SAR Mountains

Now that I'm not confined to a plot-driven box, I can go back to telling stories the way I like to. Or, I guess, the way HE likes to.

Russell had an accident. It was pretty bad and I'm not sure when he's going to be back on here. He's got some bad motor problems now and I guess the therapy takes a long time. He'd prefer to tell you guys about the accident himself when he gets back, so I'll leave it at that.

In the meantime, he wants me to talk to you guys a little about what I do and what kinds of things I've seen. I guess he's got this project going about the stairs, I haven't read most of the posts. He told me what kind of things you guys are interested and I've spent some time thinking about it and coming up with a bunch. Russell said to make a large post, so I'll make this one a good length if I can. EDIT I can't figure out the bullet points so it's just gonna be a big paragraph of sorts.

I'm K.D, by the way.

Well first off, I really want to thank Russell for mentioning tree wells and all sorts of other stuff. What I want people to take away from all of this, more than anything, is that you need to take this stuff really seriously. We're not kidding when we tell you to bring survival gear for even brief hikes or climbs. And if you're a free-climber, well, this story is for you.

Two kids were out free-climbing at a park I used to work at in Central Oregon. Of course doing that is completely forbidden, but they were in a pretty remote area of the park and it was still pretty early in the spring for most climbers. The morning they were out, I remember there being a layer of ice on everything, but it was almost totally invisible. Sometimes that happens if the frost freezes, or if there's a little rain overnight. And I remember thinking that it was going to be a bad day, just because of that. Anyway, these kids were scaling up a cliff face and they hit a spot that must have been in the shade. That layer of frost was probably still there. They fell from about the same height, which also leads me to think they literally couldn't grip onto the rock. Their fingernails were broken from dragging them as they fell. They were conscious the whole way down. They had time to think about how they were going to die, and to wonder if it would hurt. The first kid landed on his feet, how I have no idea, and both tibia and fibula shattered. The force drove his femurs up through his body cavity and into his ribs, pushing his stomach up into his throat and tearing through everything else in its path. He didn't die right away, he dragged himself about two feet before collapsing. His friend landed on his upper back and neck, which drove his chin into his chest with enough force to shatter his jaw and sternum. Pieces of bone ripped through his heart, but if that hadn't killed him the impact to the back of his head would have. The bleeding was catastrophic and caused his bright red eyes to bulge out of his skull. They were fifteen.

I specialize in mountain rescues and a lot of what I do is pick up bodies. If you get in trouble on a mountain and you're not equipped to handle it, you're going to die. We find so many skiers each year upside down in tree wells and I wish to God I didn't know what that kind of position does to a face. You don't rot in that kind of cold, you mummify or stay frozen. Most of them are screaming or biting the snow when they die. A little girl I found last winter was sucking her thumb. Sometimes they pull their hair out, if they're in there long enough. One woman ripped off her false nails and took the real ones along with them. I'm not sure what she was trying to do.

Sometimes we find climbers at the bottom of whatever face they've fallen down. They look fine until you try to move them and the bones click around inside. That's if you get them before the cold and rigor set in. Otherwise, they're like big ice cubes. They get cold enough sometimes that if you touch them your skin sticks.

And then sometimes we find the ones that don't belong. I started putting them in a group in my head that I call the Accidental Stops. I think of the bodies I find as passengers on rides, and it helps me piece together how they end up where they do. But these ones get off the ride too soon, and they end up in strange places. There was one case where a guy with three kids disappeared and left them behind in the woods. Luckily we found them before anything happened, but we didn't find the guy until the next day. I was in an area of the park that has a lot of ravines and these tricky little rock falls in places. I was climbing up one of the ravines and in this tiny little space in the rocks something shines when I get close to it. I backed up and got my light in there and sure enough, he's smashed up in there. Somehow, the guy folded himself into a three-by-two foot space. Managed to disintegrate just about every bone in himself in the process. It's pretty amazing how far the neck can stretch when the spine isn't there. The skin is much more elastic than you'd think. Holding his body was like trying to hold onto a very slippery beanbag. There was just nothing solid in there.

A lot of times it's the kids who are Accidentals. Little boys, especially. Maybe they're the ones who wander off the most. They're the ones we find two feet under the bottom of a moving stream, dressed in the clothes they disappeared in. Cause of death: undetermined. Or we find them ten feet from where the searches began, curled up in a fern with the top half of their head and their nose sliced off. And when I say sliced, I mean the way those scientists who slice off tiny pieces of brain do it. Perfect and clean.

A boy I knew went missing three years ago. He was really sweet and he came up every year with his Troop to go camping in the summer. I used to go up to their campsite on the last night of the trip and tell scary stories to them. It was a lot of fun, and he was always very polite and would roast marshmallows for me. When he disappeared he was only fourteen. He was a really, really good kid.

