[00:00:26] The bushwhacks were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains, or life, really. Whereas Pantsy Mountain is totally opposite, it's a mountain on top of a crater. I think the weather challenges on this incident were particularly difficult. It is really the development of New York State. Catskills were responsible.
[00:00:50] Welcome to Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast. Welcome everybody to Episode 158 of Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast.
[00:01:15] Tonight we'll be talking with Rangers Rusher and Horn about their previous experiences as 2024 of search and rescue missions, and also their firefighting experience that they had down in the White Horse Fire and other fires down there in the Catskills as well. So this is a great episode. We're going to break it into two parts. It's going to be so much fun and we hope you enjoy. So welcome Rangers Rusher and Horn. Alright, so let's welcome the guests of the night.
[00:01:46] Let's go! Yes, guests, two people. We got Ranger Horn and Ranger Rusher here to talk about their recent time back in 2024 and the incidents that they had, all the different stuff that they've been doing very active in 2024. And we welcome to you to the show. Smiles here. It's bright and sunny. So we're good until this week, weekend coming up. We got some stuff coming up. Yeah, some snow and stuff like that. So how are you guys doing tonight?
[00:02:16] Oh, doing pretty well. How are you guys doing? Great. I'm doing fantastic. Waiting for the snowstorm coming that we're supposed to get. Six to ten up in Oneonta. What are you guys, what are they predicting for you guys? Somewhere in the five inch range. Seems like most of the areas on Saturday night into Sunday. A little more in the peaks. Yeah. Ted, what about you down there?
[00:02:39] I haven't even looked. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me what I get around the house. I'm just going to zero in on the Catskills once we're done recording and figure out what I'm hiking tomorrow and who I'm hiking with. Oh, yeah. Now that you've bowed out for a hike on Sunday, I'm going to go back to a Saturday hike. So I'm not breaking trail. I gave you first dibs.
[00:03:02] Yeah. So how about a little background about you guys, about yourself? You know, you can go all out from like, you know, where you grew up and then how you progress into hiking and then how you, you know, thought about being a ranger and stuff like that. So let's go to the left with Rusher first. Yeah. Hey, I'm a ranger, JJ Rusher.
[00:03:22] Yeah. My background was environmental science with a focus on forest ecology and some geology. And yeah, I was attracted to the outdoors early on. My mom was from Delaware County.
[00:03:39] And I used to come up to the to the Catskills all the time and do a lot of hiking and exploration and the Catskills and Adirondacks and really just, you know, enjoyed, enjoyed nature and the outdoors. How did you progress going into like thinking that you wanted to be a ranger and stuff? I had met a couple of rangers. I was really into rock climbing. And so I really enjoyed the gunks.
[00:04:09] I lived in California for a couple of years and I was climbing out in the Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree and on some hikes in the Adirondacks. I met a couple of rangers and was inspired by them. And my first ice climbing experience was with our beloved Robbie Mikas.
[00:04:34] And so I learned from her a lot and was inspired by her. Yeah. Unfortunate incident that happened over in Alaska. That's just some crazy stuff. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was really, really unfortunate. Yeah. And then when I learned more about what rangers do, I was really attracted to it. I really liked the search and rescue and the rope rescue aspect of it.
[00:05:03] Before I became a ranger, I did take the S-130, S-190 fire course. I was interested in wildland firefighting. And so this is like the perfect blend really between law enforcement, search and rescue and wildland firefighting. Yeah. To be honest, I, you know, I've, I've been the same way when I meet you guys like out in the trail, it's, it's very inspirational and just be like, God damn.
[00:05:31] You know, I'm, you know, I kind of wish 20, 30 years ago, I could have had this inspiration and could have done this and then become a ranger. But you guys, yes, meeting you, like, like you said to Russia, meeting you on the trail is that inspiration to get you to be a ranger. So that's, that's cool. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, we, we know that, you know, we'll never be rich when you sign up to be, to be a ranger.
[00:05:55] So we're not doing it for money, but at the same time, you know, we, we can support our, our families on it. And it's a great, great combination of law enforcement, search and rescue and, and, and fire and, and helping people and protecting the environment. All of the above, man, it sounds fantastic. Horn, what about you? Yeah. So, you know, I'm a, I'm a local here to the, the Catskills.
[00:06:22] I grew up born and raised just, you know, right outside of the Shokan reservoir. So spent a lot of time growing up in the mountains, hunting, fishing, you know, just enjoying the area as much as I could. Um, ended up going up to Paul Smith's college up in the Adirondack. So got to spend a bunch of time up there, you know, knocking out high peaks every week, getting into a bunch more hiking up there, backpacking, fishing, ended up graduating Paul Smith's with a degree in environmental science and a minor in GIS.
[00:06:52] After graduating from Paul Smith's, I ended up going out west. You know, I always wanted to see what it was like out there. I just kind of, as JJ did, um, ended up getting a job with the US forest service. So I started working as a wildland firefighter, got a job on the Caribou Targhee National Forest, which is the national forest that borders Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. I lived just over the pass in Idaho from Jackson Hole, which is an incredible area.
[00:07:19] So I did that for five years, built up a bunch of walls and wildland fire, spent a bunch of time on, you know, hell attack crew, doing work with chips, doing engine work, doing hand crew work, got out with some hot shot crews. Um, just really, really enjoyed the fire portion. Um, while I was at Paul Smith's, you know, met some people that knew of rangers. I saw what they were doing when I was hiking the high peaks and it's like, man, it seems like a really cool job. Started kind of working toward that, took the civil service exam.
[00:07:48] And as you guys know, it's kind of a super long process. Once you take that test long waiting period, going through the long background check and hiring process, uh, 27 week long academy after that. Um, so go through the whole process and ended up getting the job and right out of the academy. I got lucky enough to get put right back here into the Southern Cascals, which is pretty much where I wanted to spend my career anyway. So I got super lucky with it. Yeah. And there's nothing easy about the process of getting this job.
[00:08:18] Um, my nephew is going through the process of being a state trooper. So I could only imagine what you guys have to go to because you guys have to do all the kind of research and background of the forest. And stuff like that is just. Yeah. Yeah. Because we are, um, New York state police officers. We have to go through everything that you need to know to be a New York state police officer.
[00:08:41] And on top of that, everything that, um, Rangers need to know and be experts in, which is quite a lot. Yeah. The academy is a wild mix of, you know, physical fitness and then getting into the law enforcement portion, bouncing back and forth from all the ranger stuff we do doing rope rescue stuff, swift water, wildland fire, helicopter hoist stuff. You know, you're bouncing through all these different topics every week for the entire academy. Um, but it's, it's a lot of fun and.
[00:09:10] And, you know, you come out with a lot of knowledge of the job and we learn more of it as you go. I damn knowledge. It's just like, oh, damn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of compare it to like trying to drink from a fire hose. When you're in the. Good way to put it. Yeah. So Ranger Horn, you said it was a long wait after you took the civil service exam.
[00:09:34] Why don't you tell us, uh, from the day you walked out of the civil service exam until the first day on the job is in New York state DEC Ranger. How long was the process? And I think, yeah, I think the, the entire process was years in the making. I mean, I took the test, um, in the fall, I think it was 20. Nine 19. I want to say, um, took the test, you know, then you wait a bunch of time before the results are posted.
[00:10:03] You know, you get a test score, you get ranked on a list and then you just wait and then you wait and then you wait. And I think it took like over like a year and a half almost before almost two years, even maybe before you finally get the canvas letter. And then it's like, Hey, are you interested in this job? You check a box, say, yes, I'm still interested. And you send it back. And all of a sudden you get a package in the mail with a giant background check application of everything you've ever done in your entire life. And then you start meeting with a background investigator.
[00:10:33] They comb through all of that stuff to make sure you're not lying about anything or forgetting something, every ticket you've ever gotten, you know, everything. So they come through that entire process. Um, that took months. So I just, the background investigators doing that process. You're also now going through, I think the first step was a physical fitness exam. So the running, the pushups, the sitting and, um, sit ups in the swimming. You pass that, then you go through a medical exam, a psychological exam, a polygraph test.
[00:11:02] So once you pass all that stuff, now you're also still in limbo because all these other people are doing that. And then if they have a, they have a certain amount of people they want to meet for an academy and our academies are usually pretty small. When I went through it, I think it started with 40 people and it was the biggest academy in Ranger history. Um, so usually before that is much less, probably, probably half that number. Even less. Even less. Yeah. You went through, uh, nine. Yeah. So not to discourage anybody. You guys are like, like, this is great.
[00:11:31] This is fantastic. Yeah. You need to be highly motivated in order to do it. Yeah. So you really need to want the job and really want it. Exactly. So once you go through all of that, you know, they finally, you get an email from the admin guy saying, Hey, you know, you're ranked with your test score enough to get inside of this academy. Do you accept? You say yes. And then, you know, you show up day one where they tell you two at the time, and then you take that wild ride for the next 27 weeks. Yep. Yeah.
[00:11:59] And that's like a paramilitary style police academy. So it's not real comfortable. They don't make it real comfortable for you. So what went along the process? Do you collect your first paycheck? From the, yeah, the first day you go to the, uh, academy. Okay. You are a forest ranger one, the title, uh, on day one, when you go to the academy. So once you, when, so when they send you the packet, you check the box, you're still interested.
[00:12:26] You start going through all the background checking and this, that, and the other thing. You, you gotta be working some other job to support yourself as you're doing that process. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're still, yep. And I literally got the letter.
[00:12:51] I was on a wildfire in the, you know, Northern California and South Lake Tahoe and, you know, fly back in my two days off to do the PT exam. And then literally fly back to Idaho on that Sunday evening to go back to California to the Sequoia national forest for another two week assignment like that Monday. So it's like, you're scrambling. Yeah. There's no guarantee that you make it through the academy either.
[00:13:17] It's like, like I said, my nephew is young and he is tough and you know, not to, to. Can you dissing my nephew? But he failed the first time because he like overexerted himself in the run. Like he tried to do too fast and then he like passed out. But then in the second time he did it really good. And then like, just all the stuff he's telling me about you guys go through a lot, not to discourage people from being a forest ranger. If you want to be a forest ranger, do it. Yeah. I mean, definitely.
[00:13:46] I mean, that's part of, you know, also being here on the show is to promote what we do and to make it look fun, which it absolutely is. It's the best job in the state, you know, by far, in my opinion. Yeah. And, uh, and you, uh, you mentioned, uh, the physical fitness part of getting too tired on the run. And that's what jams some people up when they show up for the, uh, physical agility test where they might train for pushups. They might train for setups. They might train for all the different elements of it, but not necessarily back to back to back to back.
[00:14:13] So I would encourage people if they are training for the physical fitness test to train it. I mean, you could train individually for a little while, but then eventually start doing them all together on the same day. So that when you actually do the test, you're ready because like you, you might be able to do X number of pushups and setups, but not necessarily all back to back to back plus extra pressure being there. Yeah. And the best advice with that is to like, you know, be prepared.
[00:14:41] They give you a minimum standard, but the minimum is the minimum. And I'll tell you on day one of the academy, they're not going for the minimum. So, uh, Ranger Russer, if, if I can, before we go back to Stosh, you're, you're out West, you're climbing at Joshua tree and other places out West. Why would you want to come back to New York state? Yeah, that's a great question. I loved living out there. It was, it was a lot of fun.
[00:15:07] Um, yeah, I was living out in Southern California and doing a lot of cross country trips and backpacking. Trips like in the Sierra Nevada mountains and big Sur and, um, enjoying everything that the West coast has to offer. But, um, but yeah, my, my family was, uh, on the East coast. I had a couple like extended family members, like on my mom's side, a couple cousins that were out there, um, on the West coast, but I had some things going on with, with the family.
[00:15:37] Um, and so I wanted to come back and just support them. And then same thing with you, horn. You were out in the Tetons area. My God, I'm jealous as heck. Cause I have a plan to go to the Tetons and then up to a Yellowstone and stuff. And back. Wow. That's one hell of an area. Oh yeah. I loved it. I mean, I lived right on the snake river. I was fly fishing every day in my days off backpacking every, every other day that I could. I mean, it's, that's a fantastic period.
