Massive S&R at Jay Peak, 12/9/07: Would you do anything differently?

[SheSkisTrees]

Since I’ve received a few PMs inquiring about the lost skier at Jay this weekend, I thought I’d post about it. My intent is to stimulate an intelligent discussion about what could have been done differently, by rescuers as well as by the lost skier and that skier’s friend. Something that’s immediately apparent: we each make decisions based on our own life experiences. As a rescuer, it’s really hard to get inside the head of the person you’re looking for in order to figure out the most efficient and effective search methods. You try to find out as much information about them so you can “figure them out,” but it still is a lot of educated guesswork. So, here are the details as I know them:

My husband and I took part in a massive search and rescue effort to find a missing skier at Jay on Sunday (12/9/07). We arrived at the mountain around 7:30 AM to see a heli hovering over the area that includes The Dip. We also came upon three squad cars parked on the side of the road and a handful of State Police were standing around wearing snowshoes. We knew immediately that we were about to spend the day searching for a lost skier.

When we got to the patrol room, it was pretty chaotic. Patrollers were being briefed on what was going on, and State Police had set up camp with the patrol director and assistant patrol director to organize the search. We were looking for a 29-year-old woman from Montreal who had last been seen around 10 AM the day before. She was reported missing shortly before 5 PM. She was wearing a white jacket. She has skied Jay before, she often skis alone, she spends a lot of time skiing glades and is known to ski glades alone. She was with a 28-year-old male friend who was snowboarding. He last saw her around 10 AM at the top of Timbuktu (inbounds) but they were headed into The Orchards (sidecountry that is between Timbuktu and The Dip). For anyone who doesn’t know this area, The Dip is popular sidecountry off the lowest peak at Jay that dumps you out on Rte. 242. If you are in The Orchards, skiing left takes you back to the lifts, skiing right takes you into The Dip and down to the road. Depending upon how quickly you ski, it takes about 15 minutes or so to ski The Dip. They had an agreement: If we get split up, we’ll meet at the car at the end of the day. When he ended up at the road, he realized she was not with him. He waited a bit (not sure how long), then hiked back to the resort. He thought that perhaps she had managed to stay left and had come out of the woods near the lift. He kept an eye out for her all day, even skiing several times under the lift they’d last ridden, but never saw her. She did not meet him at the car after the lifts closed, so he reported her missing. At this point, lifts were shut down, patrollers had swept the mountain, many had already left for the day. Saturday’s weather: clear skies except for a brief snow squall in the late afternoon, temps were fairly warm, in the 20s. The mountain was quite crowded because of the recent snow storms and there had been a LOT of traffic through The Orchards and The Dip. Sunday’s weather: It was 4 degrees at the base when we drove up around 7:30 AM, so it had gotten cold overnight; clear skies; temps expected to reach mid-teens.

A small group of patrollers did an overnight search but did not find her. Around 5 AM Sunday, the Border Patrol sent a heli to search the area, but saw no sign of her. This is the heli we saw at 7:30, it was doing its last lap. A fresh group of patrollers and State Police officers were out on snowshoes and skis searching this area as well. Search groups were sent out in waves doing a grid search. Any mountain employees who could be spared were sent to join the search. My husband led one search group on snowshoes to sweep the flats along the runout between the lift and the road, I believe this was around 9 AM. I was going to join that group, but was instead redirected to help sweep glades inbounds. Several groups of patrollers and patrol family/friends were spread across the mountain for the inbounds search.

Here’s the thinking of the search organizers: The lost skier stories you hear about at Jay are generally skiers who have gone into the Black Falls area. On The Dip side of the mountain it’s difficult to get hopelessly lost in the sidecountry. Everything leads pretty much downhill to the road. Yet, she hasn’t walked or skied out after close to 24 hours since last being seen. Therefore, we are either a) looking for someone who is injured, probably unconscious, possibly wrapped around a tree and possibly in a tree well covered with tons of snow that fell of the tree...and she is wearing white so she’ll be hard to see; or b) looking for someone who is not even in that “last seen” area, perhaps she skied out just fine, then continued to ski alone for the rest of the day until something happened to her on another part of the mountain. Hence searching the rest of the mountain.

