FTV: Search & Rescue
Living in the northwoods as we do, it is hard to escape the inevitable misadventures that occur when someone goes missing. Whether the final outcome of these episodes is a joyous reunion or an ongoing mystery, the connecting thread between them all are those who drop everything at a moment’s notice to join the search and rescue effort. For his book Last Entry Point – Stories of Danger and Death in the Boundary Waters (Minnesota Historical Society Press – 2024), author Joe Friedrichs interviewed numerous people involved in search and rescue efforts in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) area of northern Minnesota. Rick Slatten from the St. Louis County Rescue Squad provided Friedrichs with excellent insider information about the S&R process.
Slatten pointed out there is more involved with a S&R effort than sending people out into the woods. Without a defined search structure, a haphazard approach has the potential to destroy clues needed to find the missing person(s). Another undesirable outcome could be more lost people to search for. According to Slatten, there is a purposeful pattern followed that some bystanders may mistake as ‘wasting time’. At the first indication of trouble (detecting the signal from an emergency beacon or receiving a first hand report), the S&R team will gather at a staging location to organize the operation. By comparing the data they already have from the initial report, the team will determine the next course of action. If a lost or injured person triggers a beacon and stays put, it simplifies the effort to find and help them a lot.
If the location of the party in trouble is not so easily defined, Slatten said they need to establish the search area which he describes as, “An amoeba called the ‘max containment zone’. The MCZ can be – and often is – changed based on the discovery of new data. An initial phase in helping set up this zone is to determine where the missing person was last seen (which is known in the search and rescue industry as a PLS or ‘point last seen’).” Friedrichs further explains that evidence (articles of clothing, camping gear) associated with the person allows the S&R team to establish the ‘last known position’ and this helps to further define and narrow down the search area: “They also use something known as a ‘missing person behavioral profile’ to find who they are looking for. These tables break down situations when people with similar traits were engaged in comparable activity, went missing or were in distress, and were then rescued.”
Slatten expanded on exactly how calculated the search process is: “People tend to think we just walk through the woods, hoping to find somebody, or that maybe we’ll trip over a body and say, ‘Hey! Over here!’ It doesn’t work like that. The public perception of a search is largely getting a group of people shoulder to shoulder and moving through the woods. Searching is way more scientific than that. We employ human trackers, canines, drones, helicopter and fixed wing aircraft, sound searching, trail running, and a ton of investigation.”
In Minnesota, Slatton says the only source of funding they can consistently rely on (to keep the rescue squads in business) is public donations. Most of the S&R work is performed by trained volunteers who usually get involved at the request of agencies like the local Sheriff’s office, the State Police, or the Department of Natural Resources. All these agencies are funded by federal money and local tax levies. Most of the S&R money in his area is solicited by ‘blanket mailings’ done to the 110,000 households in their large county. Slatten calls it a good deal because, “It costs more than $300,000 a year to run the St. Louis County Rescue Squad and in exchange for that, the public gets about $3 million in free labor. So we think we’re a pretty good bargain.” Those rescued would certainly agree on this point. The need for trained S&R units is amplified by the sheer size of the BWCAW, an area which, if picked up and moved to the east coast, would cover the state of New Jersey.
Joe Friedrichs is a journalist who has lived near the Boundary Waters since 2014. He is also an avid paddler and hiker who found the police dispatch reports that the media would receive about incidents in the BWCAW were ‘bare bones – just the facts’ affairs. The May 20, 2020 report about three men having their canoe capsize in Tuscarora Lake was no exception:
“Two of the people swam to an island and one, a 29 year-old male, was reported missing. Identity is being withheld pending notification of family. No further information at this time.”
Later, when he read Billy Cameron’s death notice on the air at WTIP, the community radio station in Grand Marais, Minnesota, Friedrichs said, “It was Cameron’s story that broke me. The story could have ended there. Instead, I found Cameron’s profile on Facebook. His girlfriend, Natalay Yokhanis, posted something on his wall about the situation. I contacted Yokhanis and asked if she wanted to talk about Cameron and what had happened to him. She did.” This story became the basis for Last Entry Point, a book about people who got lost in the BWCAW. Some were rescued, some died and were recovered, and some disappeared from the face of the Earth.
