China Lake Mountain Rescue Group
Talus Pile #116 November, 2000
TRAINING SCHEDULE
Nov 4-5 Sat-Sun Map and Compass Gates
Nov 8-12 Wed-Sun Baja California Davis
Nov 10-13 Fri-Mon Jepson, Palisade Crest Rockwell
Nov 13 Mon Meeting (avalanche transceivers--Myers) Botham/Botham/Botham
Nov 15 Wed CPR Schafhauser
Nov 15 Wed Avalanche transceiver practice Training Committee
Nov 18 Sat Whitney Rockwell
Nov 19 Sun Rock skills Hinman
Nov 23-26 Thu-Sun Ruskin, Vennacher Needle Rockwell
Nov 29 Wed Stretcher practice hut night Roseman
Dec 2 Sat Owens Ridge climbing Roseman
Dec 3 Sun Stretcher practice Roseman
Dec 6 Wed CPR Schafhauser
Dec 8-10 Fri-Mon - Red Rocks w/ Zion rangers
Dec 11 Mon Meeting (TBD) Breitenstein/Rindeau/
Dec 13 Wed Christmas party Westbrook
Dec 16 Sat Dynamic belay practice- Roseman & Training Committee
Dec 17 Sun Desert Peak Schafhauser
Dec 22 Fri Local Peak Runkle
Dec 25 Mon Open
Dec 30-Jan 1 Sat-Mon Hitchcock Rockwell
Jan 5-7 Fri-Sun North Palisade Huey
Jan 8 Mon Meeting (ELT--TerHeun) Rockwell/Castro/DeRuiter
SUNDAY ROCK CLIMBING coordinated by Bud Gates
CLMRG is funded in part by United Way of Indian Wells Valley.
00-06 30 Sep 00 Search Palm Springs 2000-OES-0465 Walter
Runkle
On Thursday, 28 September, Mike Myers called me at work and
asked me if I could take a search operation that weekend near
the Palm Springs Tram. Joshua Best, a 32-year-old male, had been
missing for 19 days. He was reported to be in good physical shape
but bipolar schizophrenic. There had been a search when he was
initially reported lost, but his wallet had recently been found
in the area, which instigated this second search. Mike described
the area as consisting of steep technical ridges and said we should
take ropes and whatever rappelling gear was necessary. The requesting
party was Deputy Dennis Keene of Riverside. Mike gave me the OES
number and told me it was Bob Gerber at OES who requested us.
Sheila Rockwell was my coordinator. I asked Sheila to do a callout
that night and let me know later that same evening who was available.
I told her we would not need to be in Palm Springs until 0730
on Saturday, 30 September and we would probably meet at the hut
early Saturday morning. Sheila soon called back and gave me the
names of Daryl Hinman, Bob Rockwell, Bud Gates, David Doerr, and
Paul DeRuiter. Mike Myers had already told me that he would be
going.
Mike, Dave, Bud, Paul, and I decided to drive down Friday night
instead of getting up early Saturday morning. Daryl and Bob decided
to drive down on Saturday morning and meet us at base camp.
The five of us met at the hut at 1900 and got the gear together.
We left about 1930 with Mike and me going down in my Bravada and
Bud and Paul going with Dave in Dave's Yukon. On the way, we tried
the talk-about radios as a means of communicating between the
vehicles, and they worked very well. They had a range of several
miles even in town. We arrived down in Palm Springs about 2245
and pulled off the road right after turning onto the Tram Parkway
because the gate across the road was locked for the night.
We awoke the next morning about 0530 and drove to Denny's for
breakfast. At base camp, we met Daryl and Bob, who had already
arrived. I checked our team in at 0730. About 10 minutes later,
Jim Fairchild from the Riverside team gave everyone a brief on
Joshua (the missing man) and the search results so far. He gave
us a photocopy of the 7.5-minute San Jacinto quad and instructed
us to take our time, move slowly, and make safety our top priority.
Paul and I were one team, Daryl and Dave another, and Bob and
Mike a third. Bud was put with Arnold Gaffery from Sierra Madre
MRT. Paul and I rode the tram to the top while the others were
flown in by helicopter. We were all to search on a ridge called
Leatherneck Ridge that runs to the northeast from the top of the
tram.