[00:16:07] Well, I, I happen to have a daughter who has been out West for the last eight months living out of the back of her car, rock climbing nearly every day. So I hope someday she returns to the East coast, but right. You know, I don't, I don't give it much more than a 50, 50 shot. Hopefully she doesn't cut any switchbacks. Ted. Yeah. Yeah. When she's going for the fast time. Well, don't get too used to those switchbacks out there because we don't have many here. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:36] And that's, that's the funny thing, you know, just like, oh man, there's switchbacks out there. That's dream compared to here. Yeah. And I, I kind of learned that it's a great place for me to visit and it's not going anywhere. And so. Yeah. I try to prioritize, you know, family and everything first, and then we can, we can go visit out there and go for a week or two at a time and kind of come back. So, and I did a lot of traveling too. Um, in the, during that time period too.
[00:17:04] And I, and I felt like I saw a lot and I was able to, um, travel overseas and, you know, go to, go to Western Europe, um, and travel through the Alps. And then also in South America and in Brazil and Ecuador. So I felt kind of like well traveled and, and decently experienced and had, had, did quite a bit. And so I was ready to come back home basically. So. And get on this podcast. Yeah.
[00:17:33] That was the main, the main thing is like, well, it's a podcast about the Catskills. He got to get on it. That led you here. It's crazy. So, Rusher. How about that award you received? The, the Raymond Murray award in 2024. Let's talk about that. Uh, yeah, yeah, no, it was a really, uh, it was a really great honor, um, to, to receive this, uh, the Raymond Murray award.
[00:17:56] And I guess they, depending on the, the year they'll, they'll select different, um, incidents that, that occurred and different rangers. And then they'll usually provide the award at, uh, award ceremony during the graduation of an academy. So we just had our graduation from the last academy. A month or two ago. And, uh, yeah, so I'll, I'll just read the narrative of what the award is.
[00:18:21] So the Raymond Murray award is presented in memory of forest ranger Raymond Murray of Steuben County. The first forest ranger in New York to be killed in the line of duty. Forest ranger Murray died in a plane crash near big flats, Steuben County, New York in 1970, while flying aerial detection flights for forest fire suppression. The Raymond Murray award will be given to a sworn member who by a conspicuous act of valor, courage, integrity, resourcefulness, and bravery.
[00:18:50] And the protection of our natural resources and or safety of the public clearly set them apart from other persons. This award should be recognized by all members of the division as the highest fulfillment of the position of New York state forest ranger. Um, and so it really was a great honor. And then you get nominated. Um, if something happens and one of your peers nominates you for, to receive this award, then there's, um, a committee that reviews it.
[00:19:19] And then they'll make their selections. Um, and this one was related to an incident that happened that at the very end of, uh, 2023 December of 2023, where, um, I responded to someone falling off a cliff in, um, Minnewasca state park. So that's, that's the area that I cover. Um, I kind of cover like the Southern part of the Catskills.
[00:19:43] And then primarily it's in, uh, in the gunks area, uh, Minnewasca, Mohonk, uh, which is full and along the two and nine corridor. So I'm over there quite a bit. And, um, this particular incident was, unfortunately it ended up, uh, being, um, the, the person that fell to come to their injuries, but it was a real complicated, um, response. So, you know, the, the person fell off, uh, 85 foot cliff.
[00:20:13] And so we had to rappel down the cliff to, to assess the injuries. And, and I was working with, uh, park staff and actually multiple good Samaritans that, that witnessed the fall. And then they were able to scramble down another way to help out, but it just involved, you know, rappelling down to the bottom of the cliff and, um, working with the, with the, with the subject.
[00:20:40] And then we decided to do a hoist with the, with the helicopter, with aviation. Um, but it was at the bottom of like a steep talus field that wasn't suitable to hoist. So we had to, uh, find a different location to hoist her from and the spot that found was like 300 feet away in a dense forest. Um, so we ended up having to cut a hole, um, using the silky saws.
[00:21:07] And then we ended up getting a chainsaw too, to, to cut a hole for the, for the aviation. Um, and then we had the set up, uh, a low angle lower to, to carry the subject from the talus field to the, um, to the hole for aviation. Um, and, and then coordinate with aviation to insert the, the litter and then assemble the litter and, and put the, put the subject in there and then, and then hoist her out.
[00:21:36] So, and it put together a lot of different skill sets that, that we train on and everything happened very quickly. And then meanwhile, the, the person sustained like life-threatening injuries and was bleeding internally. And, uh, we weren't able to, unfortunately, unfortunately weren't able to fix that out, out in the field, but, you know, we, we did everything humanly possible to, to, to get her out.
[00:22:04] Um, ultimately, unfortunately she didn't survive. Um, but as far as the operation went, it went really smooth and, um, working with, with the other agencies and the, and the partners to, to do our best to save her. But it was very, very intense situation. Yeah. I mean, the whole situation that you're talking about is just a bunch of different craziness going on at one time.
[00:22:30] Like it's just, you, you have the tallest field, you got to get her over to a place that you can hoist her out. You can't hoist her out over here. It's just all this going at once. And it, a lot of people don't realize how much time it takes to, to do this. And for how many, the communication you guys have is this phenomenal. I cannot believe how much, how great you guys communicate between each other and, and stuff like that to get this possible.
[00:22:56] And it's not like a simple thing of where you're going to walk down to the street and walk the person out. This is crazy incident. Yeah. Yeah. It really, it really was. And with the timing, like it, we did it from the moment that I heard it on the radio to the moment that we, we sit it out. It was like two hours or just under two hours, which is pretty, pretty remarkable. Wow. Um, organization to, to try to get that done.
[00:23:21] And, um, it was, it was an extreme, extreme challenge. And, and then, but then at the end of the day, like I feel bad obviously because you know, lost their life. And, um, but we, but I do feel good that we did everything that we possibly could, but it was still very, very tragic. So when you arrived on scene, was she, uh, alert and responsive or was she unconscious? She was alive. Yeah.
[00:23:51] Yeah. Um, and then, uh, what, one of the, uh, you know, the Minnawaska staff members that, that were on scene are really great. Um, and they were there first and what, one of the good Samaritans happened to be a nurse. And, and so that was kind of interesting. You never know who's going to be on scene. So we had an EMT and, um, and a nurse that were doing the patient care. I wasn't doing much of the patient care. I was, uh, you know, my, my role there, it is parkland, but we're, we're partners with them.
[00:24:21] It's not DEC land, but, um, we are partners with them. And then especially facilitating the hoist aspect of it. Cause, um, with, there was a forest ranger as the hoist operator and then, uh, a state police pilot. And then we worked directly with them all the time. So I was, um, coordinating that a lot and then focusing on the lower to the low angle lower out of the towels field to get her to the pick side and then prepping the pick side and then assembling the litter and everything else related to the, um.
[00:24:51] To, to the hoist mission. But yeah, initially she was, she was, she was alive. So it must've been, um, yeah. It wasn't anything external, but it was. Yeah. Where in the park did this happen? So we're by the ball field area. They call it. Wow. Yeah. And then just the complexity of it all. It's like, so Russia is doing that all at the bottom of the cliff, you know, setting up for the hoist doing helping with the patient care, doing everything that he's running down there.
[00:25:19] And it's like, you know, you know, Russell Martin. So him and I and John Francis Keener up top, we're, you know, setting up the secondary rope stuff just in case the hoist doesn't work. Cause you can't always rely on aviation a hundred percent of the time. So there's always a backup and it's yeah. It's a, it was a crazy incident to watch on the cold from the top of the cliff, looking down at what JJ was doing down there. And it's just super impressive. Yeah. And you're, you're aware of the whole time. Your time's running against you. Yeah, exactly.
[00:25:48] And you have to act on the pressure and that's the biggest thing about it is like, you know, we, we do a lot of, uh, we do a lot of intense training and, um, you know, all of our accomplishments as, as rangers on incidents. So it's for me, like, um, you know, you, you, you attribute it to your training and, and to your experience. And, uh, as a division, you know, we take training very seriously.
[00:26:11] We, we train all the time and we, we try to, you try to train so much that, um, when you have to do something in real life, when it, when it's real, that it almost comes automatically. And, and you don't have to think as, as hard as you do when you're first learning how to, how to do all these things. And so it really is, um, really is a testament to our art division as a whole, uh, the, like the quality of the training that we have to, to be able to do something like that.
[00:26:40] I mean, while someone is potentially someone's dying, you know, so it's, it could get very, very stressful, but, but we train for it. And, and so you kind of, you kind of fall back on, on your training and, and that's, and that's what I did. That's all I did was my job and, but it was really based on the, on the training that I've received over the years and the support from, you know, my peers and supervisors. It makes a big difference.
[00:27:06] Yeah. And, you know, with the, with that, at that time, you know, you have all these different kind of scenarios that you have to have. You have to have medic there. You have to have a calm, you know, you have to have someone who is doing patient assessment. And, you know, luckily you had a nurse and an EMT there to do patient assessment while you can figure out how to get this person out there as fast as possible because they had life threatening injuries. And that's just, that's just phenomenal to, to have all of that.
[00:27:36] Like, like once again, all that coming together and working so smooth in two hours is just, it just blows my mind that this happens to hear these reports. It's just absolutely amazing. You guys, God damn, I'm sorry, Jeff, but you're freaking phenomenal. See, Jeff's not going to be like, like that. Yeah. Well, thanks. Yeah. And, and it's, you know, it's always a collaborative effort with all the different agencies that, that are there.
[00:28:01] But between the other police agencies and fire agencies, and in my case, yeah, middle of Alaska staff and Mohonk preserve too, because there was a Mohonk Ranger too, because they're across the street right down the road. With a very good skill set too, with a technical road rescue. And so, and, and so we all kind of work together and kind of mesh well. So it makes, it makes all the difference having these like relationships with other agencies.
[00:28:28] And a lot of that goes into, you know, what we do when we're not on the incidents. It's like, we do talk about all the incidents that we do all the time, but when we're not doing that stuff, a lot of the Ranger job is going around and building these relationships with the other agencies. You know, like you're meeting with your local fire departments in your area, you're meeting with the Mohonk guys, the Minnewasca guys, the other law enforcement agencies, and you're building all these relationships. So when you get to the incident, things do go a lot smoother. Yeah.
[00:28:55] It's not the first time you saw them before you kind of know their capabilities, their, their strengths and what the equipment that they might have. And it's a familiar face. So it does, it really does make all the difference. Yeah. Awesome. So once again, congratulations on the award. You know, we, we talk about that rescue. So, but there was more about the award. So that's, that's phenomenal. So congratulations. Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it.
[00:29:25] Yeah. So what goes the, like, when, when you, when you come around this, this aspect, what goes through your mind when, when you get called out for a rescue? Like you're, you're, you're sitting in your truck or you're, you're patrolling or something. And all of a sudden it's like, Hey, dispatch tells you that there's a rescue going on. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:44] So, I mean, you never know what you're going to run into when, when the call comes like, yeah, sometimes when, when you get a call and they say one thing, um, it turns out to be something completely different. Yeah. Yeah. So, there's been many, many, many times where it's like, Oh, you're getting a call for a missing subject. And you call that person's contact info. And it's like, no, I'm not lost. I broke my, my pelvis. You know, it's like, it's, it's always something. We'll talk about that later.
[00:30:13] You got a broken pelvis later. Is that why you're, you're bringing up that incident? Yeah. Maybe. The first one that came to mind. Yeah. So, so basically, yeah, the first thing that you want to do, obviously you want to get the basic facts of what's, what's happening and then where you are in relation to where the incident is and like your, your route of travel. And, um, yeah, I mean, a lot of times we're not in the truck, just sitting there waiting for calls. It kind of depends on the circumstances.
[00:30:38] Um, so sometimes you have to like, get back to your truck and sometimes you don't even have cell reception, but, or it's spotty. And so you really want to start collecting all the information that, that you can about what's happening and then verify the information so that we're not sending all these resources somewhere. That's not necessary wasting people's time. So we, we always try to call the person direct if we can.
[00:31:04] So yeah, if someone's lost or injured up there and they call whoever called 911, we want to talk to them ourselves. Our dispatchers are, you know, they're, they're good. Uh, and then we'll work with the county 911 center as well. And they're, and they're good and they're all professionals, but you know, we, we try to, I try to call the person direct whoever called 911 just to get that firsthand information and verify everything. Yeah.
