Tom Wood - Trading Steel for Stone: Tales of a Rustbelt Refugee Turned Rocky Mountain Rescuer

Trading Steel for Stone: Tales of a Rustbelt Refugee Turned Rocky Mountain Rescuer. Copyright 2016 by Thomas J. Wood All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Bower House: BowerHouseBooks.com.

Cover design and text composition: D.K. Luraas

Cover image: by Tom Wood; car image from Istock

Trading Steel for Stone logo design: Angie Lucht

Author photo: Amy Johnson Photography

Back cover photo: Adam Perou Hermans

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016938145

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55566-467-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-55566-475-6

Portions of the chapter Forever Lost to the Mountain: They Died Doing What They Loved Best and Other Lies from RescueWorld originally appeared in 5280: The Denver Magazine.

The story of Heaton Amalgamated in the chapter Rustbelt Recollections: My Dad the Devil, Ice Age Prophecies, and the Orange Bears was originally published as Ice Age Prophesies and the Dead Killer in Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology, 2015, Belt Publishing.

Portions of the chapter Suicide: The Low Side of That Rocky Mountain High previously appeared in the Spring and Summer 2013 editions of the Mountain Rescue Associations Online Publication The Meridian.

Mountains dont care, but we do.

Dee Molenaar,

early member of the Mountain Rescue Association

You can give credit to God or Darwin when someone survives an ordeal in the mountains. Thats your business.

John Dill,

Yosemite National Park Ranger

Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nations compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain love for one another.

Erma Bombeck,

humorist and fellow Rustbelt Refugee

Dear God, please dont let me fuck up.

Alan Shepard, Apollo Astronaut and

Tom Wood, Mountain Rescuer, Rustbelt Refugee

Prelude

The pitiful shape illuminated in the circle of my headlamps light barely looked human. My first impression, after revulsion, was that someone was mistaken. There was no way this thing was alive.

My practiced technique of pre-visualizing worst-case scenarios didnt prepare me for what lay at the foot of that giant rock. The fact that this mangled mess of a man lying at my feet was alive somehow made it more difficult to cope with than if hed been dead when we discovered him. It somehow seemed unnatural and wrong that someone could be so horribly disfigured, y et still draw breath a full three days after his accident.

His colorful BASE jumpers chute (and some of those colors werent from the parachute manufacturer, they originated from the chutes owner) was partially draped across his body. At first, I couldnt put my finger on what looked so out of place about his bloody visage. Then I realized with a start that his entire face was smashed flat as a board, with both eyes swollen completely shut. His mouth, partially open, revealed the jagged pieces of the few teeth that survived the impact.

His arms, legs, hands, and feet were frozen at impossible angles. Akimbo is the word, I believe. At each bend, splintered, yellowish-green knobs of bone poked out through tattered and blood-encrusted clothing.

My fellow mountain rescuers and I guessed that his chute had partially deployed after the jump from the top of Mt. Evans Black Wall, nearly 1,000 feet above us, and slowed his fall enough to allow the possibility for survival. Based upon his injuries, it was likely that he had smashed into the colossal tombstone rock that now loomed above us with his arms and legs out in front of him, as if to ward off the tremendous and inescapable impact. His chute had covered him after he fell to the ground, keeping his core temperature high enough to prevent him from freezing to death. But the same freezing temperatures that threatened to kill him by hypothermia had paradoxically prevented him from bleeding out. His body had reserved most of his circulation for warming his core, thus robbing his arms and legs of blood that would have simply run out of him and onto the frozen ground.

His friends (there were now two of them on scene) huddled close and spoke hushed and tense words of encouragement in his bloodied ears that still oozed what looked to be cerebral-spinal fluid. Occasionally their heartfelt exhortations elicited a weak, gurgled moan of pain-wracked acknowledgment.

Stepping back from the halo of light encircling the BASE jumper, the enormity of what now lay ahead of us struck me full force. It hadnt even occurred to me (or anyone else) that we might have to devise an evacuation plan for a living, breathing human being. I had expected to find a battered body at the base of the cliff, take some photos for the coroner, scoop it into a bag and carry it out. Now we had a he to deal with, not an it.

This man needed a paramedic with a bag full of drugs, a litter, and lots of oxygen. We had none of those things on-site, so we requested them via radio. We were about four-and-a-half miles uphill from Mission Base, at an elevation of roughly 12,000 feet, and we didnt expect the cavalry to arrive anytime soon.

It was now one in the morning, and a crystal clear night. We guessed temps were in the teens. Many of us, expecting that we could be out searching for the entire night, had brought bivy sacs and sleeping bags. We huddled together under them, and took turns monitoring our subjects condition. All we could offer him was a space blanket and choked words of comfort until the sun arrived, hopefully bringing a medical helicopter with it.

Taking my turn at his side at around 3:00 a.m., it was impossible to detect the rise and fall of his chest under the silvery space blanket. I was genuinely concerned that he would simply stop breathing while I knelt there and Id never know. So every ten minutes or so, I nudged his shoulder lightly and called his name. He responded by letting a low moan escape his clotted throat, and slightly turning his head toward me.

It was impossible for me to escape a creeping sense of guilt-ridden dj vu. The poorly planned, foolish, and downright dangerous thrill-seeking pursuits of my youth should have ended like this.

That should be me lying there.

Introduction

Welcome to RescueWorld. My name is Tom, and Ill be your tour guide today. Be careful where you step, ladies and gents, it can get kind of messy here in RescueWorld.

And parents, you may want to leave the kids at home for this trip, as some of the things that go on here in RescueWorld blow right past PG 13, zip by Rated R, and dive straight into the realm of Not Rated.

If you expect to find this RescueWorld populated by fearless, hulking, strong-chinned, and totally ripped heroes aided by buxom blonde snow bunnies led into the mountains by faithful Saint Bernards sporting little barrels of schnapps around their thick furry necks as a fleet of helicopters piloted by crazy-but-somehow-capable veteran pilots spouting pithy one-liners that must all learn to work together in order to overcome their seemingly insurmountable differences and beat the odds to effect spectacular, death-defying mountain rescues sorry.