Paul's and my assignment consisted of searching some steep, rocky,
brushy gullies running east from the very top of Leatherneck Ridge.
We never had to use the rope for rappelling, but there were some
very steep, loose sections that we avoided by going either high
or low. We saw no sign other than tracks and red marking tape
left by previous search parties.
Bob and Mike were placed farther northeast on Leatherneck Ridge
at a lower elevation. They found some very good tracks and followed
them down until the tracks left the ridge and disappeared. Eventually,
they hooked up with Dave, Daryl, Bud, and Arnold.
Dave and Daryl were initially placed off to the east of the ridge
at the same elevation as Bob and Mike. When Bob and Mike reported
finding tracks, Dave and Daryl were moved farther down the ridge
to cut for sign.
Bud and Arnold were initially about 1000 feet above Bob and Mike.
Bud found one set of old prints heading down the ridge. These
were the same prints that Mike had found. Bud and Arnold progressed
up to where a higher team had started and were then flown out
on the same helicopter that had picked up Dave and Daryl. The
four were dropped below Bob and Mike, where they split up and
searched in four different directions. They met back at the drop
site and hooked up with Bob and Mike, who had come down the ridge.
All were flown back to base camp.
I reported to Riverside that I thought there was only a 20 to
30 percent chance at best that we would have found an unresponsive
person in our search area. It was just too brushy and rocky, and
there were too many places an unresponsive person could have been
and not been visible. Riverside thanked us, and we were soon on
our way back to Ridgecrest. We stopped for dinner on our way home
and got back to the hut about 2130. We had a short debrief, put
away the gear, and headed home.
00-07 22 Oct 00 Transit Bodfish Tom Sakai
Fifteen CLMRGers were at a scheduled stretcher practice on
B Mountain when Carol Burge drove up to inform us that Sgt. John
Diederich of Kern County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) had called on
our pager at 1020 asking for assistance. Since we had left our
pagers in the cars, none of us heard the page. Sheila Rockwell,
who was at home, heard the page and responded to Sgt. Diederich
and then asked Carol to retrieve us from the mountain. It was
a little after 1100 when she arrived.
Since I was the first operations leader to talk to Carol, I got
the honors. Sgt. Diederich wanted us to help search for an overdue
deer hunter, Ramon Navarro (age 42) of North Hills, in the Paiute
Mountain area southeast of Bodfish. He and four friends had gone
out at 0600 on Saturday, 21 October. They had gone separate ways
to do their hunting. Ramon had not returned by dark, and his four
friends started searching for him that evening. In the process,
they had obliterated Ramon's tracks in the area of his vehicle,
which made footprint identification by KCSO searchers nearly impossible.
After several hours of fruitless search, they finally called KCSO
about 2020. Sgt. Diederich immediately initiated a search with
the Kern Valley team.
By morning, Sgt. Diederich realized he would need additional help,
so he called CLMRG at 1020 Sunday morning. Seven of us at the
stretcher practice--Bob Rockwell, Al Green, Werner Hueber, Dennis
Burge, Eric Toler, Curtis Davis, and I--and Bill Rudy, who had
just returned that morning from deer hunting, committed to the
search. The others had to work Monday and could not commit to
a potential multi-day search.
We grabbed some lunch, got our gear together, and met at the
hut at 1300. Shortly after passing Bodfish, a Sheriff's vehicle
passed us going the other way. It was Sgt. Diederich going into
town for fuel and food for the searchers. He suggested we wait
for him at the turnoff to the dirt road that led to the search
base. Shortly after that, at 1445, he informed us by radio that
Ramon had been found uninjured and in good condition. Ramon was
just very tired and dehydrated and had a few scratches.
Sgt. Diederich told us to turn around and meet with him in town
for an informal debrief before returning home. After a short chat,
our team was on the road home by 1500 and at the hut at 1620.
FROM OTHER SOURCES
Lost man survives in California woods for one month
Tuesday, October 31, 2000
©2000 Associated Press
GORMAN, Calif. (AP) -- A 25-year-old man who wandered into the
Angeles National Forest a month ago and got lost has been found
alive, police said.
Sean Kelly, who was reported missing Sept. 30, was found by a
hunter Monday in the Knapp Ranch area of the forest, about 60
miles north of downtown Los Angeles, sheriff's Deputy Michael
Lorenci said. Kelly was too weak to walk out, so rescuers airlifted
him to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, where he was treated
for exposure.