[00:31:31] Then you start thinking about the equipment that, that you might need and maybe you have a pre-planned area, um, where, where you've already thought about if something happened here, this is what I would do. So you don't have to think as hard when it actually happens, who else is working and come up with a plan to, to solve it. Yeah. In this, it depends on the incident too. It's, you know, we do everything from law enforcement to fire, to search, to rescue, you know, swift water, helicopter stuff.
[00:32:01] So it's like, as soon as you get that call, it's like, Oh, which portion of the job is it? And then, yeah, as Russia said, you start narrowing down the facts from there. So for our hikers that are heading out into the Catskills this weekend, likely to encounter some snow, wintry conditions, et cetera. And something happens. What should they do first in terms of reaching out? Should they call nine one one? Should they call the ranger number that's posted at trail heads or something else?
[00:32:29] Typically the best answer is to call nine one one. Um, cause whether you were lost or injured, as soon as you call nine one one, they could actually track your cell phone and get coordinates for us. So that makes our job a lot easier. Cause usually if you know, you take that picture of that ranger phone number on, on the trail head sign. It's like, if you call us, we're still going to tell you to call nine one one to get that information just so we could have it documented. Um, so yeah, the best bet is going to be to call that nine one one first.
[00:32:53] So we're now in a part of the Catskills, no cell service, but you do have a Garmin in reach. What should somebody with the in reach do? Should they, uh, send a message to the ranger number? Would it get a rep a message from a Garmin in reach or should they hit the SOS button on their Garmin or other device? What would the protocol be for somebody who's out of cell service, but has a satellite messenger? Sure.
[00:33:22] So I, I carry an in reach with me. I have the, the newer in reach messenger, little hockey puck looking one. Um, never had to use it, but I would say, you know, I would push the SOS button because that goes to the Garmin facility. I think it's in Texas. And then from there, they know what the lead agency for search and rescue is within theirs. And then they'll send it to us here in New York for the division of force protection that goes to the rangers. And then, you know, we, we take it from there.
[00:33:49] So the best bet is the SOS button, but I also have pre-programmed numbers in the, in the Garmin. So it's like, you got close. I got the other rangers in there. I got a hard dispatch. So, you know, if you have a backup, you can message, you know, your, your mother or your significant other or somebody to, you know, double that message. It's probably not a bad idea. Well, I, I have my wife's number in mind, but I'm not quite sure she would be interested in having me rescued most of the time. She'd be like, you're fine. I'm just kidding. That's, she loves me.
[00:34:18] Like try, get out. You little wuss. Yeah. Yeah. And we talked about that, you know, at this last search and rescue meeting, we talked about the, the Garmin in reach of when you could send an SOS out if you should message or SOS first. And you're correct. Like an SOS message gets you direct contact, gets you direct information instead of sending a message. We'll like, Hey, I'm lost when you're already paying for the SOS.
[00:34:46] So why, why not just hit that SOS and get some information at first. And then you could send an information to that Garmin as well. Cause I heard that the SOS message will instantly start. Uh, you can do the messages from there. So if you guys want to get ahold of that person that hit the SOS, you can be like, where are you? Where do you think you are? And stuff like that. And you can kind of almost guide them to where they could be or where it's an easier spot. Exactly.
[00:35:13] You, you know, always send as much information as you can in that. And that helps us with like what JJ just said, the pre-planning and what we need to start bringing and what not to bring and all that. But we've also been seeing an uptick in the newer iPhones and Android phones have like that built in satellite messenger capabilities that are starting to roll out, um, and be more common. So we've, we've been getting some calls from them as well. What is your thoughts about that? That's a, that's a big jump by the way. Yeah.
[00:35:38] I, I, uh, I tested it out the other day, so it all depends on like, I guess what kind of phone you might have and then what the, what the other person has. But, um, yeah, I was able to successfully send a couple text messages to people that I know through satellite went in a complete dead zone, um, for cell phone, just on the, on the regular, on the iPhone. Yeah.
[00:36:00] Last, uh, winter, right before Christmas, uh, my other district mate, Cameron Sweeney and I, we got a call from one of the satellite iPhone messages that went through the dispatch right at the, uh, it's like the upper campsite in the Cornell area, kind of in between Cornell and slide. He was able to send a message right from that area, you know, suffering from some pretty severe hypothermia, well not severe, but pretty mild hypothermia. And he was able to get a message out with that satellite. So I think the technology is coming.
[00:36:29] Um, I wouldn't necessarily rely on it. So if you really want to rely on something, I would definitely go with the, the garment in reach, at least, at least for now to make sure that you can send a message out. Yeah. If you, if you have the, if we have the technology and you can make, uh, I wouldn't say more of your life easier, but like the rescue easier to get you out of there and to get the, instead of a, you know, a recovery, then a rescue. Right. Yeah.
[00:36:58] And that, that kind of goes into one of the incidents that we did want to talk about maybe a little later was, uh, that incident, uh, up north in the Adirondacks with the, the 22 year old that got lost, uh, up in the Adirondack mountains. Yeah. Yeah. If you had, uh, maybe if you had a garment in reach, it could, maybe could have been different. Not sure. I, who knows, but, um, we didn't have any type of, uh, coordinates at all. Yeah.
[00:37:26] My, my daughter's out there with a in reach. So why not? Yeah. Why not? Yeah. So you should, it's, it's a minimal, I mean, it's, you know, I mean, to three or 400 bucks, I guess. I mean, not even, yeah, not even like 250 bucks. I mean, save your life. Yeah. Especially like when you're, like you said up north and you're, you're, you're hiking on Allen mountain in extreme snow and winter conditions, you know, why, why not?
[00:37:53] Why not save your, your, your life and continue to hike on another day? Then it's be like, Hey, I saw it. And then yeah. Unfortunate incident. We'll, we'll chat about that later. So my attitude with people carrying, uh, GPS devices and messengers is, uh, for the sake of the rescue people, the first responders, the search and rescue teams.
[00:38:18] If you're going to go out and be out there doing something, do it for them. So it's easier for them to find you. It's less dangerous for them. So they can be more prepared when they get there. Um, you're the one that decided to go way out there. And then when something bad happens, you're kind of putting it on them to come and save you. So don't make their life harder than it has to be carrying carry an in reach at least for now. So I'll put that in the show notes. Yeah.
[00:38:47] Little promo for them. Hopefully right on stock and garment. Right. Yeah. Right. That'd be something else. So with the, the incidents that we're talking about. So how about we break into the incidents that you guys have been in? So this, uh, Wittenberg rescue that happened in March, I believe, January, February, March. Yes. The hoist now horn, you were involved with this. You want to, uh, take it out from here. Yeah. So I'll chat about that one.
[00:39:16] So, yeah, we'll talk about some incidents. Like tried to pick some, you know, that, that we talked about or that we did this summer throughout the year, basically something from, from every month. So the Wittenberg one I picked out, that one was in March. It was actually right on Easter. Sitting home, you know, eating dinner with my family, get the call from dispatch of an individual that was at the Cornell crack. She had slipped and fallen and she was pretty sure she had broken her ankle. So Ranger Martin had actually taken the call on that one.
[00:39:45] So he started organizing with a handful of the other Rangers that were available that day for a carry out starting at Woodland Valley to, uh, you know, hike all that gear, that litter, everything up to the Cornell crack, which is, you know, it's going on four miles and 3000 plus feet of elevation gain. And then getting all that stuff back down with a person in it. So the call was made for aviation to be used on that incident. So I'm along with JJ, we're both part of the aviation program. So I got the phone call for that.
[00:40:15] I was with Ranger Stratton. So he got on the ship, um, or basically the ship came to the Casco visitor center area that, that big metal right across from the parking area. Um, Stratton and I met the ship there. Um, the ship came from Newburgh. As we talked earlier, we have a really, really great relationship with the New York state police and the Newburgh guys for their aviation program. So we, we use them for our area, the Catskills. So we met them at the, the Casco visitor center.
[00:40:42] Stratton and I got in, you know, we did a big briefing with the pilots, him and I, and I was the one that was going to be inserted. Um, the individual is actually. So inserted your talk about lowered. Yep. Yep. Inserted lowered right onto the summit of Wittenberg mountain, which is pretty incredible experience. Um, the individual that was injured, she was with her husband. I mean, extremely tough individual. She was actually able to get herself from the Cornell crack area over to the summit of Wittenberg.
[00:41:11] So impressive. Yeah. With, with a broken ankle. So extremely. Holy shit. Yeah. But so to do that, did, did she have like an ACE bandage in the splinting or other first aid gear that she used to, you know, support her ankle for the journey over? Or she just grit her teeth and go. No, she was extreme. I mean, not all of our incidents are people that are ill prepared to be in the back country. This particular individual is, you know, extremely prepared. She had everything she needed. First aid kit, Sam splint.
[00:41:40] She was able to, with her, splint the ankle, you know, really good. I didn't have to do anything. So she was able to splint it up, secure it. I mean, I'm sure she was in pain, but you know, along with her husband, able to get her over to Wittenberg. So Ranger Stratton was able to fly in, locate the spot. He dropped me right onto the summit. I was able to walk over to the individual. We use what's called a hot seat. So it's basically this type of harness that you almost like it kind of wraps around you.
[00:42:07] And then you almost, as you get picked up, you almost like lean back in it, like a lounge chair. It kind of just scoops you up. So, you know, get inserted in, walk over to her, give her a briefing. The helicopter flies away. So now it's all quiet and silent. Tell her what's going on. Hey, we're going to put you in this harness. The helicopter is going to come back. It's going to be extremely loud. It's going to be windy. Um, this is what's going to happen. I'm going to put you in this harness. You're going to be completely secure. You know, you give them all the PPE with their helmet, eye protection, ear protection.
[00:42:37] And then I call the ship back in. So I'm talking to Ranger Stratton up in the helicopter with my radio. He's able to fly back in. All of this takes only minutes to throw that harness on. Typically he flies back in. He, you know, talking with the pilots, adjust that ship to the right spot, just over the, you know, where I have the person placed on the summit of Wittenberg hook comes back down. And I hook her in and then, you know, she gets a wild ride fully exposed up to the ship. How far are you hovering?
[00:43:06] Is the ship hovering above the summit? So it varies, you know, we'll talk on later incidents where they could be extremely long, like the ice climber rescue. We're going to talk about later. I mean, that was 180 something feet. Wittenberg, on the other hand is, you know, open summit for the most part with that big, that big rock outcrop, short, you know, trees due to the elevation. So the hoist was only, I don't know, maybe 30 feet. So it's pretty, pretty short one in all consideration. We still use a tagline.
[00:43:35] So as that person gets hooked into that, that harness and as she's going up through the air, I have a tagline in hand. It's kind of guiding her. So she's not spinning. I don't know if everybody's ever seen a video of like a helicopter with the litter spinning in circles. So we make sure that doesn't happen. So you get a tagline attached and you know, you guide her up to the ship and then she gets boomed right back in the helicopter ends up flying back down to the Casco visitor center and she gets dropped off to get treated by the ambulance.
[00:44:01] And then the helicopter comes back for me, but you'll be prepared because sometimes the helicopter can't come back. So you got, I was going to say, yeah. Yeah. That's one that I was on that. We're going to talk about. I didn't get picked up again. I like, well, yeah, I got a bummer. It worked out well for me. I was back eating dinner in a couple hours. It was. What about her husband? Do you have to hike down? He did.
[00:44:22] So, I mean, there's certain cases where sometimes we can pull the parties, you know, the people out there without out, but with state police and regulations of who can be in that ship. Sometimes it's hard to justify pulling people that are capable of going out. I mean, I would have loved to take his pack or, you know, bring him up to obviously, but sometimes sort of rules and regulations. We just can't let certain people in the helicopter. Unfortunately, and the weather was good.
[00:44:49] And like, there's no real reason to send the helicopter back over there because there's always some risk, you know? So, you're also kind of like, you know, you, you chose this decision. Get down. No, I'm just kidding. That's what I would say. Yeah. We try to be nice. I gave him water and snacks I had in my pack. He was also prepared, but it was nice to have a little extra, you know?
