The Rescue

It has been exactly one year since The Rescue. I will always be grateful to Kirsten for letting me serve on Woodbadge staff, even though it took up so much of my time last summer.

The course was in danger of being cancelled, but we were able to pull it through with frantic recruiting and prayer. It ended up being an amazing course, even though the number of participants we had was a little low. It was really interesting to see everything happening from the "other" side as a scribe, as opposed to my experience (which was also great) going through as a participant the year before. I was able to see the Lord's hand guiding every decision that was made, as well as seeing the opposition trying to stop things from happening.

My fellow scribe, Bruce Allred from Fruit Heights, is a certified rock climber and had brought his gear with him in hopes that we'd find a few minutes to climb or rappel a little, but we were way too busy during the week. We considered rappelling possibly on the last day after the course was over, but the course was wonderful, regardless of whether we got to get out on the rocks.
The last night when the patrols spend time together, the staff had our dinner and last night together as well. This was going to be a relaxing final evening where I was actually going to get to bed before 2 am. We were interrupted when we found out that three boys from NYLT who were out camping by us in Kiesel, having come down from Browning where their course was held up the road that same week, had gotten themselves stuck up on the mountain as the sun was going down and had basically two choices: a 60 foot cliff to make it down or hike over the mountain back to Browning in the dark, probably neither of which would have been a good idea.
As soon as we heard what was going on as we were wrapping up dinner about 8:30 pm, we immediately ran over and grabbed the ropes, harnesses, headlamps, and radios and began to organize to go get them off the mountain. Four of us formed the climbing team, with Bruce overseeing everything to make sure we were being safe. Farrell Layne from Hyde Park (the course medic) talked to the boys as they came down, guiding them down the rock and checking them out when each of them got to the bottom. Our big hero was Dave Nielsen from North Logan who had to free climb up about 60 feet of cliff and traverse across the rock another 30 feet or so to the boys, tie off on a small tree and get the boys in their harnesses so I, acting as belayer, could lower them down the cliff. We had tried climbing up in one spot, but seemed to get stuck whichever route we tried, so had to regroup and choose a different spot to climb up with sunlight fading fast.

Not more than 5-10 minutes after Dave finished his free climb, the clouds that had rolled over behind us began dumping rain on us. I was tied off to a tree to keep me down in case someone slipped. With the angle I was at and the friction between the rope and the rocks and plants, it was difficult for me to tell how fast to lower the boys. I couldn't see them until they were about halfway down and made it over a rock that obscured my view. Bruce and Farrell had a better view to see more of the rock, so as Farrell talked to the boys directly, Bruce helped me communicate with Dave at the top to speed up or slow down their descent. By the time the boys actually started their descents, it was quite dark, but with flashlights and several well-timed lightning strikes that lit up the rocks we were able to direct the boys on their way down the cliff. One of the boys slipped as he was coming down, and I had to hold him for a few seconds while he regained his balance and composure from banging his leg on the slippery rock. I was glad all four of us on the ground had helmets on as we had quite a bit of small gravelly rock slide down on us a few times.
The NYLT leaders, who are great guys, were not really trained in that kind of operation nor did they have the equipment, and we tried not to think about what would have happened if our course had been cancelled and the boys hadn't had someone there to help them get down. It was interesting to me to note that it was four Varsity Scout leaders that made up the climbing team, although there were many others involved all around in taking care of the boys once they got down. Although I have been climbing a couple times in my life in non-Scouting activities, the vast majority of the times I have been rock climbing or rappelling and helped to belay others has been in Scouts and Varsity Scouts as both a youth and a leader. I had actually just been up climbing with my Varsities at Camp Browning a couple months before the course.

I remember thinking as we were heading down the trail after having gotten the three boys and Dave down safely and seeing all the NYLT boys cheering that I would like to get trained in Search and Rescue to be able to go save people. Later, as I was thinking about it, I had the impression that this is what we are doing. Our calling as scout leaders, whatever the age group, is to save the boys.

Several of the participants commented how neat it was to see put into action the very things we had been teaching them all week in terms of problem solving, organization, and team development. As we had been working together to overcome trials and provide a good experience for the course participants, we had become a high performing team ourselves.
We need to be providing the youth opportunities to work together and lift each other up, so they will be prepared when they are called on to be leaders.