So, here I am, part of a group searching inbounds. My group of three first went to Canyonlands, a gladed area with many natural features such as halfpipes, riverbeds and gullies. It’s cold out, we are all bundled up, including face masks. We stretch out, keeping each other in sight, and begin to comb the top area, which has evergreens covered in thick snow. I never noticed how many evergreens are in this glade until now. We look under EVERY tree to make sure there isn’t someone buried under it, we follow every ski track that wanders off through trees, we look at every riverbed. Meanwhile, we hear other search groups, including my husband’s, checking in with GPS coordinates and reporting that they’ve found nothing. You are so damn afraid that you will MISS seeing the injured person and your adrenaline is pumping like there’s no tomorrow. As we move down the glade, there are less evergreens, more deciduous trees and it opens up more. We continue the meticulous search all the way to the bottom, and find nothing. Then we head back up to search the same glade with each of us taking a part of the glade that someone else had taken before, so a second pair of eyes is looking. You never realize how many places there are for a person to be hidden until you start looking. Sideslipping a glade is excruciating—both physically and mentally. We then took a third run up, this time accessing that glade from another trail. We were pretty satisfied after the third sweep that we couldn’t have missed a person. We are then sent to Showoff Glade, visible from a lift. We search the far right area, following tracks wandering off into the darnedest places, while another group goes through the main part of the glade, but we find nothing. We are told to return to patrol base to rest and warm up.

When we got to the patrol base, there was a Red Cross truck outside, as well as the State Police command center truck (pretty impressive). It’s about 10:30 and no one has found anything. Why haven’t we found her yet? How could we have missed her? At this point, you start to think sinister things, like maybe she skied out of The Dip and someone abducted her when she tried to hitch back to the resort. But mostly you think you must be looking for a dead body. At some point, and I’m not sure exactly when, members of the Stowe Mountain Rescue arrived, as well as members of VT Fish & Wildlife. By early afternoon, about 100 people were searching the mountain.

After eating and warming up, we head back out to continue the search. My group is sidetracked and sent to relieve patrollers who are stationed at the top of the blue lift (for those who don’t know, this is the lift where she was last seen skiing from). We sit there, waiting…and listening to searchers calling in more grid coordinates and reports of finding nothing. Another group of patrollers shows up at the top of the blue lift to prepare for another wave being sent into The Orchards/The Dip area. Shortly after they leave, the call goes out on the radio that one last huge wave of searchers will be going through. I really don’t know what time it was, about 2 PM or so. My husband’s group goes back into The Dip area woods on snowshoes along with State Police, Fish & Wildlife and Stowe Mountain Rescue groups. I took some pictures of the rescuers at the top of the lift as they were organizing themselves and I thought some of you would like to see what a search like this looks like:

MisterSheSkisTrees walking over to speak with Jay employees and State Police:


VT Fish & Wildlife Officers:


Stowe Mountain Rescue:


The rescuers heading down the trail towards Timbuktu/Orchards/The Dip:


As all this is going on, the Jay Ski Patrol STILL needs to attend to normal duties.

Continued in next post due to word count limitations...

[SheSkisTrees]

Continued from post above...

As all this is going on, the Jay Ski Patrol STILL needs to attend to normal duties. Some patrollers stay inbounds so they can help monitor the mountain as well as sweep the mountain at the end of the day. Around 3 PM, a bunch of us who are volunteering in the search are asked to help with sweep, so we ski over to the Tram. Everyone is talking about another overnight search. When we reach the top of the Tram, we are told that the missing skier has been found and she is ALIVE! I can’t describe the sense of relief that swept through that room. And now here are the details of what happened to the missing skier as she described them:

While she was skiing in The Orchards, she lost sight of her friend around 10 AM. She saw a track that she thought was her friend’s heading to skier’s right from The Dip and decided to follow it. When she didn’t recognize where she was, she stopped, then decided to wait right there until someone found her. She heard cars, but decided to stay put. It started getting dark. She made a bed of evergreen branches and hunkered down to spend the night protected from the cold. She actually managed to fall asleep. She had several layers of clothing on and was dressed warmly enough for the colder weather that came though overnight. In the morning, she was awakened by the sound of a helicopter. She was unable to make herself visible to the chopper even though she had turned her hat (or coat, we can’t remember which) inside out to take advantage of the brighter interior color. She worked her way to a nearby clearing, took her skis and placed them upside down, with the black bases showing, and made an X in the snow. She waved and moved around. But the heli didn’t see her and it left the area. She figured it would come back for another sweep, but it didn’t. Then she figured it had to go refuel, so she waited a bit longer. Eventually, she realized the heli was not coming back. I do not know how much time passed before she decided to try to ski out. Somehow she found her way to Jay Camp. Jay Camp is a hut on a spur of The Long Trail, just off Route 242 (you can’t see the road, but you can hear traffic from here). She went into the hut and wrote a note in the sign-in book saying that she was lost, had spent the night in the woods, and was going to try and ski/walk out, and if she couldn’t find her way out, she would return to the hut that night. (Unfortunately, one of the patrollers had checked this hut, but was there BEFORE she got there and so no one saw the note.) This spur off The Long Trail is also part of The Catamount Trail, which is a backcountry/cross-country ski route through Vermont. Sometime around 3 PM, she saw some cross-country skiers and blew her whistle to get their attention. This is the first and only time she used her whistle since she’d gotten lost. The cross-country skiers showed her the way out of the woods, she skied out with them to the road. She was brought back to the patrol base, checked over and found to be in good spirits and in good health, so she left to drive back home.

As far as we can tell, while searchers were in the area where she was, they never crossed paths and she never heard them. My husband says that on one of his grid searches, he was halfway between The Dip and Big Jay, so they really scoured that entire area of the mountain. As an FYI: Afterwards, I heard that it probably cost about $40,000 - $50,000 for the rescue effort. And that does not include all the volunteers who joined in the search.

So, what would you have done differently as a search organizer? As the lost skier? As the lost skier’s partner? Do you have group protocols and/or sidecountry/backcountry protocols you follow that might have prevented this scenario? Do you ever find yourself “forgetting” to follow some of the basic rules of tree skiing and sidecountry/backcountry skiing?

[mojorisin]

I wonder if the lost skier knows anything about evolution ...

I'm glad she's alive though.

[iceman]

From a searcher's perspective I really have no idea what you could have done better.

From her perspective, though, why on earth did she stay put all day long? Why didn't she continue downhill? This reminds me of the guys at Killington that were rescued like 100 yards from the road. And good on her for having a whistle, but why wouldn't she use it periodically as she was spending the day sitting there? Very odd.

[snowsprite]

Wow, this is a lot to absorb. I am glad the skier is okay. But the cost and risk of the effort sucks. It's scary to think, but it could probably happen to anyone. That's why glade skiing alone, especially away from the routes you know well, is insane.

Don't do it!!!

Thanks for posting this, Sue...

Sprite

[soul_skier]

if i'm lost, and can hear traffic, and know that my partner is going to meet me at the end of the day at the car, i'm skiing to traffic, finding out where I am and taking care of myself. Maybe its just me, but spending the night out in the woods when you are within earshot of cars just because you don't know exactly where you are is one of the stupidest things i've heard in a long time. damn canadians

from a searchers perspective, staying put was the right call, but that is an option if you are well and truly lost and rescue will be a few days coming, not quite so smart in my opinion when you are that close to civilization, uninjured and have some idea of where you are, if she was at all familiar with jay and knew within 3/4 of a mile of where she was, then she knew that all she had to do was ski downhill and she would hit 242

[flatlander#2]

I always carry a tennis ball and 2 rawhide treats in my pocket. If I'm ever lost my wife can release the hounds and they'll find me.

[lionelhutz]

From her perspective it seems like she did some good things but I can't really understand why she wasn't blowing that whistle all the time. In the winter one of those whistle (espically if it was a fox 40) goes on forever and I'm sure she would have been rescued much sooner had she used the whistle.

