Tuesday evening September 15th we received a call asking to field a team of ground pounders for the second operation period of mission 114. The subject had taken a hike on the La Luz trail and was last seen Sunday. The Incident Commander wanted us at Incident Base (IB) by 8:00 a.m. Wednesday. Two Brigade members responded and teamed up with a single searcher from Cibola SAR. Our mission was to clear a trail the previous teams had not covered. The trail is highlighted in purple on the map. Next we were asked to search the area shown in light blue. After six and half hours of searching covering about six miles and 1,500 feet change in elevation we returned to IB having found nothing.
The third operational period started Thursday morning and one member of the Brigade headed down and teamed up with a canine team from Mountain Canine Corp. The mission was to clear the area shown approximately in the light blue. After several hours of searching the team returned to IB having found nothing.
After behind the scenes forensics on the subjects cell phone signal incident managers were able to get a better idea of where the subject had gone. The fourth operational period started on Saturday September 19th. Five members of the Brigade participated. One of our members teamed up with our local Area Commander to assist him in searching the gullies and cliff face areas with a drone. The rest of the Brigade started a ground search of the area. Eventually our team found tracks heading down a steep gully. Our Team Leader followed the tracks as far he could, to the edge of a cliff. From there he was able to see some of the subjects gear partway down the face.
The drone was flown down the cliff while one of our members rappelled down to within 50 feet of the subject to determine he, unfortunately, did not survive his fall. A sad ending and our condolences to the family.
Hats off to all who participated in this mission. As you can see the terrain is steep, rugged and choked with cactus of all kinds. Afternoon temperatures where hot in the upper 80’s and lower 90’s. Many thanks to all the other teams that also participated in the mission and again to the family we are sorry for your loss.