[00:45:12] So what was the response time from the time the call went in until you guys were, you know, landing, you call it inserted, being inserted on Wittenberg. Do you have an idea how long that was? I mean, it was quick. I mean, I live 20 minutes from the Catskill visitor center. So I got the phone call, you know, immediately run up, get my uniform on, grab everything, hop in the truck and go like I'm at the visitor center in a half hour.
[00:45:37] I think it took the ship maybe 45 minutes from from Newberg to get there because those pilots are there all the time. They're, you know, they're ready to go waiting for this kind of thing. So they're able to fly right over there. Met with Ranger Stratton. And I think it took him a little longer to get there because he's coming from Western, you know, the Western Catskill area. Um, you know, if I, if I remember correctly, it was like an hour. So yeah, if I remember correctly, um, this one was like really close to sunset. Right. Yeah.
[00:46:03] And, and like, you know, he got inserted on the summit, which is easy to find, but where they actually picked from was a little bit off the summit in full canopy. No, that was a different one. That was a different one. That was, that was, uh, uh, 2022 or 2023 hours. Yeah. I was, I was also on that one. That one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I thought you were talking about that one. Yeah. No, this is the one right off the summit. That one was, uh, yeah, that one was right down the quarter mile off the summit. The super dense. Awesome. Yeah. You guys cut, you cut some trees for that. Didn't you? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:31] Yeah. We, we, we do a lot of, we, we do a lot of hoist over by, uh, Wittenberg. Especially. Yeah, dude, that descent is just treacherous for a litter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We, I mean, I think we cut one tree down for that one. Just a little hole. Um, but yeah, I think, you know, from, to answer your question, it was like an hour, maybe a hair longer to be flying up to Wittenberg, a couple of minutes to throw her in the harness, maybe an hour and 10 hour and 15 from when we got the call. Yeah.
[00:46:58] That's, that's crazy because years ago, my mother was staying at my house. She fell down the stairs, right? It took the ambulance an hour and 15 minutes to get here. Okay. An hour and 15 minutes. You guys are like getting a helicopter, getting a crew together, flying up to Wittenberg, dropping somebody on Wittenberg and picking them up in about an hour. Okay. So was your food still hot when you got home?
[00:47:26] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I went home and finished my Easter dinner. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. That's, you know, and kudos to the hiker. Maybe like she listens to this and, and, you know, kudos to you for being prepared because, you know, to be honest, you know, I carry like I'm, I'm, I'm, we're search and rescue. We carry the most. I carry the most shit that I can to either save my life or save somebody else's life. You know, it's. Crazy.
[00:47:54] with being up on freaking Wittenberg and Cornell you are far away and your elevation gain is absolutely insane and just you know to think you know what I know when we when we were in search and rescue we had that call you had on Wittenberg to think of carrying a litter from Woodland Valley all the way up to the Wittenberg it's it's sorry Jeff it's f that that was the fastest time I think
[00:48:23] I've ever gone up Wittenberg so I was with Cameron again my other district base so two other Rangers got inserted on the top so it was like a quarter or so mile from the top going down and then Sweeney and I literally like trail ran from the bottom up and we got to the the person at almost the exact same time as those guys coming down from the top did wow yeah that's just it's it's a whole nother story and and a lot of people are like you know why do we utilize these like helicopter rescues
[00:48:51] on Wittenberg and the Catskills you know why don't we use this in aeronics this is the reason why 3,000 feet down with a litter you know 160 to 180 pound person it's it's nowhere near easy especially with eight people even 16 people it's not easy that's one of the things that we consider when we're deciding whether or not we're going to do a hoist we you know we have different levels of uh
[00:49:16] hoist levels basically where we try to figure out are we going to use a hoist or not and and one of the factors you know it's life or limb of of the subject of course um if there's any type of uh threat to life or limb but then also a factor is like the rescuers safety and the and the terrain and um and and weather as well so we we factor everything in when we're making that decision yeah definitely
[00:49:42] it's once again what the the weather conditions were they like favorable uh you know typical late shoulder season like it's it's March going into April so it's it's warmer during the days but it's still chilly at you know 35 3800 feet getting into the evening so it's still a little icy up there yeah but overall it was pretty clear calm day and you know we talk about the conditions with the
[00:50:08] helicopter rescue you know once you get up higher of course you have different weather you get above the mountains you get kind of like drifts with the wind and stuff like that how do you guys determine that when you're doing a a helicopter rescue do you just test it out and then you know back and forth yeah you know the pilots are kind of doing an assessment the whole time so they're in their office they know what the weather's going to be like at the elevation that they're going to once they figure out where they where they are going to and then it's just assessing it as they go
[00:50:38] you know we're flying up the mountain if it starts to get super windy a lot of turbulence you know they can make make the call to not do it or do it depending on when they get there yeah no i mean ultimately uh it's up to the pilot so that the pilots are the experts uh with aviation and they're they have their protocols of uh what's safe or not and and so they're constantly paying attention to that
[00:51:05] and that they have their instruments and measurements and then and they're looking at things before they go while they're flying the whole time and so if they if they feel that it's not safe they'll they'll cancel the mission and that's up to them that's why we always have a plan b we always plan for if the helicopter has a malfunction or if something's not right with the helicopter we always have a plan b in motion yeah and that particular incident you know ranger
[00:51:31] martin was down with a handful of the rangers they were already prepped and they're ready for the word to start going yeah well so let's let's move on to july 8 2024 catskill mountain house rope rescue uh i guess it was you two responding to this you remember the incident yeah so i'll start off with this one um i arrived there i think a little bit earlier than jj did so i was able to uh
[00:51:55] so the initial call went to the region four guys so this is going out of our our region um us in region three so again region three we're looking at southern catskills kind of eastern sullivan county ulster county going into region four getting up into the caterskill clove stony clove plat upper part of plat clove tannersville hunter that's getting into region four so this incident's in region four so as they need more you know resources to come assist with these larger incidents up there
[00:52:24] we're usually the ones to get called because we're close in region three um i was there a little closer or a little sooner than jj so i ended up going down with ranger dawson who was the initial ranger that covers that area he was down with the patient um i hopped great down afterwards uh ranger peterson was up top he's a another green county guy he was setting up the rigging for the ultimately it's going to be the the rope rescue portion so i ended up going down with dawson and we did the
[00:52:50] patient assessment and ended up packaging the patient so we used the big vacuum mattress type thing to put her into a litter or you know have a litter her in a vacuum mattress to kind of secure her she was pretty injured you know it was a large fall off of that cliff and then nasty nasty talus pile kind of old metal from the old catskill mountain house runes glass you know everything all all and above so we ended up doing the patient packaging treating her stabilizing what we could getting
[00:53:19] her in that vacuum mattress getting her secured in the litter and then clearing a path up to the cliff because she was like 40 50 feet down this talus just bunched up in trees and metal um jj came in afterwards and then he can kind of tell it from here as he started to get rigged up he ended up ultimately being the guy attached to the litter yeah after i got on scene um yeah uh gulland ranger gulland and peterson were set up the uh twin tension uh rope system that we use to lower down
[00:53:49] to the bottom of the cliff and and so is that the like the like the tripod kind of thing that you have uh um no that would be like artificial high directional which in this case the uh the cliff the cliff edge it was pretty exposed and um we ended up using actually i'm sure you've been there before it's like kind of an open field and and so we're able to actually drive trucks up there
[00:54:14] oh we actually anchored we anchored off of two ranger trucks nice and then just went over the edge that way and then and then we're able to do some kind of vectoring on the edge to do the edge transition which is the area that kind of takes like the the largest um forces usually with with a with a rescue load so yeah i was the litter attendant so i got put my harness and broke gear
[00:54:41] and then holding on to the to the litter empty litter they they lowered me down to the to the bottom of the cliff and and then kind of walked it over to where the the the subject was with uh ranger dawson and ranger horn and kind of packaged her into the into the litter basket and and then we had to do like a low slash kind of like moderate angle raise up through like the vegetation and the brush
[00:55:08] and that kind of nasty tallis field with like debris and and things to get her to the base of the cliff uh and then then we transitioned the the low moderate angle to to a vertical high angle raise um and then i was the litter attendant we pulled it on to the to the litter uh being being raised up to the to the top of the cliff wow so how is it that this person got down there selfie no i mean
[00:55:37] we don't really we don't really know uh sure yeah she i mean it was very big with the way she described it i mean she she didn't recall how she got close to the cliff and all that so you think that was like a retrograde amnesia did she have a head injury she was she unconscious yeah i mean she she definitely had some like injuries to her to her face um that that were visible
[00:56:00] so yeah i mean maybe maybe it was something yeah and i'm not sure if she like lost consciousness or not yeah um but you know her bag and her phone was like on the bench that was like 20 or 30 feet away from the cliff edge so it was she wasn't taking a selfie okay okay i just i i that's like the first part that i did with the cats come out now the place is crazy so so what's putting putting aside the
[00:56:27] the selfie what about uh drugs or alcohol was there any involvement drugs and alcohol not to our knowledge yeah she yeah she was she was awake and um just seemed all right i mean i'm well she she was injured of course but i don't know for sure but yeah but but it seemed like she was on it yeah but
[00:56:50] it was an open and obvious cliff that yeah she went off you know interesting yeah what were the weather conditions that day i mean gorgeous gorgeous july day sunny warm right yeah kind of warm yeah definitely warm actually yeah i remember sweating yeah so it was just an accident really yeah so with the the rescue with the the ropes and stuff like that so at first of course you have to put the i mean
[00:57:19] i've i've been involved not involved with rescues but i've been trained for the rescues so you have to put the the mat down to go over the cliff of course correct uh yeah yeah like the edge protection yep yep yep yep and that's how you kind of lifted her up until the initial part of the high angle correct um yeah you're talking about right at the top of the cliff yeah that's the one like part that
[00:57:45] i'm just like confused about because that's crazy yeah yeah that's that's like it's the most yeah it's actually the one of the most difficult parts is is that we call it the edge transition either going over the edge down or being raised above the edge uh a lot of times that's where you can see the like kind of like the strongest forces on the uh on the rope system where something bad could happen um
[00:58:11] but yeah it gets a little complicated there are several different ways to to do it safely um in this case yeah we did have edge pro um on the uh on the cliff face and uh we ended up vectoring and having a couple um edge attendance uh rangers that were on the top that were that were assisting and then when we were raising the the litter up uh up the cliff uh it was in a horizontal orientation
[00:58:41] and then so through through what's called an aztec uh with some pulleys um as a litter attendant i was able to adjust the angle of the of the litter to make it a vertical orientation instead of a horizontal orientation where you can extend the line on on the litter harness to the feet and and when you do that it orients the litter vertically for that edge transition so high and pivot yeah yeah yeah that is
[00:59:10] one technique yeah it was it was kind of like a modified pike and pivot maneuver it's called so you start out horizontal and then and then you make them vertical with their head up right when you get to the edge and then you get some edge attendance and yourself yeah kind of straddling it and then and then getting them safely over over the edge but it is one of the more complicated parts of a of a raise so how long did that take from the time that she's uh put in the litter and you start hoisting with
[00:59:40] the low angle approach to the time you get her up and over the edge and and on the ground yeah this one this one took a little bit longer i mean not crazy long or anything like that but probably the whole thing was like a few hours the whole thing was a couple hours but i think like all the preparation is done before that so the moment that she's in the litter to the moment she's on top of the cliff that was probably 10 minutes yeah okay everything's happening simultaneously so it's like as i'm running down to help dawson with patient packaging
[01:00:07] the rope rigging has already been done jj is already you know rigged and ready to go so as dawson and i got the patient package we give them the okay jj is already on it he was already down there basically by the time we were done so all he had to do is just clip in dawson and i assisted him with that that lower angle portion through the talus up to the base of the cliff and then it's and it's from there jj is just walking up the cliff dawson and i scoot around to the top and then i end up getting in with the hall so it's like all the stuff is just happening pretty quick once
[01:00:35] the wheels are in motion but the whole thing it was probably a couple hours over yeah rusher did you rappel down or did you actually hike down no i was actually lowered down on the system okay in this case we had uh you know we we did a two rope system and so we got that set up with the litter already the litter is already assembled and um and i'm attached to the to the litter and and one of the
[01:01:01] the ropes the rope system um so i just got lowered down oh awesome now and then from there on you and you and dawson and how many other rangers were involved in this kind of uh incident you have two down below you and dawson down below and then how many up top um there's several yeah yeah there's you know ranger jackson came down from renseldeer county briegel briegel fox lieutenant mitchell