[samthaman]

[rambling post]
I ski woods pretty much full time (yesterday was day 30, and only my second non-earned top to bottom groomer run). when i ski woods, regardless of solo or not, i always have a little food, some water, an emergency layer (usually a patagonia micro-puff, but on really cold days a huge moonstone puffy), a compass/map, whistle, knife, some pain pills, skins, my phone, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Lately, we've been doing a lot of exploration in some very steep, very densely wooded areas where it is possible to get cliffed bigtime, we'll throw harnesses and a skinny rope in the pack for rapping if it makes sense for the area, also it occurred to me recently that in some of the spots i ski you can be 15 feet away from somone and not hear or see them, so i've taken to (on these exploration days) throwing a beacon in one of our packs to make SAR easier if it came to that. In terms of protocol for skiing, we almost ski in 100 yard or so "pitches" so that if someone does get hurt its easier to go back up and get them, rather than skiing all the way down to the lift and skiing the run again. In more in-bounds runs, we almost always wait at the next spot a trail crosses the woods, though if we're in a hurry we wait at the lift. Waiting at the car at the end of the day seems pointless and stupid, those people obviously had no understanding of how much time and energy goes into organizing a SAR, I pretty much always assume that if its after 1pm in the BC or 3pm side-country, that if i get hurt, i'll be spending the night. This is probably excessive, but i think its a good attitude to have.
[/rambling post]

[telepow]

Heard cars and slept in the woods overnight??? I'd say its a cry for help. She should be charged the 50 grand.

[Anxious Mo-Fo]

I heard that it probably cost about $40,000 - $50,000 for the rescue effort.

Sorry for the dope S&R question, but who gets stuck with that nut?

[iceman]

so i've taken to (on these exploration days) throwing a beacon in one of our packs to make SAR easier if it came to that.

ummm... one beacon?

[Binky]

Having just spent two nights winter camping in sub-zero temperatures in Barton, VT two weeks ago, I definitely would have not opted to sleep outside, especially if I could hear traffic from the road. Smart move with the evergreen branches, but sitting in a bar at the end of the day would have been a better. If she was seemingly that BC-prepared (whistle, knowledge to build bed of evergreens, etc) and the fact that she was in the sidecounty, one must assume that she had reasonable ski skills. Did she not trust her abilities enough to ski downhill to the road?

[Tunco]

Good write up. Thanks for that. I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.

How was accountability handled? What was the command structure? Was the ICS used?

[soul_skier]

ummm... one beacon?

if we get caught in an avalanche in the woods we ski at stowe, then I deserve to die, because god just smited me. Sometimes we are literally talking about less than a foot between trees, slides are the least of our concerns in 95% of the areas we ski in, and when slides are a concern, I have never seen another group all with beacon/shovel/probe/avy 1 at stowe, ever. The point of the one beacon is so that if someone does get hurt and needs an evac, and we cannot self evac, someone can ski down, grab stowe mountain rescue or whoever and come back with even more pinpoint accuracy in the dark because they have a beacon as well as tracks and memory. Just another redundant way to make sure its an effective rescue and not just a dangerous nighttime trek through sketchy woods

[ski_adk]

Man, sounds like SAR had their stuff together and put a huge effort forward to finding the lost skier. I can't imagine you guys doing anything differently, except maybe keeping someone near the hut (but do you really want to sacrifice that rescuer when they could be doing grid searches?).

As for this skier, aside from not skiing the rest of the way to the road, did a lot of things right. Sounds like she had some good survival skills and probably would have survived another night if she had to.

However, not blowing the whistle until she knew people were around was a HUGE mistake (that must've been something she missed in her survival education). Whenever you're lost and have such a device, you should regularly make 3 distinct blasts, wait & repeat.

Glad to hear she's alive & okay and that the SAR came out okay as well. However, I have a feeling this woman remains strong candidate for a future Darwin Award.

