DeLorme Professional Weblog

The following is a first-hand account of a successful rescue operation in the Glacier Peak Wilderness of the Cascade Range in Washington State. Justin Mitchell, the Operations Leader for Bellingham Mountain Rescue, describes how the Earthmate PN-20 GPS receiver proved its mettle in extreme conditions.

On August 27th, 2008, just before midnight, I received a call from Don, an operations leader from the Skagit Mountain Rescue team. They needed some help from Bellingham Mountain Rescue for two climbers reportedly stuck on a ledge somewhere near Spire Point. The climbers were near the end of completing the “Ptarmigan Traverse,” a five-day thru hike in the North Cascades and were stuck on a ledge in bad weather with 100 ft visibility, not knowing exactly where they were.  I called and woke up one of our SAR deputies from the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office (a pleasure to wake them up instead of what is typically the reverse) to let them know we’d been requested. I then got to work putting a team together and downloading maps to my PN-20. Spire Point is located quite a way into the North Cascades, and with the normal road/trail system being washed out, I knew there was going to be quite a bit of bushwhacking and/or route-finding. It also meant our chances of getting back in there and finding them quickly without helicopter support was slim.

We met at “base operations” at the Concrete airport the next morning to discuss our options. Volunteers showed up from Skagit, Tacoma, and Bellingham mountain rescue teams. Despite the long distance involved, a team would go in by foot since the weather did not look favorable for a helicopter. The Bellingham team would continue to help at base ops but be on hot standby in the event a helicopter option became available. We were able to communicate with the stranded climbers a couple of times via cell phone and the situation was not good—they were extremely cold, wet, and showing signs of hypothermia. The cell phone, however, did provide us with a lat/long to start off with via its E911 feature. The coordinates did not initially make sense, although I was able to enter them into my PN-20 using a variety of different formats, until finally noting that they had come in via the degrees decimal format. Bingo—the coordinates put them near the summit of Spire Point (degrees minutes format N48° 19.042′, W121° 4.247′). So from there, we were able to come up with some possible scenarios and hone in our initial search area.

Luck was on our side. Although the mountains were still socked in, the weather was clearing somewhat and a Navy helicopter arrived to possibly help. We collectively gathered around our USGS maps and came up with a plan—we would follow the valleys in towards Spire Point, keeping well under the cloud ceiling, and try one of three different “insertion points” on alternate sides of the mountain for a drop off. And from there, we’d climb up near the top of Spire Point as quickly as we could to search for the climbers. This was clearly our best option given the time it would take for the first team to get in there on foot. Moreover, another weather system was on its way in and promised to bring worse weather than this one. As we loaded onto the helicopter, I entered the three insertion points as waypoints into my PN-20, wondering if we’d even get to use them.

The flight in was interesting. We followed roads and valleys into the area, keeping a close eye on the weather ceiling. And one by one our hopeful insertion points were shut out by the bad weather. All the while, though, I sat next to the side door of the helicopter with my PN-20, keeping track of where we were relative to our insertion points. As we exhausted our last option, though, I asked the pilot to head back west and try another option. I had seen a small lake on the topo map of my PN-20 that just might be accessible via a small side valley. We rounded the corner into the valley and I asked the pilot if he’d be comfortable poking his nose just over the trees at the head of the valley. We were just below the ceiling but he agreed since it was basically our only hope. As we skimmed over the trees, Itswoot Lake appeared with a perfect little landing zone on the south end of the lake (N48° 17.870′, W121° 5.319′).

The rotor wash on the Seahawk helicopter (basically same as a Blackhawk but in Navy terms) was tremendous as they took off and accelerated the wetness of the rain. We quickly donned foul weather gear, oriented ourselves with a map and compass, and headed up the mountain. Visibility was minimal, and the higher we got up Itswoot Ridge, the more rainy, windy, and cold it got. None of us had ever been here before either so our maps, compass, and altimeters were crucial to route-finding. And although we’ve trained ourselves not to rely on a GPS, the PN-20 and its integrated maps were outstanding for confirming our location and route. We got up to just under the summit of Spire Point and set up camp on the Dana Glacier in the dark. Our voices were hoarse from yelling and whistling, and our bodies were tired and hungry from battling the elements. We felt pretty good about the progress we’d made but also knew first hand the weather these climbers had gone through. We went to sleep with hopes of finding survivors in the morning.

Morning came quickly and the winds had calmed down a bit, but visibility was still quite challenging. As we loaded up our tents, we resumed our yells and whistles, and to our surprise heard a very faint yell back! Tracking the direction of the yells was difficult because of various echoes involved, but we made our way north along the Dana Glacier and eventually found the lost climbers cold, wet, but otherwise alive, and very happy to see us (N48° 19.384′, W121° 4.115′). As we fed them some hot food, they explained how they’d huddled in their one remaining sleeping bag all night and were going to head back down the north side of the mountain if help had not arrived by that afternoon.

We gathered all their stuff and headed back down the way we’d come up, meeting the other rescue team along the way. A helicopter soon arrived to take us and our rescued subjects back to warmth, safety, and their loved ones.

I shudder to think of the consequences if we hadn’t have found them when we did, especially given the colder and more intense weather system that was hitting the area the very next day. The expert flying provided by our local Navy base was certainly key to us succeeding with this mission, but equally as important was knowing exactly where we were at all times via the maps on my Delorme PN-20. I truly believe it contributed to two saved lives, and I look forward to even better capabilities on the PN-40.

For more information on Bellingham Mountain Rescue, visit www.wcsar.org/bmrc/.

To read more about the Earthmate PN-Series GPS receivers, click here.