It even happens to the best...

Triathlete Debbie Collins was dependent on luck and strangers to rescue her from the Santa Cruz Mountains, just like a lot of other people.

Collins hadn't been reported missing until November 30, despite the fact that no one had seen her since the 24th. She left no info on where she was headed, and the local Sheriff's Office said a full-scale search of the two nearby parks wasn't feasible.

Friends and neighbors searched for her.

But it was an unknown neighbor and his 7-yr-old son who found her, hypothermic and with an injured ankle.

Missing California triathlete found alive

It will never happen to me...
It will never happen to me...
It will never happen...
OH-OH!

Sue

I am a triathlete, desert hiker/trail runner. After hearing a few of these over the years I carry a hydration system on all outings plus a UL survival kit depending on season and location. I added a SPOT2 last year which makes everyone feel much safer about me.

This:
http://www.suite101.com/content/danelle-ballengee-rescued-a10887

Happened to her:
http://www.trainingrx.com/articles.htm
http://www.trainingrx.com/results.htm

She is extremely fortunate. The ultimate SAR nightmare is having a lost individual with no indication of where to search.

That's freakin' amazing. I would like to see pics of the arrows and maps.

That is quite a story -- neighbors instigated their own searches, a psychic predicted she'd be found in that area and a wife made the suggestion to her husband who found her.

We're all just a misstep away from being incapacitated.


Collins braved temperatures that dipped into the 30s for at least some of the past six days. She had no food and only water from the nearby creek to drink. She used a plastic bag she had in her pocket for a cup and several layers of clothes kept her relatively warm.

Why not just leave a note of where you are going?

That would have been valuable here. However, the article says that the woman is "a triathlete and had spent nearly every day of the past nine years hiking in Fall Creek and other parts of Henry Cowell, which surround her home."

I'm also a hiker/runner and have my regular routes. Leaving a note of exactly where I will be running every time is just not going to happen. Even if I said I would do it, it still wouldn't happen in reality. Further, many times, I take a different path than I originally planned. The woman here was probably the same way.

Maybe a tangent but last week I watched the movie Frozenabout three friends stuck on a ski lift after the mountain closes for several days. It was a decent movie in the vein of Open Water and Jaws. They explain the lack having a cell phone in the movie, though on AT&T, I never consider my phone a via option outside of town; I couldn't help but think, PLB, PLB, PLB. A dang SPOT2 could have solved the whole thing and a decent strobe light might have helped considerably.

As I have stated earlier regarding the injuried woman, I never really needed my SPOT before I got it but I and my family are certainly glad I have it now.

Ok - How about an email to friends (or facebook note)
Listing possible where's and when to start looking. even if its 2-3 parks and possibly 10-30 trails, it gives SAR a good place to start.

I, too, watched Frozen couple of weeks ago. Rather good movie (although not without couple of typical logical mistakes). Also good for pondering about what should have been done/ what would you do/ what would you bring etc. It reminded me the thread here on ETS about paracord rappeling .
Maybe I did not pay enough attention but what was the reason why no one carried a cell phone? Where they out of range?

You might want to test that out. Sprint has worked for me on mountain peaks in Tahoe, including Heavenly and others. I'm talking 4 out of 5 bars. I was quite amazed.



That's certainly a good idea, no question. Facebook has been instrumental in finding people and solving a few crimes.

Sprint will work outside of town, CDMA carriers have a lot more coverage. AT$T/GSM is non existent outside major towns.

That's certainly true in some areas. However, some areas I've been my AT&T phone worked fine where Sprint and Verizon did not.

There's an argument to be made for carrier-diversity among your party.

I guess I should have prefaced with my area. From the west end of TN to Washington DC, South to the Carolinas and North to Michigan GSM coverage has been getting worse once you get out of any decent sized towns. Its almost like they have transmitters at the town limits, people's gsm phones drop there. I was keeping an analog cdma and a gsm phone for diversity but in the last few years the coverage areas of either has gotten so low it doesn't matter anymore.

Cell coverage certainly isn't great in the I-81 corridor or 60 miles west of DC in Virginia. I have Verizon and always lose the signal about 70 miles west of DC in Virginia headed toward the mountains. Friends and I caravanned to Pigeon Forge, TN in October and relied on walkie-talkies to communicate between vehicles (I-66 and I-81). I wouldn't bet a nickel on getting a cell signal anywhere along that route -- outside of the few significant towns.

At 3700 feet in the Shenandoah Mts, at the campground we frequent, there are only a couple of campsites where a signal is possible for most peops I know. But I did meet someone with a Droid last summer and they were pulling up weather radar away from the usual good spots for a signal. I don't think they were on Verizon.

In the movie, Parker (girlfriend) had a phone in the locker but was talked out of getting it by the boyfriend as he tried to repair a wrongly taken conversation.