[summit]

OK, ignoring the victims moron factor and looking purely from the search management perspective:

I don't know exactly what that command structure was thinking or how they really executed things, so I can't really condemn. I can say that here you are with a HUGE search effort and the victim is found 24 hours later by non-searchers in a likely area. This indicates poor search technique, containment and direction from command.

Shit happens though... I've seen stuff like that happen when SAR does everything right. I'm glad that the lady survived.

It seems to me that poor technique and containment methods were ordered. With the amount of resources available in the second operational period especially, many of them untrained, one of the best things that could be done would have been to station more personnel at likely crossroads and choke points such as XC trail intersections, exit trails on the road, and places like that hut. Victims follow these paths and containing the search area is key. SAR needs to utilize their resources as efficiently as possible while keeping the search area from growing.

I'm left mostly with questions:

First off, I need a map with a LSP on it before I could really make a good comment. It's somewhat difficult to comment because I know jack about the area or the terrain.

The weather sounded alright for the fist night. Why was the response so small for the first 14 hours????????

Was ICS established? When? By who?

I don't know how they operated the search in the first operational period, but they needed to contain the area and check likely locations/routes. Did they execute effective containment in addition to searching most likely area, checking the main exit and XC trails, and known shelters like the hut? If not, why not?

Did they collect victim background information and integrate that into the plan?

At any point did any search group encounter any clues? Were these marked and reported? How many of the searchers were actually trained searchers and knew to look?
Was there any attempt to use search dogs units?

Helicopters have poor POD rates in timber. How did they interpret the negative results of the helo search? Did the BP bird have FLIR?

*Why did they choose to execute grid searches at the start of the second operational period when the first involved only a few search resources? What areas did they grid search? Grid searching is VERY slow and resource intensive and if you are looking for an adult, you are looking for a deceased or unresponsive person with a grid search.

Therefore, we are either a) looking for someone who is injured, probably unconscious, possibly wrapped around a tree and possibly in a tree well covered with tons of snow that fell of the tree...and she is wearing white so she’ll be hard to see; or b) looking for someone who is not even in that “last seen” area, perhaps she skied out just fine, then continued to ski alone for the rest of the day until something happened to her on another part of the mountain.

Given the time frames, OPS probably decided that A was probably a body recovery so if the suspected area failed to turn up results after good POD searches, B is a better use of resources if trying to recover a live victim. OTOH it sounds like they were using extremely intensive search methods on these other areas which doesn't sound like the best use of resources. Most victims are found close to their LSP. How far away were these other areas?

[DharmaBum]

I would like to hear her decision-making process re: why she stayed put when she could hear cars. This makes no sense to me unless she was delirious or panicked - yet, she had the presence of mind to bed down on evergreens. My gut tells me there is something we don't know here.

[samthaman]

if we get caught in an avalanche in the woods we ski at stowe, then I deserve to die, because god just smited me. Sometimes we are literally talking about less than a foot between trees, slides are the least of our concerns in 95% of the areas we ski in, and when slides are a concern, I have never seen another group all with beacon/shovel/probe/avy 1 at stowe, ever. The point of the one beacon is so that if someone does get hurt and needs an evac, and we cannot self evac, someone can ski down, grab stowe mountain rescue or whoever and come back with even more pinpoint accuracy in the dark because they have a beacon as well as tracks and memory. Just another redundant way to make sure its an effective rescue and not just a dangerous nighttime trek through sketchy woods

a little harsh consider alec stall and all, but yeah thats the idea, make getting back to the person as quick and painless as possible for the rest of the crew and SAR. so not about burial at all, but just finding someone where sight/sound are very limited

[iceman]

a little harsh consider alec stall and all, but yeah thats the idea, make getting back to the person as quick and painless as possible for the rest of the crew and SAR. so not about burial at all, but just finding someone where sight/sound are very limited

I got it now, it just sounded kinda weird at first.