One tale that resonated with me was that of Harold Hanson of Ramsey, MN. In October of 2021, the seventy-eight-year-old decided he wanted to hike to the top of the state’s highest peak. He took his nineteen-year-old grandson along and by 2:30 pm on October 10th, they had reached the 2,301 foot summit of Eagle Mountain. Twenty minutes into their descent, Hanson’s right leg went limp, he was cold and felt he had to lie down. A young couple they had talked to on the summit caught up to Harold and his grandson and saw he was in trouble. The young woman continued another half mile down the trail until she found cell service and she called 911. It was 3:00 pm when the call was received at the Cook County Law Enforcement Center and the emergency personnel were at the trailhead to Eagle Mountain by 3:35 pm. It took until 4:25 pm for the responders to reach him and the story ended up with a happy ending. It also included a small twist no one saw coming, but it serves as a cautionary tale about why people venturing into the BWCA Wilderness (or any wild area) need to plan for any contingency.
About the same time the responders began readying Hanson for his evacuation by stretcher, a storm rolled through with heavy rain, high winds, and golf ball sized hail. By 5:41, they had to halt their downhill trek under a large spruce to avoid the hail. A tornado warning was issued at 5:44 and the EF2 level tornado (which can include winds up to 120 MPH) later touched down farther to the north near Adler Lake off the Gunflint Trail. It was the only October tornado in BWCA history and the first in the area in fifty years. Weather in the BWCAW is always the unknown wildcard commodity for those who venture there.
Hanson’s story reminded me of hiking in the Huron Mountains during the three summers I worked there. We often hiked up some of the peaks during our off hours from the kitchen, but on other occasions, I would strike off on my own. I was asked to deliver camping supplies to one of the lakes farthest from the main compound. Guides leading overnight hikes with the club member’s kids could then travel lighter and simply load the supplies in the boats stashed on Mountain Lake and row off to the far campsites. This gave me access to a club truck and the keys for the gates that restricted motorized vehicles from the club’s interior trails.
The trails I would hike solo were well marked and doable in a couple of hours time so it never felt like I would end up turned around and have to spend the night in the woods. Just the same, it was eerie to be sitting on a peak taking in the scenery knowing there wasn’t another human within miles of my location. The DNR wouldn’t admit it back then, but there had been sightings of mountain lions in the Huron Mountains (something we were aware of but didn’t dwell on when hiking there).
One rule held for all such excursions at the club. You always left the key in the club truck when exploring the backcountry ‘just in case’. My third summer there, I found out exactly why this rule was in place when I was on the way back from a Mountain Lake supply drop off. I drove down past Mountain River Falls and parked near Pine Lake. I had never hiked to the overlook above Pine Lake so having plenty of time on my hands, that is exactly what I did. I had just settled in to take a breather at the top of the overlook when I heard the truck (parked a quarter to half mile below my location) start up and drive off. I was a little alarmed because this more than likely meant someone was having trouble on the hike I had just supplied. It also left me with quite a hike back to the main compound. At least there was a slightly shorter trail across the north end of the lake (including some boardwalks built over the swampy areas) so I didn’t have to take the longer route following the road. One of the guides had slipped and broken their arm ascending the trail to Mountain Lake. The other guide (who was sent to get help) said he was really happy to see the truck as he made his way on foot toward the main club compound. Had he been twenty minutes later, I would have been back in the driver’s seat myself. There were no cell phones in the early 1970s so we never went hiking without letting someone know where we would be, just in case.
Joe Friedrich tracked down some of the hikers who had been successfully rescued from the BWCAW. One was Bob Klaver, a professor from Iowa State University. Klaver was solo hiking in an area crossed by the Border Route Trail. After his second day on the trail, he was making his way to Partridge Lake when his canister of bear spray caught on a tree branch and discharged. The spray covered his torso and got in his eyes which left him temporarily blind. As his vision cleared, he made the conscious decision to hunker down there and wait for rescue rather than chance getting turned around in the dense forest. When his university friends reported him missing, Search & Rescue went into action. In the end, Klaver was spotted by a passing float plane who saw him waving his red sleeping pad. When they reported his location, he was safely extricated. Slatten praised the professor for not losing his head and hunkering down as he did; it is always easier to find a stationary target after all. It is also much easier to become totally turned around in the bush in times of stress, so Klaver did well to stay put.