AT&T in Arizona is horrible outside of town and that includes stretches of state routes between cities, (not major freeways). I have been on the top of 4 Peaks and at the 1.5 mile rest house in the Grand Canyon and AT&T had no service. My hiking partner who has Verizon had good signal at both and had to use his phone. In the Superstitions when I had Sprint I knew exactly where I could pick up service coming out of the canyon. With AT&T I have to travel an extra 4 miles out and even then have to reset my phone or wait another few minutes to pick up a tower. YMMV with provider and location.

Some areas have set moritoriums on building additional cell towers.
I don't know the reasoning.

I'm 5 miles off Interstate 5, and always had bad cell coverage. I bought a TracFone and couldn't get any kind of signal. My vet's wife refers to this as 'cell hell'. So I called a couple of cell phone services and asked if they wanted to put up a cell tower in my back yard. They said they would like to, but they couldn't due to the local moritorium.

Sue

I have had great experiences with Verizon, connecting on the Channel Islands, which are outside their official coverage area, aw well as other odd locations. On one trip, my basic phone worked where a sat phone flunked out.

Mountains add in a lot of dead zones as the signals get bounced and or blocked. My parents home is in a valley and we can't get a signal there, but 1 mile down the road I get a perfect signal where the two streams and valleys merge so the area is open enough that the signal can get in.
Now with a droid I only have to go 1/4 mile down the road, the reception has improved that I can still get a signal that last 3/4 of the mile where I couldn't before. The higher end phone has that much of a better antenna.
I drove down on the 4 wheeler to meet someone who wanted to visit us, she had to turn around 1 mile away from there and drive the 7 back to town then make a call on her at&t phone, I assumed she had called from where I was and wondered where she was when I got then so I had to sit and wait for 20 minutes for her to drive the 7 miles back from town to meet her again.
On top of the mountain I have a perfect signal vioce and data, yet no one else on other carriers can get a call in or out. So its partly the better carrier but partly a better phone too.
I actually have the cb radio to converse with others who don't have the coverage.

Long time lurker here who registered to respond to this thread.

One thing to note is that sometimes a 911 call might go through even though your phone shows no reception. My provider is T-Mobile, and they used to share cell towers with another major provider (not remembering which) and now, even though they no longer share towers, it appears they have an agreement concerning emergency calls. When all reception is lost the phone will say "emergency calls only". Customer service confirmed that it means you will still be able to dial 911 even though other calls won't go through.

Since I have an older phone mine doesn't display their handy little message, so at this point I just have to take their word that if I need help my phone is going to work. But I have seen it on the phones of those I share my plan with, so I know it does occur.

I believe this information is important because in a survival situation you'd want to try your phone anyway, even if it shows no reception, and that little bit of knowledge could be the thing that saves you. Of course from what I understand it wouldn't work if you're out of range of all cell towers, but at least it's something to try.

Welcome aboard, Ann!

Your post reminds me of the James Kim family tragedy of 2006 -- when their car got stuck on a remote road in the southern Oregon mountains. James did not survive.

I recall reading that even if a phone is simply on it will "ping" whatever cell towers are around and that can help pinpoint your location.

Something like that, others may know more on that aspect.

Welcome Ann and thanks for your input. Hope you provide many more.

Thats a good point, and we can thank the FCC/Congress for it

Very interesting. Any idea what "Phase II" information is? Hopefully "location" is phase I....

Just a reminder:

In fringe areas, text messages will often get out even if you can't get a reliable signal for a voice call.

Apparently, cell phones keep trying to send a text until they succeed. They only need a tiny fraction of the bandwidth of a voice call, and only need a signal for a few moments.

I have seen a number of news reports where people were able initiate rescue by texting.

The 911 only or emergency only message doesn't mean you have no reception, it means you have recpetion but no service with your provider or no roaming agreement with whomever's tower your on. If you have no reception then you can't make any calls.

I never heard...

Did the Kims call 911 and were just out of range, or were they just trying to call people they knew?

Welcome, Ann! This is a really lopsided board, so we need more women! But the guys are nice and very knowledgeable.

Sue

There are more details at the link below. Two engineers for Edge Wireless had the idea to search cell records for the Kim's phone and contacted authorities with their plan. It took more educated sleuthing after finding the ping (from a text message that had been sent to one of the Kims' phones) and that pointed searchers to the road where the Kim's car had gotten stuck in snow.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/06/national/main2232874.shtml


Searchers rescued Kati Kim, 30, and her daughters Penelope, 4, and Sabine, 7 months, along a remote forest road Monday afternoon.[color:#000066] The key to finding them, police said, was a "ping" from one of the family's cell phones that helped narrow down their location. Though cell phone signals are rare in the area, reports CBS News correspondent Blackstone, the family's phone connected briefly to a distant tower as it received a text message. That gave searchers a place to look.[/color]

There are other threads where I've posted more detailed stuff on cell phones.