[powder_prophet]

It soudns like the search was run as well as it could have been. I think the skier could have done some things differently. For one, I'm not a huge proponent of the "I'm lost, I'll stay put" mentality. It DEFINITELY has its time and place, but if you were where she was, hearing cars driving by, there's no way I would have just stayed there. It sounds like she got lost shortly after 10AM, so she spent all day just staying put when she could have been using the sunlight to find her way to the highway. Another thing she should have done differently is used that whistle, a lot! Once she saw a chopper and knew she was being searched for, she should have just been wailing on that thing!!
Its interesting because it sounds like the kind of thing that could happen much more then it does. I know I've found myself "lost" in sidecountry, but an hour of bushwaking usually gets you somewhere familiar. I think the biggest issue is she got scared and refused to try to get herself out. This is just another example of people who take too more solace in the fact of SAR. Its a trend we see all across the country, I know its prevalant in Colorado. Just this summer two hikers from the midwest tried to climb Mount of the Holy Cross, got to the top, and then realized they couldn't get back down what they had come up. they just busted out their cell phone and called in the heli. That's just stupidity and despite the grumblings of the rescusers, they were retrived. Rescuers got heli dropped below the peak and had to climb up, sleep a night on top with the men, and then help them down in the morning. Of course the cost of the heli drop came from the CO tax base, and the two men returned to Nebraska or wherever they were from with nothing more then a story to tell people at the bar.
What all these words really come down to is just taking responsibility for your actions, don't just rely on others to bail you out. In this women's case, she had all day to attempt a self-rescue, but she just got scared and didn't move. She should have marked that spot (put something in the trees, leave a ski, something) and then walked towards the sound of the highway.

I can't imagine hearing cars and still staying put...

[allenataylor]

My jaw dropped and I almost shit myself when it said she herd cars and stayed put. What on earth would make someone stay put in that situation other than severe hypothermia (doesn't sound like she had it), injury (didn't have it), or absolutly no idea how big a deal a search is. I hope they charge her the full cost of the search she deserves it.

I had a friend with no idea where he was going do almost the exact same thing earlier this year (same place and all) but he called 911 and they used his cell's GPS to walk him out. They charged him 40 bucks for that, should have been more. For all i know this lady followed his tracks, he found himself at jay camp too. As someone who has spent probably 15 nights at jay camp in the winter I can say that I havnen't heard much road noise there but there are trails right there you can follow.

This is yet another example of people going into the side/back country and not knowing what is involved. I like how so many resorts are very open with their boundary policies but this is the downside. Jay has some of the best marked boundaries I have seen east coast too.

Props for helping with the search, its good karma. Its too bad that the lady you were searching for was an idiot. At least she's not hurt and the bill for the rescue will teach her one hell of a lesson. I hope this is widely publicized so that other gapers will read about it and realize that their place may be within the boundaries not outside them.

[philippeR]

A great read.
As others, my question for her is why did she stay put all day ? Couldn't she ski downhill to a road ?
My question to you (I've no idea about the area) : I guess there was no cellphones signal in the area, but what about walkie talkie ? Useless in those moutains ? How the two of them could ski in the BC, with the risk of being separated, and didn't carry any means of communication doesn't make sense IMO.

[samthaman]

it also strikes me as very strange that she had the skills to spend the night out w/o injury and without over night pack (not the simplest thing in norther NE winter), and yet while having that entire skill-set apparently decided that saying put while she could hear traffic was a good call. its like she was asleep for half of BC101 and took great notes for the other half.

[GrizzlyFD]

Wow, I can't believe that...she was stuck in the woods at 10AM...and near 242...and decided it was best to stay overnight


Absolutely unacceptable. She was an "experienced" tree skier who visited Jay many times. Skies woods solo. SAR is extremely difficult both physically and mentally. To put a hundred searchers through that is absolutely unacceptable. She should be charged the entire amount, unless there is something else going on.

WRT the actual search, it seems like the original area (dip, orchard, timbuktu) was searched, but not as extensively as it could have been. Of course she could have gotten out and skied other areas and gotten hurt, but I would have started everyone in that area. She said she never heard anyone until late in the afternoon? The area is not all that large, maybe a couple hundred acres. Focus on where she was last seen, not where she could have been.


Oh and lastly, who does not have a cell phone on them!?!?!?! Jay has a verizon tower at it's peak, and anyone can use 911 as long as they can connect to a tower.