Wilderness Survival and Rescue Reading

Imagine sticking a breathing tube down someone's throat. And imagine having to do that without accidentally inserting the tube into the person's esophagus or breaking the patient's teeth. Then imagine doing this while kneeling on sharp rocks while perched on a narrow ledge, as a hovering rescue helicopter sprays you and your patient with dirt and debris.

Endotracheal intubation is one of the most difficult medical procedures an ER doctor performs, and that's within the clean and controlled hospital setting with skilled assistance at hand. But Dr. Christopher Van Tilburg has had to intubate in less-than-ideal backcountry conditions as a member of the Hood River Crag Rats, the oldest Search & Rescue team in the U.S.

Christopher Van Tilburg is not only an ER doctor and a ski patrol and emergency wilderness physician; he's also an excellent writer. I spent three days reading Mountain Rescue Doctor: Wilderness Medicine in the Extremes of Nature during every spare moment.

Along with insights into the ethical challenges a wilderness physician faces and the tools and techniques of emergency backcountry medicine, Tilburg describes a number of suspenseful missions. One account involves a call to Columbia River Gorge, where he intubated an unconscious patient who'd fallen from a cliff. Another chapter concerns the rescue of an injured and hypothermic man who'd fallen onto a logjam. Dr. Tilman also writes about rescuing cliff divers with spinal injuries, rushing to rescue a trapped climber within the "Golden Hour," treating the victim of a rattlesnake bite, and participating in a grisly body recovery at the scene of a mountain plane crash. Tilman has been involved in numerous high-altitude, winter missions, including a much-publicized search for three missing climbers on Mt. Hood.

After finishing the book, my only disappointment was that, in certain cases, the reader is left wondering what happened to the victims Dr. Tillman had worked so hard to save. Did they survive? Then I happened across a blog post by the author, in which he states, "Yes, several chapters don't really say what happens to the patient. That's part of the deal with mountain rescue missions: we hand off the patients to a helicopter or ground ambulance crew, and sometimes we never find out the end result." As any member of a SAR unit knows, that statement is very true. The last we sometimes see or hear of a patient is when they're whisked into the sky in a litter, spinning at the end of a 200-foot rope.

To learn more about the author of Mountain Rescue Doctor, visit Christopher Van Tilburg's website at DocWild.net

Among the stack of books I've read about the lost, the stranded, the injured and the rescued, another of my favorites was Coming Back Alive: The True Story of the Most Harrowing Search and Rescue Mission Ever Attempted on Alaska's High Seas by Spike Walker.

This is a book about eight amazing rescue missions off the coast of southeastern Alaska, culminating in the edge-of-your-seat account of the Coast Guard's efforts to save five crewmen from the fishing vessel La Conte, which sunk in 100-mile per hour winds and record 90-foot seas in January, 1998. Without a life raft, the men are left to drift in the freezing water for hours, as three different helicopter crews try in turn to rescue them.

Author Spike Walker worked for years as a deckhand in Alaska. He researched Coming Back Alive meticulously, through hundreds of hours of interviews with survivors.

This was one of those "I don't care how tired I'll be at work tomorrow, I have to keep reading" books. In fact, I was so intrigued that after finishing "Coming Back Alive," I started following Coast Guard SAR headlines on Twitter with links to their news releases.

Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival, by mountaineer Joe Simpson, recounts Simpson's and Simon Yates' near-fatal climb of 20,813- foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. They were the first people to successfully reach the summit of Siula Grande via the almost vertical west face.

But things went terribly awry on the descent, when Simpson slipped down an ice cliff and shattered his knee. The pair, whose trip had already taken longer than intended due to bad weather, had run out of stove fuel, which they needed to melt ice and snow for drinking water, and therefor had to descend quickly to their base camp about 3,000 feet below.

They proceeded by tying two 150-foot ropes together, then tied themselves to each end. Yates dug himself into a hole in the snow and lowered his injured partner down the mountain on the 300 feet of rope; however, because the two ropes were tied together, the knot wouldn't go through the belay plates, so Simpson had to stand on his good leg to give Yates enough slack to unclip the rope. Then Yates would thread the rope back through the lowering device with the knot on the other side.

Things went better than expected for awhile, though Joe was in agony as his bad leg kept catching on the snow. And then a second disaster struck; Yates accidentally lowered Simpson over a 100-foot cliff during white-out conditions, leaving Simpson dangling in mid-air with the knot tight against the belay plates. Yates couldn't see Simpson but felt all of his climbing partner's weight on the rope, which was very slowly pulling him down the mountain.

Simon Yates held on for about an hour, while his bucket seat gradually collapsed beneath him. Eventually, he forced himself to cut the rope, ultimately dropping Simpson into a crevasse.

The next morning after a cold night in a snow cave, Yates descended the mountain alone and saw the crevasse. He realized what must have happened to Simpson, certain that he must have died in the fall. Yates safely descended the remaining dangerous leg of the journey.

But Simpson had survived, and, when he eventually took in the rope, he discovered the end had been cut. He spent a dreadful night in the cravasse, described in his own heartbreaking words, but despite his injuries, Simpson abseiled from the ice bridge that broke his fall to the bottom of the crevasse and crawled out onto the glacier.

From there, he suffered three more days, crawling five miles back to base camp. Almost completely delusional, he reached camp just a few hours before Yates intended to leave.

Simpson's survival is widely regarded by mountaineers as amongst the most amazing pieces of mountaineering lore in history. I literally could not put this book down and even cried into my cereal.

Imagine first volunteering with an alpine Search and Rescue team at the age of 63, joining a group of young, robust whipper-snappers in the field. Well, Peggy Parr, author of Mountain High, Mountain Rescue, did just that and not only rises to the task but excels.

As a field leader for a Colorado Springs-based SAR team, Peggy shares her fears, joys and insecurities, as well as her fascination with the mountains where the rescues and recoveries usually take place. Often, a life is saved, but sometimes help arrives too late.

One of my favorite quotes from the book--one of so many that I can relate to--is, "This strong desire to aid strangers stricken by misfortune is like a vein of gold inside the team. When I joined, I had no such sense of mercy--adventure was my goal--but the compassion of the members was contagious and I caught this best of all diseases."

Read firsthand accounts by rescuers and the rescued at

SARstories.com