Eugene and EMPNotImplyNuclear are both correct that this is mandated by the government (not like you couldn't find that out yourself... figured I'd throw my knowledge 2 cents).

Susan, you can get "pings" but not be able to complete a voice call. This is why SMS messages can get through. At a cell site there is a control channel, and a number of voice channels. Your phone is constantly trying to listen to the control channel, and sends information to the tower on a periodic basis. If you send/receive an SMS message this is the channel that does that. Your phone WANTS to be connected to this channel ( ET phone home! with a ping! ).

Side note: You'll notice I said "always on". It is segmented into "buckets", and when you send a text message, it takes up a bucket(s). Those buckets cost you from $0.10 to $0.25. Whether you sent the message or not, the "bucket" is always there.

There's something I don't get...

Triathlete Debbie Collins is a triathlete! With a sprained ankle (or even a broke leg) she could have hopped out of there in 6 days. It's not like her hand was trapped under a boulder!

If I knew I didn't tell anyone where I was going I would low-crawl out rather than hope someone notice I was gone.

Good info, ki. Thanks for the welcome everyone.



This is pure speculation, but I wonder if she might have stayed put not necessarily because she felt she couldn't get out, but that, as an athlete, she did not want to injure herself further by forcing it if she didn't have to. After all, she had 6 layers of clothing and unlimited water, and knowing the trails as well as she did she may have assumed that someone would pass by sooner or later and that she'd be fine until then.

It appears to me that if she had realized how difficult it would be to find her and understood how dangerous a position she was in then she would have done everything possible to get out of there regardless of its effect on her injury.

Oh really! Can you recount any examples? How far have you hopped on a sprained ankle, much less a broken leg? A sprained ankle is essentially identical to a fracture in terms of field first aid, and they generally are quite painful. Sometimes you can move a bit if the ankle is wrapped tightly, but it really helps to have a crutch or a companion to lean on if you are going to move any distance (like 100 yards or so).

Evidently she was in a location where she had water. Moving away from water, she could easily have gotten into a much more serious situation, aggravating her injury, becoming immobilized, and out of reach of water. I think she followed a pretty decent strategy.

The occasions on which I have had to deal with a gimpy leg have not been fun at all. I have helped pull a lot of people out of the woods with sprained ankles/broken legs and the like; the best way to do this is with a stretcher, or in some cases, with the victim on a horse. Well actually, nothing beats a helicopter.

I was on a climbing trip in Alaska and my partner fell and hit his foot against a rock causing an ankle injury. He had significant pain and noticeable swelling. Several days later after we finished the climb he was diagnosed with a distal fibula fracture, aka broken ankle.

I once fell 500+ vertical feet skiing down a 38 degree couloir and partially avulsed my right quad tendon among other injuries. I wrapped my leg with a coban and skied for several more days.

Mountaineering and Exploration literature is filled with many examples of people experiencing serious injuries, some life threatening, and walking, limping and crawling back alive.
I've personally witnessed people basically duct tape themselves together and walk out with a full load of gear to get home.

Thank you - you gave a very convincing answer to my question.

Ditto. If it was a severe ligament strain -- it's crippling. I've had a few wicked ones that had me on crutches and in pain for months. Very inconvenient when it's your clutch foot, let alone miles from a trailhead. Makes me wince to think about it.

I'm trying to recall those injuries and picture myself hobbling/crawling that last couple or few miles of some of our Shenandoah hikes. Hard to imagine.

And so is being in the woods for that many days. I need to get serious about a PLB, though I never go into the woods alone.

I was moving from San Jose, CA to Las Vegas, NV. The van was packed, the dog was in the front seat, the cat was in her carrier. I went back upstairs to grab my pillow and the cat's water bowl, and missed the last step coming down. Badly, badly sprained ankle. I had to hold onto a chair to get out to the van. Couldn't stay, the new roomie was moving in that afternoon.

500+ miles to go. Ford van with a stiff clutch. Ace bandage was packed somewhere. I got onto the freeway and drove until I was forced to stop for gas and a hamburger. I had to press the clutch just right to be able to get it down, and couldn't hold it down for long. I couldn't keep putting it down to go through the line at the McD's drive-thru, so I hobbled in... and couldn't get over the speed bump. A SPEED BUMP! On otherwise smooth pavement. Finally, another car came through and I asked the driver if I could lean on his car.

So, I'm with Hikermor on this one. Hopping on rough terrain is just begging for more trouble.

"I once fell 500+ vertical feet skiing down a 38 degree couloir and partially avulsed my right quad tendon among other injuries. I wrapped my leg with a coban and skied for several more days."

Sorry, but anyone who hurts himself and keeps skiing for several more days isn't hurt very badly. But a twinge at the wrong time could have changed all that, couldn't it? Then what?