Kelly told the hunter he had been lost for about two weeks and
survived by eating roots and bugs, Lorenci said. To survive, he
covered himself with dirt and branches at night to keep warm.
``We're all surprised that he'd been out there for 30 days and
that he survived,'' Lorenci said.
FROM THE MEMBERSHIP
Steve Walker
Bob Rockwell
A recent edition of the Investor's Business Daily has an article
on this new technology of tiny moveable mirrors on a chip--MEMs,
for micro-electro-mechanical chips. A current applied to a mirror
changes its orientation, which changes the path of a reflected
light beam. MEMs are expected to be the next breakthrough in optical
telecommunications devices.
Steve Walker's company, Integrated Micromachines in Pasadena,
is one of the three companies highlighted, and "Steve Walker,
senior applications engineer, etc." is quoted in a couple
of places.
Steve is one of CLMRG's Honorary Life Members. He joined in 1987
and became a Leader in 1992. Steve was one of our best rock climbers,
became Winter qualified, and moved away in 1994.
A Financial Glance at the CLMRG
Mike Myers
The China Lake Mountain Rescue Group recently went through an exercise examining the past few years of our income and expenses. We had been noticing a decline in donations and wanted to get some insight into the seriousness of it. Also, we wanted to take a look at the trends of our expenditures to see if some belt-tightening might be warranted. Some information from this exercise may be of interest to Talus Pile readers and is included in the hard copy of the Talus Pile and the e-mail document sent by Loren to the membership.
Summary
Going through this exercise has had beneficial results. It
gave us additional insight into what it takes to finance our rescue
group in a more global sense. We brainstormed ways of increasing
our exposure to the community, which may result in increased donations.
And we identified some expenses that may be curtailed without
overly impacting our near-term effectiveness in mountain SAR.
Finally, we prioritized our next-year's budget, item by item.
For example, our initial expense estimates for 2001 totaled about
$18,000. It can be seen that by projecting the top line in Figure
1, this far exceeds what we expect to receive for the year. By
focusing on only the most critical items, we were able to come
up with a "bare-bones" budget of about $10,000, which
should allow us to temporarily perform our basic mission with
full effectiveness. The other items of a less-critical nature
will be tended to as we see how our finances evolve throughout
the year.
A cautionary note: If our numbers of SAR operations return to
the higher levels of a few years ago, we will not be able to continue
within the guidelines of our proposed budget, and we may need
to begin an aggressive campaign to elicit additional donations.
2000 OFFICERS
President Mike Myers 375-6801 MyersMB@navair.navy.mil
Vice-president Bob Rockwell 375-2532 rockwell@ridgecrest.ca.us
Secretary Eric Toler 446-6100 TolerET@navair.navy.mil
Treasurer Steve Florian 371-3996 FlorianSJ@navair.navy.mil
MRA Representative Werner Hueber 375-2165 hueber@ridgecrest.ca.us
2000 CONTACTS
Public Education Terry Mitchell 375-0168 MitchellTA@navair.navy.mil
Training Walter Runkle 377-5931 RunkleWD@navair.navy.mil
Equipment Werner Hueber 375-3073 hueber@ridgecrest.ca.us
First Aid Ellen Schafhauser 375-4043 locoweed@iwvisp.com
Qualifications Bob Rockwell 375-2532 rockwell@ridgecrest.ca.us
Qualifications Tom Roseman 375-1030 RosemanTW@navair.navy.mil
Qualifications Tom Sakai 375-7404 tsakai@ridgecrest.ca.us
Sheriff's Office Al Green 375-9189 agreen@ridgecrest.ca.us
ASTM Representative Dennis Burge 375-7967 dennis93555@yahoo.com
Emergency Services Linda Finco 375-7951 FincoLJ@navair.navy.mil
Summer Class Bob Huey 375-0168 huey@ridgenet.net
Stores Carol Burge 446-7038 cburge@ridgecrest.ca.us
The Talus Pile Loren Castro 375-3279 lfc32@earthlink.net
Web
page Janet Westbrook 375-8371 jwest@ridgenet.net
THE ONGOING WHITNEY CHALLENGE
Bob Rockwell
