SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Stranded in the woods, injured, longing for help, it’s good to know there are hikers out looking for you. It’s better to know the air power and technological capabilities of the California National Guard are behind them.
Several times a year, CNG aviators work with the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Unit to locate lost individuals and, in some cases, hoist them to a helicopter for transportation to safety.
The CNG teamed up with the all-volunteer Search and Rescue Unit during the last weekend in July for a training exercise that sent 18 ground searchers into the Desolation Wilderness, where they later rendezvoused with an Army Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The rescue effort was launched in response to a simulated text message from a hiker to his wife, saying a fellow hiker had broken his ankle.
“We use the 160-member Search and Rescue Unit to carry out those missions because it would be logistically impossible for our on-duty deputy sheriffs to attempt to do that type of large-scale search,” Sheriff’s Deputy Jamey Morgan said.
The Search and Rescue Unit conducts about 100 missions a year, he said, including searches for lost people and rescues of people at known locations. As valuable as the volunteers are, however, Morgan said there is no substitute for the aerial view provided by CNG and California Highway Patrol helicopters.
“One hour of helicopter time searching over an area can do what 100 ground team members can do in eight hours,” he said. “[Helicopter teams] cover so much more ground and accomplish so much more than ground searchers can. … The time we have with the Guard is extremely valuable to us.”
In the July exercise, however, the Black Hawk team did not locate the stranded hikers; that was accomplished by a ground-search team that deployed the afternoon of Friday, July 25, and found the pair that night.
Back at the incident command post, sheriff’s deputies monitored the search teams’ progress every step of the way through satellite communication devices provided to each team by the CNG. The devices automatically sent a signal every two minutes that plotted the team’s course on a digital map.
“It let [the incident commander] know where his teams were, so if they were getting off course from the plan or if he needed them to spread out their search pattern, he could get on the radio or send them a [text] message through the device itself to direct them,” said Capt. Adam Rix, the CNG’s deputy current operations chief.
The next morning, CNG aviators were notified that a search team had found the hikers and requested a hoist extraction because of the injured hiker’s deteriorating condition. In addition to the Black Hawk, the Guard sent a UH-72 Lakota helicopter to monitor the rescue effort and relay near-real-time video to the incident commander.
“[The video feed] is something we’re looking forward to utilizing in the future, because we’ve never had the capability to see what is going on from the air,” Morgan said. “Many times, having that resource available, we can assist the ground team members with identifying safer locations to move to or different strategies we can use to accomplish the mission.”
The ground teams that morning suggested two possible locations to perform the hoist extraction, one on a rocky outcropping and one in a flatter area near Shadow Lake. When the aviators arrived at the incident command post, Rix showed them a digital representation of the elevation profile, the vegetation and other features surrounding both sites, so they could make an informed choice.
As this was a training exercise, the aviators chose the rocky outcropping.
“The other hoist location was flat, so the skill required by the crew was going to be minimal; this location required more skill to effectively execute the lift,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Raymond Centers, a CNG flight instructor and Black Hawk pilot. “We like to train under more demanding conditions. … If you train to a higher standard, then when you need to perform to that level, you are prepared to do it.”
At the rocky outcropping, Staff Sgt. Drew Neil lowered himself out of the Black Hawk, dangling from a hoist cable more than 200 feet off the ground. When he reached the ground, Neil positioned two search and rescue team members on the hoist and sent them up to the Black Hawk.
“I probably clenched [up] a little bit,” said Mike Mullens, training officer for the volunteer search and rescue team, who played the role of the injured hiker. “When he was reaching out to pull us into the helicopter, I was thinking, ‘Man, I do not want to slip off of that seat.’ But he was such a pro at it. He got us in there as clean and good as he could.”
Only two volunteers got to ride the hoist, but they all rode in a Black Hawk to the incident command post, executing their training on how to create a landing zone and properly approach and disembark a helicopter.
“Our team has a lot more confidence now in how to work with helicopters,” Mullens said. “We got to see how professional the National Guard guys are and how good they are at their job. It makes me feel really comfortable that, if these guys are coming out, this is going to be clean.”