[01:01:27] was there fox from up north yeah right yep ranger fox uh jackson um gulland and peterson so there's like six or seven yeah but a lot of people don't realize how how difficult like the ropes rescues are especially on these 90 degree angles of where you have to once again strategically talk about how you're going to get them up above that ledge you know without further injury i wouldn't say further
[01:01:53] injuries but like not to the hit and rub and bump and stuff yeah no a lot a lot goes into it it gets pretty pretty complicated which which kind of goes back to what i was mentioning before is like but we we train for this and we try to do it frequently enough so that it almost comes like instinctively when you get to the scene even though there but there's a lot of safety precautions and um a lot a lot goes into it but it makes it easier when you've done it when you've done it before in training
[01:02:22] why why no helicopter this time that particular one you know we were talking earlier like risk like flying a big machine that weighs that much with a rotor on top it's like a helicopter is extremely dangerous and risky thing to use so it's like when you can do the rope stuff and again we're highly trained in the rope stuff so it's like when we can do that and it is the quicker easier option we usually elect to do that other you know instead of using the helicopter yeah when necessary it's just
[01:02:51] so much less risk and then based on the patient assessment and then the location then we're able to drive our trucks right to the top of the cliff and then access to a lot of resources fairly quickly to set it up safely it just seemed like the better the better option for that particular one and as i recall this person was there alone she was by herself yeah at the moment that she did fall
[01:03:17] off or whatever um she was actually the only one at that particular spot which is kind of amazing when you think how busy that area is yeah and actually the only reason why somebody called it in uh someone at the top i think someone that didn't know her just heard someone yelling for help wow and then so a good samaritan overheard someone calling for help and then called it in that way yeah and so talking what we you know what we're talking about earlier with you know gathering that information
[01:03:43] so when that call came in somebody hears somebody else yelling for help at the bottom of this cliff in this thick green vegetation the call actually came through to us as somebody was lost at the casco mountain house down below the cliff bushwhacking something so it's like ranger dawson gets that call thinking he's going to walk to the bottom of that cliff and just grab somebody and walk them back to the top and you get there and all of a sudden somebody's piled up in a bunch of rocks at the bottom it's like no this is not a lost individual this is something way more serious and and eventually
[01:04:13] from your notes you had the haynes falls volunteer fire department and tannersville rescue members there as well yeah correct so again we do a lot of these incidents we we get a lot of help from the volunteers as well so once we got them to the top of the cliff the volunteer fire departments through you know helped transport down to the ambulance the paramedics are taking a look at her at that point so so how's this story uh turn out do you know uh what her injuries were and whether or not she
[01:04:42] recovers from them uh i don't know the exact specifics but she didn't she did recover yeah yeah i just heard that she she recovered and and was working within a month of the incident a lot of times we don't we almost never get follow-up a lot of things um you ever look at you ever look at their instagram pages to see if they're like a habitual selfie poster you know
[01:05:10] out and out in the wild and to see if that's what their game was that day no no no i would i'd want to know what why it is they fell were they out there yeah on the edge going into like searches and stuff like you know if we got a missing person that we don't pick up that first operational period or whatever um we do dive into social media a little bit and try to gain clues that way but usually it's for a
[01:05:36] specific reason not just to to snoop not curiosity all right so there's no these these rangers don't admit to stalking okay so we're we're going to move on to august 10th 2024 caterskill cove falls leap why don't you guys tell us about that incident so i was on that one so this is an incident for august i chose this one you know just to kind of highlight all the different stuff that we do
[01:06:02] so this particular one uh fawns leap has been a very busy area for us lately and i'm sure the region four guys can attest to that because it is their region but i got the call to come up and assist them in this incident um fawns leap we've had just a bunch of incidents there over the last few years and this particular one was kind of like a combination swift water slash rope rescue so very similar system
[01:06:27] to what jj just talked about um this individual was right after a large rainstorm so the clove was ripping uh fawns leap was just a raging waterfall flash flood right yeah yep so this guy i don't remember where he's from but he came up got dropped off you know he did walk past all of the the signs that said do not enter area close no cliff jumping and decided to jump off the cliff into the this
[01:06:52] you know what used to be the pretty popular swimming hole and he was lucky enough to get or unlucky enough whatever to get washed downstream and he was able to get out and for whatever reason he decided to go back up and jump in again so he jumps in the second time but this time he didn't jump far enough and then the hydraulic from the waterfall causing like a kind of like a large whirlpool just sucked him right to the back of the waterfall and basically he like was just holding
[01:07:22] edge i was able to kind of like scramble up this little sub ledge behind the waterfall so at that point rangers dull and fox and peterson were in route so they got there first before i did i was coming i was parking slide mountain trailhead helping somebody what why were they in route how did they know to go look for this guy so he was with some friends i believe they called 9-1-1 okay gotcha goes to the green county green county gets our dispatch dispatches the rangers because
[01:07:49] it's a water you know catarscope club wild forest area it goes to the rangers so they end up getting dispatched to it so they're the local rangers for that area and they got sent to it so they got there and they began to start rigging the system peterson ended up being the one that got sent down to the cliff he threw a harness on the kid i ended up getting there i helped ranger fox kind of set up
[01:08:14] the hall to start pulling them back up and then ranger golem was kind of like that edge edgi i um helping with the transition as peterson came up over the cliff but yeah we ultimately ended up pulling him up over that cliff and using some rope techniques using a three to one raise and then we had to use some swift order techniques to kind of walk them back across the the twirling of a river and get them back to the other side that was there was a video of that correct there was yeah yep okay
[01:08:42] i gotta i'll put that in the i remember seeing that and i was just like holy that place like like you said was raging was a flash flood that just happened and once again people are unaware of how small and narrow that place is just a little bit of a rainstorm can cause some significant kind of craziness down there yeah and then it just highlights kind of all the different things that we do so it's like you know the first portion to even get to the person it's like you're coming up with swift
[01:09:09] water techniques to get across this and then doing you know rigging with rope stuff going down the cliff and then bringing all that stuff back up and then going back across that river so you you say this with um just a i pick up a sense of just like you're very familiar with doing this it comes across very casual the way you talk about all this but when peterson goes down to get this guy he's putting
[01:09:36] his life on the line isn't he yeah i mean there's always potential you know yeah we're very confident in how we rig our systems but you never know i mean he is dangling 30 feet over a rock ledge on a road yeah like an anchor could break loose something could happen and you could watch peterson go down the river yeah although a lot of our rope systems we we do have like like like a uh yeah it's
[01:10:01] like a 10 to 1 safety factor always yeah whatever whatever the likely load is we build our anchors to be 10 times what we expect the highest load of that system to experience so instead of like one tree you'll have three trees yeah like you know we thought it's it comes down to like physics i guess and like you know when when peterson is dangling down on that uh on that line it's like we call it
[01:10:28] like one kilonewton of force on that and but we know he's going to bring up two people so you know you can estimate and overestimate and say maybe two kilonewtons bringing up and so we're building our anchors to at least 20 or 30 kilonewtons and and also that they're going to be backed up and also redundant so more more than so there's redundancy built into the system so if something fails something
[01:10:52] else is going to back it up that's also equally as strong so are you saying you don't think about the risk involved there's so much redundant yeah no that's not what i'm saying yeah yeah wow you definitely think about it and we are putting our lives at risk no you are absolutely right but it's a calculated risk um during a stressful time when someone else will potentially die but at the same
[01:11:18] time we need to go home to our families every night and we need to prioritize our lives to make sure that we're safe and we do and we we do train for that but at the same time yeah we do risky things it is a fact that's that's just crazy i mean because none of you guys chose to go down fall and sleep that day and do the do the second jump but this guy with his friends apparently you know did it one
[01:11:41] time and it was gnarly and that didn't dissuade him from doing it a second time right and then you also did the one thing that i find phenomenal is that once again you're thinking about your life at this time but then you also have three to four other rangers supporting you being like hey we can do this or we can't do this like and it won't be like if everybody doesn't agree to say like this is safe
[01:12:08] we can rescue this person or if one person doesn't have like you know like hey you know i don't feel right about this it'll take more time to think about it and you will essentially be like either option b or option c as well right yeah everybody has equal say yeah whenever we go on any of these um search and rescue missions and if you see something say something and yeah we always talk about the talk
[01:12:38] about the plan and i mean it kind of comes more naturally and we kind of do it automatically but there is a process involved with setting all this up and analyzing and making sure that it's safe but um yeah we do do a systems check and make sure that everyone is on board with the so is there ever been a time where you guys aren't on board you're just like this is too risky we can't help this person
[01:13:06] i mean it kind of depends i mean maybe we'll talk about that a little bit uh when we talk about um the one in the adirondacks okay um yeah i also would think with with the fire that would come up um when you're battling against a fire because i look i've had many friends who have been new york city firefighters and when they show up at a scene and there's a fire a blazing sometimes they they'll tell
[01:13:32] you how they try to get in but then they know when they it's just too dangerous to go in and it's a really just a heartfelt thing for them to to say they can't do it so yeah especially yeah you talked about if someone's in the in in that structure and they can't yeah yeah they know they know somebody's inside they can see them but they just there's no way to get there safely so and and when i think of
[01:13:54] this swift water rescue you know a lot of people don't realize how uh floods water is one of the most significant like destructions that can ever happen like you cannot predict what's going to happen you know it's just it it could more could happen at at a quicker time and then like it decrease with it with like five ten minutes but you never know with water it's it's it's the most
[01:14:21] destructive force of nature that you have snow yeah snow can happen you can you can trample over that but water can take you down in a matter of seconds and to for you guys to do this wow unbelievable i'm gonna have to watch that that video again because i remember seeing that and i'm just like jesus this is insane yeah let's throw the link to that in the the posting for this episode absolutely yeah and i think the previous summer too we had a real significant swift water one in that same area
[01:14:51] right yeah there was like more than one person right yeah it was there was a whole group of people at fawns leave there was another group downstream that i think the ulster county sheriff's swift water team dealt with i'm going on right below catariskill at the at one of the lower pools so that that was a real busy day in that same area too for a similar type of flash flood emphasis on busy day i remember that there was like multiple rescues and in one day and it seemed like these these teams are getting
[01:15:17] called out like you know almost hourly uh over a couple week period because there was a couple significant rain events that just seemed to pull everybody out of the the weeds and into these places to you know push the limits so once again phenomenal rescue down at fawns leap one of the most popular spots in in the catskills you know we talk about blue hole fawns leap but fawns leap the catariskill clove
[01:15:45] is definitely a spot that's hazardous and you know steep embankments and stuff like that so swift water once again dealing with with water and flooding is just one of those things that i can't i i just can't think of because it's just beyond my capacity of like the the risk it's just be it's just crazy and you
[01:16:12] guys once again save these people you talk about that other rescue like that i think of is just amazing now let's let's move on to we're talking about once again i gotta calculate this so july august september uh we're talking echo lake rescue in october uh yep yeah that was uh october
[01:16:34] around echo lake october 12th so an 80 year old gentleman i believe from france was um hiking with his with his family towards echo lake and um something happened on the trail where he fell i think he fell from just walking height i don't think he was climbing on on anything in particular but um maybe
[01:16:59] due to whatever whatever circumstances were he fell and then fractured his pelvis uh in the vicinity of echo lake which you know it's several miles to to get out of there um on a pretty fairly rugged trail we we could potentially drive a utv to to that point um rangers martin and francesquina were
[01:17:25] responded there first um to to get there and a couple maybe like a month earlier we had another rescue there where we someone injured their back and we ended up uh working with the fire department and and local ems to to drive them out so we we know that we could drive them out through the overlook trail okay so you're coming from to to drive them out you would come from the overlook uh summit and
[01:17:49] then down yeah yep yeah so i wasn't on this incident but it's my just specific coverage area i think i was away that day but you can get a truck from the meets meadow at least the ranger truck up to the ruins and then from there you use the six wheelers yeah so we had done that on a on another rescue like a month earlier and so we were kind of thinking to do that again because it's you know if you could
