Happy April
Fool’s Day to my fellow mountain rescuers!
We all know
that mountain rescue is serious business. As rescuers, we work very hard to
project the image of ourselves as dedicated, non-paid professionals. And while
we always tackle the mission at hand with complete seriousness, I feel that we desperately
need to avoid taking OURSELVES too seriously.
I am a
member of Colorado’s Alpine Rescue Team. We like to think of ourselves as
highly skilled, well-trained non-paid professional rescuers. But if you look closely
at the walls of our headquarters (AKA The Shack), tucked in between the
official proclamations of thanks from politicians, yellowed newspaper clippings
tacked to the wall, and next to photos of our ice-rimed members waving summit
flags atop the world’s high peaks- you’ll find a framed photo from the 80s of
eight of our members (male and female) mooning the camera at the base of an ice
climb. Can you imagine the look on your boss’ face in Corporate America USA,
Inc. if you put a photo of eight pairs of (blindingly white) cheeks on the wall
of your cubicle for all the world to see?
Probably
not.
And look!
Next to all the fancy brass and glass plaques from the local Chamber of
Commerce, the Rotary Club and the Red Cross – it’s a gnarled bristlecone pine
tree trunk adorned with various trinkets and artifacts including, but not
limited to: a chunk of melted aluminum (from a torched snowmobile), broken toy
helicopters, busted toy snowmobiles, a cracked aircraft altimeter, a sticker
that reads “emergency helicopter exit only” and the tag cut from one of our
mission leaders’ Fruit of the Loom white bikini brief underwear. This is our
team’s inglorious monument to our failures and embarrassing moments as mountain
rescuers. It is lovingly known to Alpine members as the Windy Peak “Aw Shit!”
Award, and the trinkets hanging from it are the contributions of past recipients.
This award
symbolizes so many things that I truly love about mountain rescue. First and
foremost, it is a recognition of our humanity. Our fallibility. It also
symbolizes that cherished spirit of true irreverence that runs crookedly
through the heart of mountain rescue. I feel that the “Aw Shit!” Award,
bestowed each year upon the team member who had the year’s biggest goof-up, is
our most important award. (And yes, I am a previous winner – DON’T ask). It
serves as our yearly reminder to both honor that irreverent spirit of mountain
rescue’s independent nature, and to lighten the hell up. For in mountain
rescue, sometimes our sense of humor is the only weapon we have at our disposal
when we are faced with tragedy in the backcountry. The temptation to take
things too seriously is sometimes a strong one, and one that we must avoid if
we hope to remain happy and sane while doing our important work in the place I
like to call RescueWorld.
Ernest
Hemingway is famous for saying, “There are only three sports: bullfighting,
motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” And though
mountaineering could be thought of as
a sport, it is most certainly not a TEAM sport. It’s a solo endeavor performed
by individuals. And so it goes that mountain rescue teams can be thought of as
extensions of these free-spirited mountaineering individuals.
Hell, given
the fiercely independent nature of most mountain rescue teams in the U.S., it’s
a wonder to me that a national organization like the MRA exists at all
sometimes.
For just as
the mountains attract many hikers, climbers and mountaineers who march to the
beat of a different drummer, so it goes for many of the men and women who sign
on to help those having a bad day while enjoying the freedom of the hills.
The very
dynamic and eclectic nature of non-paid professional mountain rescue itself often
cries out for an eccentric and unconventional approach. It follows that those
who are drawn to this type of service for lost or injured hikers, climbers and
skiers in the mountains might be a little … off as well.
In fact, the
more time you spend around almost any volunteer mountain rescue team in the
world, you’ll find that most of us possess (and sometimes flaunt) a strong sense
of independent irreverence that you won’t likely find in EMS organizations that
are dependent on mill levies or those that are forced to march to the PC beat
of a Human Resource (HR) Department.
And God help
mountain rescue the day that we have an HR Department.
(Hold on for
a moment here while I step up onto my soapbox.) The way I see it, if you can’t
go to the mountains or the backcountry and let your hair down once in a while
(whether to recreate or to rescue), where else is left? In our politically
correct society’s quest to never offend ANYONE, we’ve taken a lot of fun away
from EVERYONE. (OK, sorry about that, I’m stepping back down now.)
In non-paid
professional mountain rescue, this kind of financial and institutional independence
is essential to the survival of each and every volunteer organization. As the
Langdale-Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team (from the Lake District in Britain)
says on their website, “Self-funding means freedom - to
experiment, to acquire the best equipment for the job, freedom from
bureaucratic interference and cost-cutting to which so many public services have
fallen victim, and freedom to enjoy the team spirit which rewards and respects
initiative and competence in a way which binds and disciplines a team to the
ultimate benefit of all.”
So just who
are these people who dedicate and donate so much of their time and effort “that
other might live”? And what motivates them?
I’ve noticed
two distinct personality traits that seem to be present in the folks who
dedicate years of their life in service to mountain rescue.
First of
all, those who give that much of their lives to mountain rescue simply love
helping people.Though a
love of the backcountry and a deep respect for the awesome might of nature are
important traits found in the mountain rescuer, it is their obsessive desire to
help their fellow human beings that keeps the career mountain rescuer going
year after year after year. After all, it is not unusual for most mountain
rescue teams to go a couple of months with absolutely no calls, and if you
joined mountain rescue strictly for the thrills, this is when you are likely to
discover that you’d rather be climbing or skiing than sitting through yet
another classroom presentation on line search techniques. From what I’ve seen, this
is why adrenaline junkies make for terrible rescuers. These folks eventually
discover that there’s a lot of standing around going on in mountain rescue, and
that they’d rather be out recreating than being stuck back at Operations
shuffling around in a parking lot inhaling diesel fumes from the rescue truck
while waiting for a field assignment.
Secondly,
career mountain rescuers have a screw loose-and I say that with the utmost
respect. Professional
mountain rescue has come a long way since its humble beginnings across the
pond. But even with all the modernization of mountain rescue techniques and
tools – and the equally modern concept of risk management – it is still a
dangerous undertaking at times. It follows that those willing put themselves at
risk for total strangers, year after year, with no financial reward or loaded
gun to their head, are cut from a different cloth.
Like the
bumper sticker says, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.”
Or, as
Joseph Conrad once said, “There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and
enslaving than the life at sea.”
And so it
goes for the life in the mountains, dedicated to mountain rescue.
In closing,
I urge my mountain rescue comrades to savor the one day of the year that you
are not only permitted-but encouraged- to play the fool. To let your freak flag
fly.
So I say to
my fellow mountain rescuers, remember to lighten the hell up-and may you always
be a little…off.
Tom Wood is a 15-year veteran of the
Alpine Rescue Team in Evergreen, CO and works as the Training Manager for
Vertical Rescue Solutions by PMI. The preceding post contains material from his
upcoming memoir: “Trading Steel for Stone: Tales of a Rustbelt Refugee Turned
Rocky Mountain Rescuer”. This post does not reflect the opinions of the ART, the
MRA, PMI or-quite possibly- anyone else, for that matter.