A couple familiar with Boundary Waters canoe excursions admitted they were their own worst enemy when they got turned around near Oyster Lake. They took the wrong tributary and when the going got close to impossible, they kept going. They reasoned, “It has to get better around the next bend.” It didn’t. Though Chuck Kelly and Pamela Scaia weren’t declared missing until Scaia’s daughter reported that her mother had not returned to her job, they ended up spending nearly two weeks camped on the edge of a swamp. They didn’t panic and rationed their dwindling resources until S&R finally found them. Slatten called it a ‘textbook example’ of how a successful BWCA Search & Rescue is carried out.
Friedrichs also details cases that didn’t end well. The brothers who camped out with their sons ended up as a double fatality event. They had pitched their tent over the roots of a large tree. When the tree was struck by lightning, the electrical discharge traveling under them killed the one brother and his son while seriously injuring the other father/son duo. In another unsolved mystery, Lloyd Skelton left all of his gear in his van and set off on the Angleworm Trail. When he never came back out of the woods, the S&R teams eventually found his clothing (except for his shoes) near a campsite on Whiskey Jack Lake. He had stepped out of his pants (leaving his wallet and keys behind) and discarded various items of clothing and disappeared. Being unprepared for the harsh conditions, Skelton may have had his body temperature drop to the point where the blood being sent to his skin caused him to start feeling too warm. People who undergo what is known as ‘paradoxical undressing’ are usually not going to survive. In this case, one can only assume this is what happened to Lloyd. Was it intentional? We will never know.
Jordan Grider’s is another case that left clues but no answers. Grider had been living a camping existence in southern Kentucky. Why he decided to try the same trick in northern Minnesota in late October is anyone’s guess. Searchers found his hammock strung between two poplar trees and a lot of blood stains. Did he injure himself with a tool or firearm? In any event, he was not equipped to spend the cold months in the BWCA and no matter what killed him, his body was no doubt consumed by wild animals and the forest.
We started this part of the discussion with Billy Cameron’s death notice – the story that set in motion Fredriech’s research that led to his book. Cameron and two friends were not novices and were prepared for the harsh conditions. When Cameron’s fishing line got snagged, they donned their life jackets and took their canoe out onto Tuscarora Lake to try and untangle it. When their canoe capsized, they spent fifteen minutes trying to right it before they started swimming for shore. Two of them made it to land, Billy did not. His body was found in the cold lake water still wearing his lifejacket. Hypothermia had claimed him as it has countless others who have underestimated the effects of cold water on the human body.
My old buddy Jim and I capsized a small Sunfish sailboat off Middle Island Point near Marquette on a hot June day. He had given me instructions on how to right the boat if this happened. When we went into the drink we didn’t panic and soon found ourselves upright again. Jim asked if I had thought about trying to swim the quarter of a mile back to shore and I said, “Nope – way too far and way too cold.” We were in the water for no more than five minutes and looking back today, reading about the loss of life from hypothermia recounted in Last Entry Point makes me glad we got back on board and safely back to shore. Cold water can kill you.
Press accounts of these cases get around pretty fast now that social media has entered the picture. Some of the deaths are avoidable but others can only be chalked up to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz lost his brother to the BWCAW in 2016. The 43 year-old brother of then Senator Walz died on the shores of Duncan Lake when a powerful storm roared through the area and dropped a large tree on the tent in which he was sleeping. Search & Rescue teams are always happy to find the missing persons but in a case like Walz, the job becomes ‘recovery’.
The western Upper Peninsula has a fair amount of wilderness one can lose themselves in. We are also blessed with dedicated volunteers and professionals who answer the call when someone is injured or goes missing.
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