[01:18:14] drive somebody out why not well why why put anybody at risk with the helicopter um but it is extremely rocky it's not a smooth drive and because of the subject's age and and because of the we confirmed that it was a pelvic fracture we we were able to get a paramedic out there to assess the patient too even though we all are wilderness first responders uh but we like to work with um the local ems
[01:18:42] organizations and and the paramedic is a higher qualified uh medical professional to assess that too and so we had them uh confirm that it was a fractured pelvis and we don't want to risk severing something an artery possibly or causing more issues just from rattling around it in the back of a utv when you're strapped to to a litter it wasn't going to be it was going to be very painful
[01:19:10] and potentially dangerous ride out so so we opted to do do a hoist uh for this one as well and um it wasn't exactly at the the lean to it was up on the trail a little bit and and so um rangers uh martin and francesquina and a couple other uh fire department members were able to cut a pick site
[01:19:37] meaning that cut you know open up the vegetation the canopy to allow us to insert my and i ended up getting inserted as as the rescuer with the uh equipment uh with with the litter with the aviation litter to hoist them where were you uh where were you picked were you picked up at down the new pulse or were you picked up at another area yeah so um i was actually picked up uh at the trooper barracks
[01:20:03] on the 209 corridor because they have um but they have a landing zone right there and so you know i was working a little further south and then heard everything that was happening and then um i was relatively close to to that area so it all depends on where we are and what the circumstances are and so uh ranger griggs uh we call him griggs the ranger coward yeah his name is griggs b coward the
[01:20:32] third and so he goes by griggs so um who's who's a really awesome ranger and um but he was the hoist operator so he went to newberg painter the aviation painter drove there and then i was closer to the uh kingston area so i was on the 209 corridor and i got picked up at the trooper barracks there because they have the landing zone and then which is pretty close to you know that woodstock area and
[01:20:59] overlook and uh flew in flew in from there so i got inserted into the hole that uh martin and francisquina cut uh with the equipment and then we we packaged up the the subject and then um hoisted him up and then and then he got uh brought over to i believe a woodstock fire department um has an lz there
[01:21:22] where the ambulance um drove him to the hospital unbelievable so what what size of uh an opening do you guys have to cut up to let the hoist operation function um yeah it kind of kind of depends on on all the circumstances like is it going to be a litter or is it going to be just a harness you know if we're just opening a hole just for someone in a harness that takes up less space
[01:21:52] the bigger the better that's going to be safest really does what about the weather does that play a role if there's if it's windier do you need a bigger opening um well if not necessarily if it's too windy we're not going to do the mission um so there's uh there's always going to be some winds especially from the uh the rotor wash um so we have
[01:22:17] to look for a lot yeah a lot of hazards but i i think they may have made like a 30 20 foot 25 foot hole for this one you kind of pick like something that's somewhat naturally more open than the rest of the area so it's like you think of echo lake that that big open hardwood area it's like they kind of picked spot that had like an open opening in the canopy to begin with and you know we try to be minimal it's like you don't really want to cut as many trees down but you're going to do what you
[01:22:41] need to do to get the job done you didn't ask the beavers to cut you some places jesus yeah those guys are destructive down there yeah but it was uh but everything was successful and we were able to get them out safely and um he was able to get you know the help that he needed and his family was able to to hike out and that was one where they ended up not picking me back up so i had to hike
[01:23:05] out from from echo lake but you always plan on that so you always have to if you get inserted anywhere you you bring a pack that'll get you through the the night basically now with that was was he hoisted or he was he because of his pelvis he was in a litter correct yeah yeah so he was still hoisted but we attached the the hoist cable to a litter so we put them in a litter first
[01:23:32] and then um attach the hoist cable to to the litter and he got hoisted up in in the litter wow and and i think there may have been uh there may have been a video on that too yeah on one of the probably one of the yeah there's week we can review how much how much does uh that litter ride cost we get this question all the time yeah so you should have a good answer for us what i mean how much is
[01:24:01] that that ride about one-way ride yeah so i mean in new york like jj and i are paid to do this job you know your taxpayers are paying for us to go out and perform these rescues and all that compared to other places out west um places in the northeast i think new hampshire you know if you get rid of them at washington you're you're paying for it but here in new york all the rescues are free yeah yeah yeah yeah don't say that don't say that don't want that i'm we stash what i'm hearing
[01:24:27] is we need to find some spots that we want to create viewpoints in the catskills yeah right like oh whoa i'm injured stage a litter rescue oh oh my pelvis my hawk at mountain needs uh a little yeah it needs to be verified all right i can get some old x-rays to verify a broken pelvis with your professional opinion you know we talk about uh you know like new hampshire and stuff like that do you
[01:24:53] think there needs to be a hike safeguard that we need in new new york where we can kind of like pay 25 a year to help fund you guys doing these kind of amazing rescues that's a good question i don't know if i have a good answer for jeff doesn't want you to answer that i don't know but i do know that you know the aviation and the pilots that that's built into the into the budget they they go on a lot of different missions for for the state of new york
[01:25:23] uh not not just search and rescue they're busy a lot and so they have pilots there around the clock basically they're they're there for every day essentially and it's all it's all included in the budget so they like to fly you know they need to practice their skills too so um it's all kind of built into the built into the budget yeah i think a lot of those other agencies are using you know
[01:25:48] contract helicopters like and they're looking to pay those contractors i think ultimately so we don't we don't run into that issue here i guess yeah i would say you know i was thinking the same thing of course you know we're not as frequent as new hampshire is and stuff like that with the the blackhawk what kind of helicopter did do they use with new york state police so we use a huey and then bell for
[01:26:12] or a 4 30. okay it's not like those crazy blackhawks that they use up in freaking new hampshire and stuff we do have uh i don't know the exact model it's like a airbus something 45 i don't know don't quote me on that but we are getting a bunch of new helicopters for the state here pretty shortly yeah this next year yeah this year next year they're investing in some new helicopters but yeah with the rise
[01:26:37] and of course of of hikers that we've had in the past you know five years i you i was going to say four years but five years yeah this is it's definitely needed especially unfortunately say up up in the adirondacks that you know where these incidents happened and that we need to have aviation come by and and help us rescue these people that unfortunately need it we don't really like to ever
[01:27:04] you know like compared to those other areas it's like you don't want people to be discouraged from calling for help because they're worried about the cost and then ultimately when they do need help regardless of whether they're worrying about paying for it or not you know it makes it easier when they're not you know waiting to make that call a lot of times yeah i'm i'm a proponent of not necessarily making people buy the equivalent of a hike safeguard but i think it would be a great idea
[01:27:33] to have people buy some type of pass to you know hike in certain areas of the state just to you know generate money for trail maintenance and other resources um because frankly the state legislature seems to be too stingy when it comes to spending money on these areas although you know they're great and a lot has been
[01:28:00] done and if you want to do a deep dive on one of stash and i we have a little pet peeve about the kiosk at the giant ledge trail area but we won't go there instead let's head over to the witch's hole uh incident on november 16 2024 uh i know where witch's hole is but i know stash doesn't know
[01:28:25] where it is so why don't we start off by just telling our listeners where witch's hole is yeah sure and and on my map i think it says it's like uh restricted area or something like that is that true well maybe uh adjacent to it um it kind of depends which is all is a um state forest owned by the the dec but it's kind of sandwiched in between property owned by minnewaska so you have minnewaska
[01:28:55] on one side and minnewaska and sam's point kind of on on the other um and which is holes right in the middle and kind of behind uh eastern correctional prison so it's but it's a really interesting area uh part of the part of the gunks and so there's a couple ravines back there really rugged terrain uh
[01:29:18] big cliffs uh thick dense vegetation steep slopes and thick mountain laurel you got uh pitch pines and buckleberries and blueberries and and then a waterfall that's that's back there but there's no real easy way to get there so it doesn't really see a lot of traffic which which might be good because like you you can really get yourself messed up back there we're kind of talking about like uh pre-planning
[01:29:47] areas so that that's part of my district and um i i've kind of unfortunately kind of been waiting for something to happen back there i knew something was going to happen at some point it'll probably happen again but yeah there was a um a gentleman that um went bushwhacking i think he started in on the minnewaska side and parked at the visitor center and uh rode a bike um kind of several miles six or
[01:30:12] seven miles back into minnewaska to the top of the which is hole area um and then uh bushwhacked and maybe he heard about the the waterfall but there's no really good way to get there the going in from from the top you gotta descend several hundred feet and in a short amount of time through like really thick brush and uh yeah and some something happened where um he was supposed to just be gone for a day he
[01:30:42] went by himself and then uh i guess his wife called in the afternoon saying you know my my husband's overdue i knew and said that he was going to minnewaska um and then wanted to check out the witch's hole waterfall and then didn't come back by like three o'clock or something like that and um yeah then you know we started uh looking for him um we were able to actually get coordinates his one
[01:31:10] of his daughters from out of state was able to um somehow paint his phone i don't know if it was through like find my phone or some technological way was able to get coordinates of where his phone or where his watch was and uh when i looked at it on the map i was like i know where that is that's that's the waterfall and so if it's not if it hasn't moved in a long time either he dropped it or maybe
[01:31:33] he's injured something bad might happen and then um so we ended up uh working with parks staff a couple went in from the top and then i went in from from the bottom of the of the ravine and then unfortunately something happened where yeah he got to the waterfall and somehow slipped and fell
[01:31:54] and uh it turned out to be a recovery and um so we had to um recover his body from the bottom of the waterfall and uh ranger horn was was involved with that and uh several of park staff and um it went really really smooth um we had to set up a rope system there isn't really a trail to get there and
[01:32:19] we had to like flag flag her out to to get in there and then um package them up and then um get them out on a litter and set up a steep angle rope system to to get them up on on a steep part and then um was able to drive them out on on parks uh utv to the to the road so it was another like unfortunate
[01:32:45] tragedy um but yeah any any thoughts of like what happened like do you think he got too close to the edge and just slipped and just had those unfortunate incident yeah i yeah based on everything that i saw um it just seemed like an accident it's really it's really rugged and not real like open and the
[01:33:10] the thing about this one too it was like sandwiched to really get the dates and everything it's kind of sandwiched in between all these fires that we were working on which is we brought it up um because it kind of talks about some of the the ruggedness of our area but but also it was like we were immersed in fire yeah like the diversity of like what we do it's like i was on the white house fire for you know a bunch of days leading up to this incident and i'm driving home at night leaving
[01:33:39] the white house fire in the peaking moose corridor there going home and it's like then i get the call you know jj's got this going on you need to go you know assist him it's like oh wow switch from weeks of fighting fire to going back to doing technical stuff in a technical area yeah we were like almost a month almost a month into like fighting fires every single day for hours every day and like we'll talk about this a little later too but like yeah we were in full fire mode
[01:34:08] and then not really able to do the other parts of our job really fortunately we didn't have a whole lot of like search and rescue missions like that i heard about happening when we were fully immersed in all these fires except for this one this it did happen you know we were coming home from one of those fires and yeah a couple of the parks guys that that were that responded to this were at the
[01:34:35] probably i think at the jennings creek fire too and then they they came to help us out with that so just kind of like switching gears yeah now to like gotta be prepared for it all yeah yeah yeah it's unfortunate and yeah well that the witch's hole area is rather forbidding you know with all the all the cliffs in there all the the low ground cover um you really don't know what you're stepping on
[01:35:04] at times when you're going through there yeah it's pretty rugged terrain and i would never ever ever recommend to anyone going alone back there yeah yeah and i would also say if you're going in there don't don't go in from the top going from the bottom so uh i mean any water waterfall offers that
[01:35:26] let sense of like risk you know just a slip and you know 60 feet is 60 feet and you fall and you hit your head and i'm sorry to say you're done or you hurt your back you're paralyzed and so do what did i hear the story correctly that the call that he was missing came in the next day
[01:35:49] uh no the call came in that afternoon the wife okay um the wife called when he was overdue basically so yeah he was supposed to leave around 9 a.m and then get back in the afternoon i think i forget the exact timing but it was probably like three o'clock or so in the afternoon when the wife didn't hear from them and then uh just called just to and was this a local fellow was he from like ellenville or this
[01:36:17] oh he was somewhere somewhere from the county okay yeah and this is once again a high angle rescue right uh this one it wasn't high angle it was more like a low to like moderate uh moderate and steep i would say it wasn't vertical so if we chose to bring them up the waterfall um then it would have been