My opinion on Debbie Collins was that she didn't think it necessary to take a cell phone, a whistle or a lighter, because she was sure nothing would happen. It hadn't up till then, right?

Sue

"...Badly, badly sprained ankle..." Yes that must have hurt and I bet my climbing partner with the fractured ankle (confirmed by x-ray in Anchorage) was feeling some pain too but we climbed for 11 more days.

People have different experiences with pain and injury and what they can do. When I injured my leg skiing it was a real musco-skeletal injury and very painful. Painful enough that getting up from sitting was excruciating so I did not sit down much. I also did not have full range of motion due to pain. I checked with an orthopedic surgeon friend to see if there was a chance for permanent injury and kept skiing since the trip was part of an advanced avalanche course that would be difficult to for me repeat later.

My outdoor background is mostly from the mountaineering school that considers "bivouac" a French word for "mistake" and self-reliance not optional but necessary. As I said before, there are just too many examples of athletes, climbers and explorers performing at better than just sitting and waiting for help levels while injured and in pain to accept that sitting and waiting is always the best option.

I bet Tyler Hamilton was a bit uncomfortable when he finished 4th at the 2003 Tour de France with a broken collar bone and other injuries from a serious crash. Nah, on second thought he must have been fine since he only needed to have a few teeth replaced from the grinding due to pain.

When Doug Scott Fell on the Ogre and smashed both of his knees he didn't whine about it, he just crawled out. But he probably didn't really hurt himself and was just looking for sympathy.

Sir Douglas Mawson tied the skin from the soles of his frozen feet back on and kept walking alone in Antarctica to get to help. He was probably not in much pain though since frozen feet don't hurt until they thaw anyway.

When one of my friends crashed badly on her last lap of a 24 hr mountain bike race in Italy, smashing her helmet, face, and right leg in the process, she just taped her foot to the bike pedal and finished the race. Then she went to the hospital as a formality since she probably wasn't in pain at the time even though her leg required surgery to repair after she got back to the US.

When a bear mauling victim in Alaska, whom I learned of through photos while taking a WEMT class, ran about a quarter mile back to the trail head he was probably ok. Even thought according to surgeons his leg should not have even been able to support body weight due to the bone and muscle damage.

The Wyoming gas pipeline inspector who arrived in the OR where I work had enough composure to shut of safety valves and then drive herself several miles to get cell phone reception with something like 80% full thickness burns was probably not in much pain. We've all learned that full thickness burns hurt less than partial thickness burns because of the nerves being destroyed.

My point is that people can keep going while tired, injured and in pain if they want to and try. I've seen too many examples on climbing trips, in adventure races and working in an operating room of injured people who did more to help themselves and others than just sit down and wait to have much sympathy for those that do when self rescue is a good option.


Sorry for the rant but this topic is one that gets me worked up a bit.

I also wanted to repeat my first post with links to the story of Danelle Ballengee, arguably one of the worlds most accomplished endurance athletes, who at least tried to crawl for help with a fractured pelvis after falling over a cliff on a training run. She crawled for several hours with a potential life threatening injury. If she had only injured her ankle I bet she would have finished her run and gone home.

The simple fact of the matter is the lady is alive. Sure you armchair her injuries and critique what she should of, could of done but really what is the sense? You were not there and certainly not privy to all the details of what transpired so what gives you the privilege to be so judgmental and so unfairly compare her situation to others?

She is alive and will live to run another race and hike another day and quite frankly, thats all that matters. What more can you ask for in life?

Excellent point. Old saying: "Never judge someone until you have walked (or in this case, crawled) a mile (or more) in his shoes.

We weren't there; we don't know.

Sorry for my delayed reply; my intention was not to work everyone into a defensive fervor. I made the mistake of thinking this was the forum for intelligent discussion about options and potential actions in a survival situation. Had I known this was the "sympathize and reserve judgment forum" I would have found another forum.

LOL.

Yep, that's us: the sympathize-and-reserve-judgment gang.

We must've mellowed. A lot.


:-)

Better the SARJF than the Shoot From the Hip on the Basis of Inadequate Information Forum (SFHBIIF?). The fact of the matter is that the newspaper stories that apparently are our only sources of information so far are simply not detailed enough to allow an informed judgment. Also, I, for one, am not familiar enough with the country in question to really deliver a definitive opinion about many of the specifics in this case.

I have been able many times to compare the newspaper accounts of incidents such as this with what actually happened (i.e., I was there for the entire incident). Frequently, the news distorts reality quite severely, particularly in the early reports.

You can make the best evaluations when you have the best possible information.

I am desolated that this forum has disappointed you, but it eases my pain to know that you will undoubtedly be able to find many places on the internet where our reservations of judgment will not be an issue.

I second that. Welcome aboard Ann!