IT WAS ANOTHER tough week in the news, but what do you expect?
It’s summertime and the living is far from easy if you are in the search and rescue business.
The Olympic Peninsula has been invaded and overrun with adventure-seeking, outdoor dudes who seem to be working overtime keeping the search and rescue teams working overtime to rescue them.
Now, with the Fourth of July long weekend approaching, we can anticipate a perfect storm of people doing wacky things that need rescuing in the great outdoors.
It would be nice if people used a little common sense in the outdoors but no, this is America where you can do pretty much whatever you want and if the search and rescue has to come and save your life, you don’t have to pay for it.
That’s if you survive. Some people are not so lucky.
Like the young man from Texas that fell off the Sol Duc Falls on June 8.
Over the years, the Sol Duc Falls has acted as a magnet for thrill seekers who knock down the safety barricades to get just a little bit closer for that perfect selfie with sometimes tragic results.
The latest victim was reported to be last seen walking across the slippery, algae-coated rocks just above the 50-foot waterfall before he lost his footing, fell down and was pinned to the bottom of the river, where Olympic National Park search and rescue personnel and the Forks Swiftwater Rescue Team had to risk their lives to retrieve his body.
Coincidentally, the very next day on June 9, another Texas teen fell 100 feet off a cliff while trying to get a picture of a waterfall at Mount Rainier National Park.
The Texan was somehow able to grab on to a tree limb and lift himself on to a rock ledge, and wait for a rescue by National Park Rangers that was described as “nothing short of a miracle.”
Rivers aren’t the only water danger that can kill you here.
On Sunday June 29, two surf fishermen were swept out to sea at Copalis Beach.
Both victims were pulled to shore where Advanced Cardiac Life support was performed unsuccessfully.
All of which just goes to show how dangerous the rogue waves that roar across the Pacific and beat upon our shore can be.
You can be standing on dry sand one minute and pounded by the surf in the next.
Wearing a flotation device when fishing for surf perch is a good idea.
Water wasn’t the only danger this month, people got into plenty of trouble in the Olympic Mountains.
On June 18, the hot shot helicopter pilots of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island received an alert from the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center about an unidentified 40-year-old man suffering from hypothermia somewhere in the Olympics at 11 p.m. and delivered the dude to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle by 1:30 a.m. That’s service for you!
The Navy pilots barely had time to shut down their helicopter when they got another call to rescue a 41-old-man.
According to the Peninsula Daily News article, the man was stuck on a 1-foot ledge on a 300-foot cliff while trying to retrieve a dropped backpack.
All of which begged the question, what was in the back pack?
Couldn’t he just let it go? No.
ONP rangers retrieved the man with ropes and flew him to a nearby landing zone.
While profiling and stereotyping in a wilderness gossip column may be wrong, it is worth noting at all of those rescued have been men.
Just saying.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