[01:36:38] but based on like knowledge of the terrain and some other herd paths and and other ways that you know we know about um we were able to do a carry out we actually used minnewaska's litter and they have a wheel as well so we used a wheel with the litter basket and and then we're able to carry them out to the
[01:37:04] steep part and then set up um one of the parks uh rope technicians up uh uh like a steep angle rope assist essentially up up the steep part and then we're able to get them up that part the technical part up to uh a little bit of a carry out and then to a utv route and then drive them out the rest of the way and it kind of highlights you know your episode with ranger martin and lieutenant
[01:37:31] slate and there was a clip in there where he had mentioned it's like we always have a mission kind of when we out go out and do our our hikes for patrol and you know jj mentioned it's like pre-planning so it's like going into that area you you know something's going to happen eventually it's like knowing those herd paths knowing the this particular part of the ridge you're gonna you gotta take carry somebody up if you know you got to get somebody out of there and you know jj does an excellent job in that area of having all that stuff like it was so smooth and like there was no question about where we were going and how long it was going to take and what we were doing it was
[01:38:00] you know it's like having that pre-planning is it goes a long way and also maintaining the relationship with the other agencies and and knowing the because this incident actually started on on parkland you know on on minnewaska state park and so i know and train and work with the park staff a lot and so we all kind of work together and know each other so when something like this happens
[01:38:22] everything goes smooth yeah the whole communication thing is is a viable aspect of what you're doing because you know you have a bunch of people communicating with with you with with the once again the park staff and stuff it can make the the incident as smooth as heck even though you know it might be one of the most difficult things you do but you know like you said everything clicks get
[01:38:50] together with communication and then it could be a smooth yeah and that and that training and experience and then and the relationships yeah yeah and so the sense with this fellow is he he died on impact he fell off the top of the fall yeah presumably had trauma dies on impact yeah unfortunately yeah yeah i mean yeah i don't any idea had he been there before i don't know
[01:39:20] yeah i don't i don't really know the whole backstory of that um he heard about the waterfall somehow yeah yeah well i've been there before and i really don't have any interest going back i mean i'm just throwing that out there you know yeah there are almost every time i go back there at least in the warmer months i always encounter a rattlesnake yeah yeah here is that rattle when you're like neck deep and laurel and you can't even see your feet yeah it's a type of place where going one
[01:39:49] mile is puts you deep into type two fun you know it's like why am i doing this it's really not worthwhile there's a perfectly good carriage trail a half a mile away yeah i don't need this so that's not type two though you do that type two you want to go back but not not that i don't know yeah exactly once once was enough yeah well unfortunate incident of course now another unfortunate
[01:40:16] infant incident that you guys were involved in was uh of course the big uh alan mountain rescue with uh what was his name liam defour uh leo yeah leo yeah that uh was a crazy incident that involved going up to uh a 4 600 foot peak up in the adirondacks and unfortunately battling snow and ice and and
[01:40:41] different things now you guys want to chat about that real quick i mean most of the people we talked about that recently on on the show and that it's been an ongoing investigation and yeah it's just craziness yeah so we'll talk about you know jj and i's particular and like specific experiences on that incident so every you know it's been highly publicized everybody knows the the background of it when he was there why he was there what he was doing when he was there so we'll kind of talk about
[01:41:11] basically what jj and i did while we were there to be a part of that incident so it's like yeah we're rangers down here in the caskills but we're also a statewide resource so whether it's a swift water incident down down in long island or you know getting called up to a gnarly winter rescue search type thing in the adirondacks where you got to be prepared for any part of the state so we got the call you know to go up to the adirondacks to the high peak wilderness to allen mountain to help look
[01:41:38] for this individual uh we got up there a few days you know into this incident it started on the first i think we were up there on the evening of the fourth um we assisted for the first few days while we're up there just doing linear type searches helping clear out remote trails to maybe get a little this the search was like the major hindrance um the weather was atrocious we were getting absolutely dumped on with snow um you know 30 40 50 up to 60 mile an hour gusts of wind
[01:42:08] whiteout conditions almost non-stop and temperatures that were you know highs in the teens the low teens getting into single digits and then negative teens at night so the conditions were were very difficult so we we assisted out kind of in more of a front country slash back country kind of day trip type thing going in and searching and then coming out and then we'll kind of focus on the experience where
[01:42:31] jj and i both got hoisted in to uh as they had a window for aviation because the aviation part was very limited uh we ended up getting hoisted in and and camping out at a back country camp at the base of the mountain for a few nights so we'll talk about that experience but i mean it was you know blistering cold winds dump and snow i mean four plus feet probably from the the time that we we got into the time we got
[01:42:57] out in total at the top so yeah and then the conditions the conditions were just getting worse um every single day the the structure of the uh of the search was highly organized and being run by highly qualified uh rangers in the in the command post and and we were coming in just to like help out however we could and yeah like um horn was saying though yeah the first day we just did like a
[01:43:23] uh a a day trip essentially but they're plagued by weather so aviation wasn't able to fly a lot over there ideally the the search tactics would have been you know you you get inside a helicopter couple searchers and then and then you get inserted high up on the mountain so that you could search throughout the day and then get hoisted out at the end so you can maximize your your search
[01:43:52] effort but um they were they were really plagued by bad weather and so you know even the the day that the first day that i got inserted um we wanted to get inserted on the summit but only got i only got inserted up to like 2700 feet on the one of the drainages and so that takes a lot of effort to to hike up to to the summit in those conditions and in feet of snow you know yeah this is a trail's peak i think
[01:44:21] it's you know just about 20 miles around trip yeah it's a it's a difficult area 8.6 miles from uh what's it called uh the parking area over to the west all the way up to the top absolutely insane overworks trailhead yeah yeah yeah so they were trying to insert us as high as they could but uh weren't able to get inserted that high and then and then you know as as i was up there on that day trip with another uh ranger you know there there's a storm potentially that was going to be coming in
[01:44:51] in the late afternoon and and high winds uh with like you know negative 20 or negative 15 or whatever with the wind chill and everything and and then once you like step off the the trail you know you're in like several feet of snow too and and there's continuously more snow that's falling down and and uh even like between the snow and the and the wind even when you when we were walking out you don't
[01:45:16] even see your tracks anymore from like earlier earlier that day and um yeah with like the spruce traps kind of like walking on the deep in snow like inside of a tree you felt like because you're like three or four feet off the ground yeah there was a particular moment i'm thinking of where it was like the first day after we got flown into that camp so we wake up for our first full day of of searching once we got flown in and we'd hike from the bottom of the mountain almost you know just a couple hundred
[01:45:45] feet below the summit breaking trail up and we're at the top of that slide and we're trying to grid search down that drainage and i look over at jj and he's literally just up to his neck in snow yeah we were trying to go off the trail and then trying to do um you know an area search with like what did there was like nine of us that that went up there and kind of spreading out off off the trail
[01:46:08] to to see if he went off trail at all and yeah it was in literally chest deep of of snow and that was just you guys do grid search from the top kind of like scaled down and stuff what was your search tactics well i mean you know they were they were doing a lot of what we call linear searches we're trying to cover a large area with a few amount of resources and and like areas that that we we believe
[01:46:34] he may have been but high probability yeah we but on that particular one yeah we wanted to look a little bit off of the the main trail um but it was like very very very difficult and and every day there was more snow that was falling down since he went missing yeah so the it was extremely
[01:46:58] challenging with with the snow with the with the terrain the spruce traps and um and the weather and the the temperature and you know like we're we're kind of swimming in the snow ourselves and then wet you're going to be wet and then we're putting ourselves at risk for sure um risk of hypothermia that that was why they they built the uh the backcountry camp and uh you know we had a couple
[01:47:22] wall tents there with wood burning stoves and a lot of firewood there you know a ranger had the assignment of like maintaining that base camp to make sure that's warm and then we had a warming tent and then when we came back from the the day of searching we would dry off all of our equipment and wow make sure everyone was was safe and yeah yeah where was the camp located like uh adjacent to allen
[01:47:47] mountain north south east west elevation stuff like that uh it was kind of like off the the main herd path going up to the mountain it was kind of like an old forest road type thing that was like broken off of the herd path as it starts to like work its way up the drainage toward allen mountain so we're not like yeah basically kind of right off the the toe of the slope of the mountain and what is how did this how did how do you set this this up was it like like tarps and stuff like that plastic you know ply
[01:48:16] they actually i think they hoisted in uh when when the weather was favorable yeah there was an opening there and a flat area that that was why they selected that as the spot and then they they hoisted in wall tents that we constructed out there wow that kind of pre pre-made wall tents that that can accept the uh a stove and so we had you know put together a a wood two wood burning stoves with with uh two
[01:48:42] wall tents and and firewood why don't they explain like like like they bring these details to like the dc like stuff like that i've never heard of that that's that's phenomenal to have you guys kind of like have that safety while you're about freaking they provided a lot of good safety uh you know we try to look at you do a risk analysis when we do all this and like we mentioned before we want to
[01:49:11] make sure that that we're safe then we're going home every night to our families uh we we accepted this backcountry excitement we knew we're going to be out for multiple days out there but the incident and the and the rangers managing it mitigated as much risk as possible yeah for us and it was it was good it was very extreme and difficult yeah how many nights were you guys up there we did it was four
[01:49:37] days right it was four days three nights we got we got you know friday afternoon so basically they're pre-planning this thursday there were some rangers in some other camps so they're looking for a new wave coming in so they pre-planned it thursday you know we were told friday morning like yeah you guys are the one so it's like you scramble get all the gear you need for three nights in an extreme winter backcountry camping situation basically so we're packing all of our food layers spare layers extra
[01:50:03] socks your boots you know everything you'd need to do a winter search and rescue mission but times three so you you prep all that fly you know drive up to the the pick site that we use that at the tahavis mine flow flew us up to the camp wasted us in so we ended up staying friday night saturday night sunday night and then hiking out monday wow and and what why was it that you you did three
[01:50:28] nights and not a fourth night was that just like the limited tour you were assigned or did the conditions just kind of the pre-planned assignment so the uh the the rangers that were managing the incident that was the assignment that they that they gave us and and so while you're up there during the course of those four days three nights was it a uh rescue operation the entire time or had it transitioned
[01:50:54] to a recovery well i mean we we were just looking for any clues at all so you know we we never know for for sure yeah you always try to maintain a a positive positive attitude but um you know we we were up there looking around the the last known point essentially at that point of the of the search they had found uh really the only the the last like last known point that they were able to find was a
[01:51:22] water bottle that they were able to confirm that was his definitely his up that herd path towards allen mountain and and so that's usually where we kind of base our searches off of um the last known point so we're we're looking in around that area between where we were um the base camp and then the summit of alan mountain and i recall reading reports that he had summited allen mountain is that
[01:51:49] correct yeah that's what we heard yeah yeah these rangers that responded that first night i mean they had tracks that they believed were his going up to the summit you know two three four in the morning but it's not like there's other hikers that had seen him up on allen that day no so there's like no eyewitness we don't know all the fine details because uh you know we were we weren't in the working in the in the command post and we were we we came later on during the search but yeah to our
[01:52:18] knowledge how how comfortable or uncomfortable were you when you're yeah right wall tent at night it wasn't bad it really wasn't as bad as you probably expected it to be did you go through a lot of firewood yeah a lot of firewood i mean a lot of mountain houses yeah a lot a lot of work and effort went into yeah how many rangers were involved in that and that like tent was it just you two at the
[01:52:44] time or was it multiple there was not uh on that backcountry mission there was uh nine of us yeah so six of us were in one tent and then three got the the smaller tent that was also so basically your your thermal regulation with your body temperatures heated the place without the yeah wow yeah there was some condensation um but it was it was it was all right yeah i mean it's not not for everybody it
[01:53:12] wasn't it wasn't like walking and we're working hard and you're burning a lot of calories just trying to stay warm and you know and carrying a lot of equipment and um it's not for the faint of heart but um but it was it was good experience for us overall i mean very again it's a very tragic tragic story yeah had you ever done that type of operation before stayed in in those tents types of tents before was this the first time you know it's like getting canvas for these missions it's like a lot of the
