You are here

Mount Rainier National Park Climbers Need To Be More Self-Reliant As Park Alters Rescue Techniques

Share

Rescues conducted by short-haul flights, such as this one at Grand Teton National Park, are coming to Mount Rainier National Park. NPS photo.

The death of a climbing ranger last year at Mount Rainier National Park has prompted a shift in how the park uses helicopters on rescues. In the near-term, that means climbers could find themselves responsible for their own rescues.

Nick Hall died during a rescue at nearly 14,000 feet when he lost his balance on the upper reaches of the mountain and slid 2,400 feet to his death in June 2012 while rescuing a party of four climbers. An investigation determined that the 33-year-old ranger had failed to properly anchor himself on the mountainside before trying to retrieve a litter that was being lowered from a military Chinook helicopter as the key to his death.

“I want to make it clear that the military operation is not unsafe. It has been used for decades here, and it’s been used very successfully," Chuck Young, the park's chief ranger, said on Friday. "But for our staff, which is largely a seasonal staff, the amount of training we can give them and communications issues and things like that, we look to a 'short-haul' system as something that’s another tool that can be used in their toolbox. And in some cases it may be a better tool, and in some cases it’s not.

“But we didn’t have that tool (short-haul) at our disposal when Nick died, and we haven’t had it in this park. The plan is that we will have that tool during this summer’s operations and we’re moving towards that.”

While there were other contributing factors to Ranger Hall's accident, including a lack of training, in moving to prevent a similar accident park officials decided to move away from using the massive Chinook helicopters for high-elevation rescues. In their place, the park will utilize smaller helicopters that employ "short-haul" methods for rescuing injured climbers.

In a short-haul rescue, the injured individual is placed in a litter that is attached to a rope that dangles as much as 100 feet below the helicopter. Whereas the Chinook rescues would winch such litters up into the belly of the helicopter, under short-haul techniques the litter and an accompanying ranger remain at the end of the rope and are lifted a relatively short distance to a landing zone for additional evacuation from the mountain.

The procedure is routinely used at Grand Teton and Grand Canyon national parks, just to name two parks. While Mount Rainier now will move to short-haul rescues whenever possible, Chinooks will still be available if needed, the chief ranger said.

“If we need to get a pretty good number of people up to the mountain by air operations, the military Chinooks are perfect for that," he said.

With Mount Rainier's primary climbing season running out in mid-August, Chief Young said he hoped the short-haul training would be done by the end of July or early August. However, until that training is done climbers who get in trouble could find themselves without help from rangers, he said.

Along with training rangers on short-haul techniques, and commerical helicopter pilots on flying missions at 14,000 feet on the mountain, Mount Rainier staff must figure out how to pay for this change in rescues. Whereas the military flights didn't cost the Park Service any money, Chief Young said costs for short-haul operations will be "in the hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Where that money will come from isn't entirely clear at this point, and the federal budget sequestration that has sliced roughly 5 percent from Park Service budgets adds a complicating factor, said the chief ranger.

"It’s a matter of reprioritizing money and just figuring out how we are going to pay for it, and that’s certainly a huge issue," he said, adding that rescue missions will continue when needed, not when the money is available.

"We’re going to be called for rescues. That’s a given. And we need to have it in place," said Chief Young. "We’ll just need to look at our funding sources and move money that we’re paying for other things around, and some things will get cut because of that."

Cuts have not yet been identified he said, although it could mean fewer seasonal rangers are hired going forward.

"You need money to pay for things, it has to come from somewhere," the chief said. "It may be reduced servces, it could be increased revenues in some ways. We may be charging for things that we didn’t charge for before. But that’s just planning and conjecture at this point, nothing that’s set at this point.”

Comments

Global Rescue is an insurance policy that provides evacuation and compensates agencies for their trouble. Requiring this of climbers would be a very good solution to taxpayer funded rescues in all situations to include coast guard situations.


Smokie, my basic belief is that a rescue is part of what my tax and fee dollars are paying for, however your idea of utilizing an insurance policy does make a lot of sense.


Yes, Mount Rainier National Park climbers do need to be more self-reliant.
And it is my right, is the very nature of being human to seek adventure without regard to prudence, profit, self-improvement, learning or any other serious thing.
My tax dollars going to a rescue is money well spent.

“No servant brought them meals… No traffic cop whistled them off the hidden rock in the next rapids. No friendly roof kept them dry when they misguessed weather or not to pitch the tent. No guide showed them which camping spots offered a night long breeze and which a nightlong misery of mosquitoes; which firewood made clear coals and which would only smoke. The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave…those rewards and penalties for wise and foolish acts…against which civilization had built a thousand buffers.
We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: in wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men." ~ Aldo Leopold, “Thinking Like a Mountain”


Edmond, I am on the fence to be honest. Like you, I believe we do pay for this and it is such a miniscule part of the NPS budget. As a climber and backpacker I just get tired of people blaming me (I've never had to be rescued, knock on wood) for saddling the taxpayers with the burden. I just threw this out as an alternative. Global Rescue costs about 400 dollars per year which is pretty steep. But when you need them, they are indispensible.


Add comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

The Essential RVing Guide

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.

This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.

So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.