Region 5 forest ranger activity report

From deep in the Adirondacks: here
Frequent themes:
The old and frail cannot keep up, and are abandoned by the group, who cannot find them on the way back.
Tripped and fell.
And the common solution: So we sent a Ranger into the woods, he found 'em and walked them out...
Admittedly, this is a region and a season in which helicopters can fly less than half the time, and NY Forest Rangers are 7 feet tall and enjoy wading over 9 foot drifts on their snowshoes, but the choice of low tech over high tech solutions and the uniform, apparently effortless success is impressive.

Thanks for the post. Always nice to read about other people's mistakes (to learn from them).

HJ

You don't often see it, the rangers are universally so strong and capable that they seldom need to exert themselves, but if you wait long enough you may be there when the big day comes and has to rip open their shirt and reveal the USFS tights with the big 'S' on the front. There is a rumor that similar tights are issued to some people in the Coast Guard but it remains just a rumor.

They train at a camp in the hills called Wanakena. The first group to train there lived in tents, and spent the first semester building log cabin dorms. Some used chainsaws, some just knocked the trees over and broke them over their knees, gnawed notches in them and dropped them in place...

They used teeth? Isn't that cheating?

HJ

growing up in Up State NY i always wanted to be a forest ranger,i still have a couple kids books from the 50's that i re-read many times with titles like "jimmy helps at the fire tower"...then later on i found out the sort of work rangers really do and took a political science major.

I try to avoid criticizing rangers. It just doesn't seem like something that will end well.

One of the rangers fainted on us while we were gelding his stallion-he wasn't prepared for the old man (a veterinarian) coming out from under with blood up to his elbows. The ranger was big, so his horse was big (maybe 18 hands), and he had been holding the halter. When he fainted, the horse escaped (gelding of horses was done under local anesthesia and light sedation) half gelded and bleeding, and cantered away. We rolled the ranger out of the way, recaptured the horse, re-sedated, and completed the procedure. Toward the end of the procedure, it became apparent that the old man had over-sedated slightly, and the horse began to fall over. I inquired of the old man what he wished me and my brother to do: he indicated that we should hold the horse up. Laid end to end, my brother and I were 12.5 feet long and weighed a quarter ton. The horse was 72 inches at the withers and weighed maybe half a ton. Naturally, the old man assumed that we could prop the horse up. We didn't know any better, so we held him up long enough for the old man to give him a shot of amphetamine, after which he perked up and cantered off.
The horse was pretty tough: I know I would not be cantering anywhere after being half gelded. The ranger rode the horse, suggesting that the ranger was tougher than the horse.

We did not criticize the ranger for fainting.