CONTEMPORARY Time Age CONTEMPORARY Adjusted
Walter Runkle (MR) 3:35 46 ....... Tom Roseman 3:09
Tom Roseman 3:38 50 .................Walter Runkle (MR) 3:12
Curtis Davis (MR) 3:38 34 ...........Curtis Davis (MR) 3:37
Mike Myers 4:11 48......................Mike Myers 3:45
Tom Sakai 4:50 54 .......................Bob Rockwell 4:09
Bob Rockwell 5:20 63 .................Tom Sakai 4:12
Bud Gates 6:37 40 .......................Al Green (MR) 5:35
Al Green (MR) 7:10 68 ...............Bud Gates 6:24
Jeanette Rudy (MR) 7:30 34 ........Jeanette Rudy (MR) 6:44
Dave Doerr 7:40 36 .....................Dave Doerr 7:38
HISTORICAL.................. HISTORICAL Adjusted
Terry Moore 1979 3:11 35 .........Terry Moore 1979 3:10
Dennis Burge 1979 3:40 43 .......Dennis Burge 1979 3:33
Bob Westbrook 1979 3:40 37 ....Bob Westbrook 1979 3:39
Bob Rockwell 1979 4:05 43 ......Bob Rockwell 1979 3:57
John O'Connor 1999 6:22 42 .....John O'Connor 1999 6:09
CONTEMPORARY = 1999 or later by current CLMRG members.
HISTORICAL = Ancient times or former members.
MR = Mountaineer's Route.
Adjusted = Times are adjusted for age and sex using the Age Equalizer
™ interactive calculator at Peak Running Performance's web
site www.peakrunning.com. The standard used here is a 34-year-old
male's time for running a marathon (26.2 miles).
Mt. Whitney, as we afterwards called it in honor of our
chief, is probably the highest land within the United States.
Its summit looked glorious but inaccessible.
-Clarence King (July 7, 1864)
EDITOR'S LEAD
Loren Castro
A little extra space in this issue allows me to print the recipe for something called hike-bike bars that I found in a newspaper many years ago.
Hike-Bike Bars
In a large bowl, cream together 1/3 cup butter or margarine
and 1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
Stir in 1/2 cup light or dark molasses
and 1 cup sugar
and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Add 4 eggs
one at a time, beating well after each
Add 1/4 cup Grape-Nuts or wheat germ
On wax paper, sift 2 cups flour
with 1 teaspoon baking powder
and 1/2 teaspoon salt
and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Add flour mixture alternately with 1 cup mashed ripe banana
stirring after each addition until just blended
Stir in 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate bits
and 1 cup chopped salted peanuts
Pour into a greased 15x10x1-inch baking pan.
Bake in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes or until firm to the
touch.
Cool in the pan on a wire rack.
Cut into bars.
Store in a dry place away from marmots.
Notes: This is close to the original recipe. Over the years, I've modified the original to suit my own tastes and lazy ways. The taste of molasses gets old fast, so I use honey. I do not sift ingredients, stir alternately, or chop the peanuts. Two bananas is about right. This stuff freezes well. Some of my batches stay in the freezer for a couple of months. I take them out as I need them.
SCREE
For information on ropes, contact the Cordage Institute, 350
Lincoln St., Hingham, MA 02043. The definitive view of ropes as
they are used in cave exploration, rescue, and industrial occupations
can be found in the book On Rope, by Bruce Smith and Allen Padgett,
National Speleological Society. It costs about $35.50 postpaid
from On Rope Inc.,
6313 Jan Lane Dr., Harrison, TN 37341.
Check our web page at http://www.clmrg.org.
All telephone numbers in The Talus Pile are area code 760 unless noted otherwise.
Editor: Werner Hueber provides the following information:
The Sheriff gave the Group a Nokia digital cellular phone
to replace one of the Motorola phones.
The new phone has a phone book. I entered the phone numbers (home,
work, cellular, pager) of Commander Moe and Sgt. Diederich, the
phone numbers (home, work, cellular) of the coordinators, and
the cellular phone numbers of the members who have them. Feel
free to enter more numbers if you think we may use them. I recommend
that the Motorola phone be used by the coordinators. It works
fine around Ridgecrest.