[01:53:41] the older rangers are like you know this is an opportunity that's like maybe a once or twice in a career type thing to get a large-scale incident in such a remote area and the resources that were available and everything they did to set this up i mean this is definitely not something that happens very often right most of the time like you're going you're going home then i mean sometimes we'll do like an overnight where something gets you're working through the night into the next day and then you're
[01:54:07] working 12 to 15 hours that day and then but then you go home or sleep somewhere in a bed and then you come back early the next day and do that for like two weeks straight yeah it's kind of like doing a fire experience but staying in the backcountry camp like that yeah it hasn't happened on the job doesn't have not in the catskills right yeah so did did others uh take your place when you guys
[01:54:34] were done with your tour up there no there was a group that went before us and then uh based on the at where they were with the with the search effort um this was the last backcountry assignment for the for the incident gotcha and then so what happened to the tents did you guys take them down did they get flown out or just left there for springtime yeah so we ended up you know packing out as much
[01:55:00] gears that that we could you know the valuable stuff like some chainsaw we had like a sked in there and then all of our packs so we we packed out the valuable stuff like chainsaws and you know a lot the food that animals might have gotten into or trash but a lot of the infrastructure stayed in and they'll look at that with a helicopter when it makes sense to yeah we're not sure but once we left the incident um i don't know when they if it's still up i i'm guessing that they took it out by now but
[01:55:25] we weren't involved with that yeah so our primary job was to get out safely but yeah yeah so we we took out as much as we could knowing that this is going to be coming in the the big question is who makes the final call on like that this is beyond what you your capability is that you know the risk of of having you guys go out there in the search for this this guy yeah i mean ultimately it's up to the
[01:55:55] incident commander of the that's what i thought of the incident but you know nobody exists in a vacuum and the incident commander is not sitting in a room by himself or herself um it's it's it's a joint it's always a joint effort but um it's going to be the incident um commander and then the other staff members that are that are involved in the in the command post and supervision and usually if it's a
[01:56:23] unified command uh agency representative for each major agency that's there so it's not only one person but that's that's if it yeah i mean every single day there was more and more snow and and uh the the probability of detection was really low yeah and that's uh uh god i'm trying to think
[01:56:50] of what it was uh what it's called when search and rescue that that you uh you do that just like you know where you kind of yeah i wouldn't say give up no no no no yeah it's called limited continue yeah and you know incident command i gotta admit is is a tough task to do because you are kind of like the the person that is in charge of everything and once again you rely on like your
[01:57:19] your thoughts and stuff like that up on the mountain of where you're like like hey you know the risk is not worth it let's call it off for this day maybe extend to another day and stuff like that so they have directions flowing at them all the time it's just absolutely insane yeah yeah complicated so you know amazing that you guys went up there and did that search because it's absolutely insane
[01:57:45] so uh so we're talking about let's go on to 2025 we're moving on 2025 now so buttermilk uh ravine ice rescue this ice climbing rescue so you want to chat about that yeah sure we'll chat about that one so that's another incident uh that jj and i were both on um so it started out uh again in region four so rangers dawson peterson were actually right at that trailhead they were kind of conducting their
[01:58:10] own training just across the road and they heard the call over over the county 911 so they had a super quick response to that one in right there at the trailhead literally so ranger peterson he took a you know a run up that trail and made first contact with that individual um all of us region three guys we were actually just over the hill right by phoenicia so we're super close and had a bunch of resources real close by a bunch of us being rope techs with uh ranger stratton ranger martin and
[01:58:40] you know they requested the rope techs because it started out to be kind of like a it was going to be a real technical rope rescue to get him out of that ravine and ultimately it ended up transitioning to a hoist rescue due to the to the terrain the the safety of the rescuers trying to get get him down you know his his safety the the conditions getting colder the ice so yeah and he was pretty deep in there um from from what it sounded like to me is uh yeah he's a very good ice climber and then
[01:59:09] it was like a seven pitch ice climb up the buttermilk ravine uh so it's seven pitches up and then he made some mistakes and you know everybody makes mistakes but um he was climbing solo um it didn't sound like he was uh roped in at all and then he made it all the way almost to the last the last part
[01:59:32] but then something happened that obviously had bad ice or something and uh he fell off the seventh pitch like 40 feet or so and ended up um breaking his ankle and his wrist um um and maybe well i don't know the full extent of his injuries but definitely his uh his wrist and his um and his leg but then you know um so he called himself well that that's the other part of
[02:00:00] the story too okay another kind of mistake you know he got ultimately he was very very lucky uh aside from falling um everything else like worked out really well for for this person um because he didn't have a phone on him he left his phone in the car i believe so 2025 or 19 like 60. maybe just forgot it or fell out of his pocket or something so he didn't have any means to call for help and so i mean a testament to him he
[02:00:29] like with a broken ankle and a broken wrist he started rappelling down the ravine and uh like down towards the bottom and then but he also he also got lucky because there was a group of ice climbers that were climbing up towards him and then found them and some of them i believe were from out of state and yeah yeah exactly they were like out of state fire department guys that were emt qualified yeah
[02:00:56] so they so you got lucky and then uh they ended up calling 9-1-1 and and getting the wheels rolling and then helped them and then like splinted him up and um stayed with him until until we got there um and then horn and i our role was to was more like the the rope side um at the base of the ravine to try
[02:01:19] to try to get him out and um the other rangers um were with him and then and then just based on the totality of the circumstances to to try to set up multiple rope systems to to get him where he was to the road he had up we opted to do the hoist yeah there's a pretty good video of that yeah dc is posted
[02:01:43] as well the gopro footage from the uh the ranger crew chiefs aviation helmet yeah so what what does it mean when you say he wasn't roped in when he fell well i i wasn't there i wasn't at that site when he fell but um i know that he was climbing solo so there was no one belaying him or so we didn't have a screw up top ahead of him yeah i i don't i don't know the exact circumstances i wasn't there to verify
[02:02:10] but i know he was there by himself and um so there's no one belaying him there are some circumstances where you can try to like self belay and do that so i don't know i don't know if he was doing that or not but um it didn't sound like it so yeah i i know he made some mistakes you know yeah it could have been a lot worse for him yeah i know a fellow who in the gunks all the time goes climbing solo with one of those self belaying devices i think it's totally insane myself
[02:02:39] but he's been lucky so far doing it when i was yeah when i was out west like and going to joshua tree i would see these climbers like free soloing just climbing without any protection just no rope nothing just climbing but yeah it's not not for me yeah i guess we i mean doing this for a thing you know and dealing with all these incidents it's like safety is always a thing in your mind now it's like
[02:03:07] every time i go do something it's like oh thinking like in work terms like it's got to be super safe backed up doubled everything yeah with ice climbing i i say i mean i've never done it you know i talked with my my friend about it on i think it's like episode 101 and just being solo i i mean i i don't even like to hike solo during the winter like it's just a little too risky and ice climbing solo in
[02:03:34] the winter like especially in taking on like yeah you're taking a huge risk but even if you're really good he's i think he was really good climber or is a really good climber and probably super confident and probably could have easily climbed these climbs who knows he's probably done it before yeah just something happened where they messed up and fell but he got your cell phone well how old was he did you
[02:03:59] know this the the age of this individual like 73 no he was like mid-30s how do you you want to post that instagram post of you slapping up these ice climbing stuff to hear your ice ask us and maybe he's done it so many times that he doesn't need doesn't feel like he needs to but i i don't know i don't really know all those details but yeah all i know is that like yeah it was really rugged terrain
[02:04:24] and it could have been a lot worse and he got he got real lucky yeah he's lucky he you know he could have been roped in and fell and been hanging upside down for a couple hours before anybody noticed that yeah he was hanging there so yeah i mean it could have been a day where you know there was no other climb i mean that's pretty remote it's it's now's the time to ice climb and a lot of people are out but i mean it could have very easily been a day where nobody other than him had picked that ravine to
[02:04:50] think that yeah it was a frog was a friday as i recall it was a friday yeah yeah so he was lucky others were around him and it wasn't like a weekend yeah which is more popular but i guess a friday's got to be you know of the weekdays a popular day to go out there if people want to do like a three-day weekend like take off on friday still and then that's just the risk is just crazy and then you know
[02:05:17] we talk about the buttermilk uh area and then you have another one over in the cadastro clove area that just recently happened was that um i think you're best as well is that the same it was across the street basically yeah the same parking area just a few weeks earlier another ice clamor had fallen um neither of us were on that one but yeah that guy had fallen and they ended up tearing him out i think kingston fire department also helped some rangers with that one but but you
[02:05:43] can see that ice wall from the road it's um popular yeah yeah yeah it's a very popular spot i mean it faces south so like it gets hit by the sun but um but it's a it's a nice cliff line yeah so the with this like ice climbing incident that you have did he was he fully prepared with with everything somewhat besides another hiking partner it uh you know honestly uh i don't think he was fully uh because i
[02:06:12] remember he came up in a puffy jacket but that wasn't his jacket i don't think he had an extra jacket um i was told that he didn't have a helmet either we had to give him a helmet for the hoist um so minimalistic very minimal wow yeah wow like it sounds like low tech minimalist um climbing solo
[02:06:35] probably screw that like and i'm not i'm not like no puns intended to screw that like no helmet and stuff like that like helmet is like a mandatory thing with ice climbing yeah i i would never climb without one but um wow people people make mistakes i guess and who was uh this was a hoist rescue
[02:06:59] uh who was was it was one of you guys in the helicopter and stuff yeah so that one was uh we ended up using newberg aviation again so we were talking about ranger coward earlier so his coverage area is putnam county so he's he's right there usually next to the the hangar in newberg so when we get a lot of these hoist rescues if he's on i mean he's he's got a real short response time so ranger carrot was the one that ended up doing the hoist for this mission as well and this one we didn't
[02:07:24] insert anybody um we would you know there's plenty of like personnel on the ground um to to manage the equipment so ranger coward flew in and then inserted the um did we use the uh the hot seat again so it inserted the equipment packaged him up and then the rangers on the ground prepped it and then and then ranger coward hoisted him up yep and that's the one i mentioned earlier so compared to that that
[02:07:53] wittenberg uh hoist that we talked about earlier where it was like very short maybe 30 feet this one was on the very high end of what we get what we do um looking at the the video and the pendant i mean that thing it was like 185 feet so it's like an extremely long hoist just of how tight that ravine is and how quick the the terrain rises on both sides of the helicopter and then having about that waterfall on the ridge right you know to the side of that so three sides of very high terrain
[02:08:19] so he had to they had to keep that ship up pretty high to be able to to safely hoist so that was a real long one and that it looked like from the the hoist from the video that you guys didn't actually trim any trees down and stuff like that that you found a spot remotely that you could lift them out independently i think they i think they trimmed some some but nothing didn't look like like that much though yeah it was pretty open i think they were able to find a naturally open spot but i think they did
[02:08:48] have to do a little bit but yeah crazy wow just baffles me the safety that that some people go through just uh like that ice climbing incident like like one person like no way i mean like like i said i don't even like to go in the winter solo like tad someone joins me and then he tramples ahead 200 feet and then loses me and then i'm just like i'm dying over here and he just leaves me i i get ahead
[02:09:16] of you because i hear the mountain lions coming so i need to rush ahead but i know you guys don't want to talk about mountain lions and the catskills tonight so we'll stay away from that we don't want to put you on the spot and you know you've already encountered them yeah yeah but they're not shaking their heads like i'm talking any nonsense so they see all those backyard trail cams that gets video sent into the dec headquarters with you know correct with like the false information of this like
[02:09:45] we don't know anything about it leave us alone false info they're high definition high resolution imagery of wild mountain lions but we should move on to wild fires and stay away from mountain lions so these guys are in dc headquarters they'll get in trouble if we start talking about mountain lions i know right they might have to subpoena us and then like they won't be able to be posted and stuff
[02:10:11] like that so and our warriors aren't that good so yeah not at all we don't want to take on the dbc hey everyone i just want to thank you for listening to the show if you enjoyed the show subscribe and throw down a smooth review on spotify apple podcasts or any podcast platform that you use
[02:10:40] you can also check daily updates of the podcast hikes hiking news and local news on facebook instagram twitter and the official website of the show remember this you gotta just keep on living in the cat skills man and i'll be i wicked wicked wicked wicked