He was actually one of the rare ones that goes missing at night. It's much more common for them to go missing during the day, because that's when most of them are up and wandering around. My guess is that he went to go use the bathroom and while he was out there, he noticed them and decided to go and investigate. Officially, he wandered off and got lost. That's the Park's way of saying that we have no fucking idea where the kid is, and no idea where to even begin looking. I took the news really hard. I wanted to be part of the team, and I had to fight hard to be included. Normally, they restrict Rangers who have any kind of relation to the missing person from searching, but in this case they made an exception because the area is largely mountainous terrain.

I looked for him for weeks and I hadn't found a single sign that he'd ever stepped out of the camp. Eventually, I came back to the site and started over, going over every inch of the area. If I hadn't done that I'd never have found him. He was small, by that point. Just a soccer-ball sized ball of his torso was left. Almost perfectly round, it included the curve of a lower rib and a tiny segment of his spine. The spinal cord itself was gone. I found it under a pile of dead pineneedles. It was taken to the ME and tested and confirmed. I don't know what they told the parents, but it doesn't really matter. The casket was sealed before they even got there. It would've been cruel to let them see the contents.

Like Russell, I have a lot of friends in the Service. The stress gets to you and it's nice to have people who you can talk to about it. Every year I try to meet up with my core group, Russell and two others, and we go out and camp in our secret spots during the fall. One year we invited a couple others, six of us in all, and we actually rented a cabin out in the Smoky Mountains. It was one of the best years in memory. I don't think there was a single day that we spent more than a few hours sober, usually just enough to get into town and pick up food for me. I have to eat a lot because of a condition that popped up suddenly when I was a kid. We stayed for a week, and on the last night we were all a little low. I think we were all feeling the end-of-vacation blues pretty strong. Suddenly, Mike (one of the non-regulars) pops his head up from his phone and looks out the window. "What's up?" I asked him. "I dunno, I thought something moved." "Go kill it. I'm hungry." I joked. He laughed and we forgot about it until I got up to get us more beer. The cabin didn't have electricity, which is partly why we chose it, so the only light was the fire on the other side of the room. The interior is dark and it's easy to see out, or in, at night. I'm on my way to the cooler in the kitchen when I notice someone on the edge of the property making their way toward the cabin. They're dragging themselves along the ground, and I can see that something is really wrong with their legs. I stand about two feet back from the window and watch while the others kept talking, completely unaware.

The first thing I noticed was that he had no fall clothing. The temperatures can drop very quickly during this season and anyone out here is going to need at least a coat and hat if they plan to camp out. This guy is wearing cargo shorts and a tank top. There's no major roads anywhere near here, and the closest cabin is almost five miles away, so I know he hasn't had an accident and come for help. There's enough light coming from the windows that I can see he's very tan. He's dragging himself onto the property with his elbows, his hands are held up and I can see that the fingers are all broken. They're bent and twisted and when he shuffles forward they stay rigid. I know, of course, that I need to go and help this man but I can't bring myself to do it. Too many things don't add up. I can't figure out where he would have come from and as he gets closer I can see there's no dirt on his clothes. And there's something wrong with those, too. I can't tell what it is though until he comes forward into the square of light under the window.

There's no seams. There's no collar or hemline. The fabric blends into his skin and seems to grow out of it, and when he moves it doesn't bunch up or wrinkle. It's like his clothing is a part of him. He's right below the window now, and I can see that hes making this anguished face, as if he's in pain and knows that I'm right there watching. He drags himself so close to the house that all I can see are his legs, and that's when I notice his legs and the fact that they're stretched behind him in this long long line, all the way back to the treeline he came from. Where the ankles should be, there's another calf, then another knee, and so on all the way back at least fifteen feet and who knows how much farther beyond that. There's movement at my eye level and I flinch backward and he's staring inside at me and his face reminds me of the mask of tragedy, his mouth is wrenched down so far at the corners. His neck is stretched out and his head hangs from it upside down like some kind of ripe fruit. He looks up at me from this bizarre position, with his head hanging off the side of his neck, his mouth wrenched open like that, and that's when I drop the bottles and go to get the rifle out of the mudroom. Everyone reacts and I ignore them, snugging the rifle against my shoulder, but by the time I get back and get a good shot he's gone. I decided to tell them I'd seen a big coyote. Not because I didn't think they'd believe me, but because I didn't want such a good visit to have to end that way.

I have to leave this here for now, but since there's no time limit on posts here I'll probably just update sporadically as I have time. I'll do my best to not let them be too infrequent.