to the slopes this winter. "They saved my life," she says of the TNSAR skiers. "I'm so glad they were there for me, and I'll never forget them."