While watching a Fresno Grizzlies baseball game recently, I received a call from Search and Rescue saying that Survivorman would be filming an episode and had requested our participation. I thought to myself - Why Not?
I fully expected that the job of Search and Rescue would be to provide some eye candy to the camera. Little did I know.
After having a killer breakfast with my dad at Pete's in Oakhurst I headed to the S.O. There I found that we were actually going to be doing a "mock" search for Les. The scenario was that he had gone on a short hike, spent the night and not returned in the morning.
Before beginning the actual exercise, the producer of the show briefed us on what the film crew would be doing and thanked us for all coming out. Now I've gotta say that if you want to get a large turnout for a search, being famous will help immensely, there were more searchers at this mock SAR than I've ever seen on a real one. But I digress.
I was placed on a team that included a dog handler, a dog and myself. We were given our assignment and headed out to begin searching. Working on a dog team is quite different than working with just foot searchers. You have to be conscious not to get in front of the dog, you let the dog lead you, you end up going up and down hills quite a bit.
We made our way from Chilkoot campground down to Willow creek in about an hour. When we got to the creek a helicopter began to circle around us. Over the radio I heard that the pilot had detected a mirror flash and he was going to check it out. At this point I figured that Les had likely been "found". I radioed into Command to let them know that the helo was circling about 500 yards from where we were but that to get to it we would need to cross Willow creek. Now it's springtime right now and the babbling brook that is Willow creek in the summer is more like a raging river so crossing it was not really an option. Command responded that we should hike back up to the road and a vehicle would take us to a drop off point on the other side of the creek after which we were to make our way to the coordinates of the flash.
Great. We had just finished hiking down a pretty steep canyon, now we had to go back up. Once we finally got back up to the road we were picked up by the Sergeant in charge of the search and taken to a drop off point on the other side of Willow creek.
One of the things that I've learned in SAR is how to use a compass, map and GPS. Thank goodness for that skill. We plotted the position of the coordinates given by the helo onto a map and started out. For the first 1/2 mile it was very straight forward, just walking along an abandoned lumber road. Once we got to a certain spot on the road we headed off cross country. The dog was working back and forth but did not pick up a strong scent. I continued to yell "Les" and whistle. After coming up over a small rise we came into a large open area. I yelled again and this time there was a response. Since we were actually a dog team we decided that we'd let the dog make the actual initial contact so we approached Les in a manner that would let the dog pick up the scent and be "rewarded" with a find.
Once we "found" him he turned on his camera and asked a number of questions about SAR and dog handling. A short time later one of the other teams met up with us and we all headed back out. When we finally got back to the road the producer of the show as well as the camera crew was there. They did some more interviewing and then we all packed into the support vehicles and headed back to base.
I was really impressed with Les and the entire crew. They were very professional but also very friendly and willing to answer any questions we had. I think I've probably exhausted my 15 minutes of proverbial fame now but I did get a cool baseball hat and T-Shirt out of it.
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