Previously ... It's early Monday morning, June 12, 2000, and the radio is hinting of another rope rescue, this one over the edge off Echo Summit. Lake Valley is there already, so is Dep. Berg, and it sounds like Terry is rolling from the SO in anticipation of another high angle SAR. Hopes are high but the decision is made to let LVFD handle it all on their own.
Fast forward to later Monday evening when we hear talk of a 17-year old overdue from the Eagle Falls area. Nice warm night, bright moon. good trails, but he turns up elsewhere.
Wait, now there's another group of people at Eagle Falls missing one of their party! After a few hours of wondering when the call will be finally be toned out, we hear the scene cleared so we quit monitoring and go to sleep.
Segue to ... 5am Tuesday morning. When the pagers go off, most of us roll out of bed already pretty sure that we will be pursuing last night's leftovers. We hear Dep. Berg asking for a hasty team to respond to, surprise... Eagle Falls, to sweep the most likely trails for an overdue hiker.
Rolling in at around 6am are John Truesdells Sr. and Jr. with Vehicle 901, Judy, Jeri, Silvio and myself. Sure enough, we will be looking for Susan, who was separated from her party and last seen around 2pm the day before. She is in her 40's, has water and maybe some snacks, enough clothes not to freeze, but since she threw her cigarettes away yesterday after her "friends" teased her about how out of shape she was, she is probably in a really, really foul mood by now. (Of all the times to quit smoking now we won't have any butts for clues).
Between the six of us we need to check the Bayview trail and the drainage into Azure Lake, the Eagle
Falls drainage, the trail to the 3 Velmas, and the Dick's Lake trail. Silvio and Jeri (Team 2) were most familiar with the drop off into the Azure Lake drainage so they drove off to Bayview, and the 2 Johns, Judy, and myself (Team 1) headed up Eagle Falls trail to sweep the Velmas and Dicks Lake environs. Along the way we detoured down to Eagle Lake, and while the Johns swept the camp-able side, Judy and I looked, whistled and yelled, but to no avail.
We soon heard Terry's voice come up to relieve Warren, and a short time later H-20 checked in. Now we knew that if we needed it, a heli ride would not be out of the question ... I tell you, it does wonders for a volunteer's spirits.
We continued on, cresting the ridge and heading west towards the Velma's cutoff where we met two men who asked us if we had seen a 14 year old boy on the trail. He had left their campsite about an hour before to hike back to Eagle Falls on his own, and since we had not seen him on our travels up said trail, we assumed that he had probably missed the cutoff anti was on his way to Bayvlew instead.
Now we had two lost people! We sent the worried adults onward with assurances that there were plenty of resources available to help at Eagle Falls, left a note for Susan on the junction signpost, and continued on.
While we were doing all this. H20 was dropping Mike Sukau on the top of a nearby peak to set up the repeater so we could talk directly with CP on CalCord. (Ask Mike sometime what you do when you're all alone on a mountain top with a 20 foot tall antenna pole and only then do you wonder how you're supposed to keep it standing).
Back on the trail, Teams 1 and 2 were still using H20 to relay information for us until we had better communications. Along with the intel on the lost juvenile, we also reported that as we were dropping into the Velmas, we seemed to be getting a very definite response to our audio attraction.
H20 relayed this and, since they were just hanging around (literally) while the repeater was being set up, they cruised on over to see if they could help. As I gave them instructions to our location (nope, not once did I tell them that they were at my 12 o clock) I couldn't help but notice that once a helicopter is on scene to help you pinpoint a verbal response... you can't hear anything anymore!
However, they did see someone at the north end of the lake and relayed that they were pretty sure that we were hearing our lost 14-year-old. The Johns made contact with him and were told to escort him back down towards the Eagle Falls CP.
This left Judy and myself to continue on to sweep the Velmas area, an opportunity that we were looking forward to. We had just crossed the river below Upper Velma Lk when we heard that the father of the boy we had just found had just cell-phoned 911 with a location for our lost woman! What are the odds?
Soon we heard that Susan was somewhere near Eagle Lake and seemed to be injured. After a short; time, both H20 and Team 4 (Joni and TJ, who had responded to the 2nd toneout for more help) made visual contact. H20 dropped off their flight officer who ascertained that she was just tired and banged up and who assisted Team 4 in walking her out. She had spent the night somewhere near the Velmas and had scrambled down the back drainage into Eagle Lake that morning after we had left it.
Soon everyone was back at CP except for Jude and myself, who had been told to standby at Middle Velma, pending confirmation of Susan's exact location in case we had to access her from above. Det. Mazzoni had taken over command at this point, so, about 4 miles later when we cruised back into CP, we found no one there but Tim, comfortably ensconced in his vehicle awaiting our return and the official termination of the mission.
It was a beautiful morning for a hike, and we ended up with two prodigals for the price of one. Not a bad day's work!