The Last Season (25 page)

 

ONE WORD CAME UP
time and again to describe how the backcountry rangers felt at the peak of the search: numb. It was, according to one ranger, “a circus in a
Twilight Zone
episode,” an overwhelming buzz of activity coupled with the odd sensation that they were both spectators and actors on a bizarre wilderness stage. From a personnel standpoint, almost one hundred searchers were focused on finding Randy on July 30—fifty on the ground, including a dozen dog teams, and four helicopters in the air.

By now, every segment had been searched. Unless Randy was purposely hiding out or he'd left the mountains, there was a strong possibility of stumbling upon his body, something the searchers had to steel themselves against as they were inserted into areas already searched. There was even a code word to use over the radio if they found Randy's body, so local media didn't intercept the message before next of kin was notified.

Judi Morgenson, who was getting daily phone updates from both Chief Ranger Debbie Bird and Special Agent Al DeLaCruz, had become convinced something was truly wrong, in part because of a dream she'd had—not once, but twice.

“I was driving down this mountain road and came to a clearing and there was this lake with granite along the shoreline,” she says. “Big trees were hanging over the surface kind of like the bayou, and I looked into the water and it was crystal clear and there was a man with a backpack floating at the bottom of the lake.”

It was vivid—a clear vision that Judi couldn't discount. She asked Debbie Bird if they had checked the lakes in the area. Bird responded that they had been looking “everywhere.” They hadn't brought in divers, as there were literally hundreds of lakes in the search area, but shorelines were searched, as were major waterways. No telltale footprints led them to believe that Randy had fallen into the water, and no dog teams had expressed interest in such locations—at least not before a dog named Seeker started searching a low-priority basin at
the southern end of Segment M.

Like thousands of search-dog handlers nationwide, Linda Lowry had a “real” job; in her spare time, she volunteered for the Contra Costa County search-and-rescue team and was a member of the California Rescue Dog Association (CARDA). Lowry and her dog, Seeker, represented the fifth or sixth wave of search-dog teams to descend upon Kings Canyon. Most had lasted only one or two days before the rough terrain and high altitude disabled them.

Lowry had been dispatched the afternoon before, driven five hours to Cedar Grove, got settled at 3
A.M.
, woke at 5:30
A.M.
, was briefed at 6
A.M.
, and was waiting for a helicopter at 9:30
A.M.
From other dog handlers who'd been in the field she learned that this search was “very personal” and that “They're pushing it hard.” This concerned her.

As a dog-team handler, it was her job to run the search. But since the terrain was so remote and dangerous, none of the dog teams were allowed to enter the search area without rangers, who, in essence, acted as guides. Apparently, some of the dog handlers who had been teamed up with close friends of Randy had difficulty “controlling” the rangers. “They had their own ideas of where Randy would be, but you can't allow those hunches when you're working with a dog,” says Lowry. “You have to put the dog to the advantage of the wind and the terrain and stick to the system you're using, which doesn't always seem like the best plan, especially if you're a ranger and you know the territory backwards and forwards.” The rangers knew Randy wouldn't be out in a place such as a flat, open meadow, so why waste your time with it? You can see clearly that he isn't there. “But as a dog handler,” says Lowry, “you have to cover all of your area. Otherwise you don't get the maximum benefit out of your dog.”

Lowry was relieved when she was introduced to Rick Sanger, who thanked her for being there and immediately made her feel at ease. She didn't know it, but Sanger was equally relieved when he met Seeker—a giant schnauzer that he perceived was a friendly dog. Their assignment was the Window Peak Lake drainage, the same segment searched by Dave Gordon and Laurie Church on the third day of the SAR. They
would meet up with Bob Kenan's team, already working its way into the drainage on foot, carefully scouring some of the dangerous cols that led from the adjacent Arrow Peak Basin.

The Window Peak drainage is an experts-only “detour” from the John Muir Trail. On the grid, it would be like cutting a corner, or taking the shorter, bumpier scenic route instead of the longer, faster interstate highway. It's rough country—some of the roughest in the parks—though you can still travel without a rope if you know how to weave around the cliffs that abound in the area. Though the mileage is technically shorter than taking the longer trail route, the time spent navigating and grunting through no-man's-land would likely double a hiker's time, if he found his way at all. Even rangers get turned back on occasion, for the routes into this high valley are often packed with snow and ice the entire summer. For this reason there are seasons when the Window Peak drainage sees barely a footprint.

“Trail miles and cross-country miles are completely different animals,” says Bob Kenan. “And air miles don't mean a thing. If you think in terms of ‘how the crow flies' in the Sierra, you'll end up in a world of hurt.

“Two or three hundred yards across a talus field might take an hour, where you can jog that same distance on a designated trail in less than five minutes. Cross-country routes can eat you up so bad you feel like kissing the ground when you hit a trail. It's not too hard to find places that haven't seen a footprint in three or four seasons. It takes effort, but there's plenty here in the park. Plenty.”

The Window Peak drainage is enclosed by an assortment of high (up to 13,000-foot) peaks, vertical cliffs, and high-angle glacial moraines, littered with Volkswagen-size boulders that are known to shift and occasionally tumble down with the slightest disturbance. But even though the drainage was deemed a low-probability area, it still had to be searched—twice. “Low probability of area doesn't mean it's a low probability for injury,” explains Sanger.

One of two or three plausible routes into the drainage from the north (off the Bench Lake Trail), Explorer Col is steep, made up almost entirely of loose rock, and usually filled with snow late into the season.
An ice ax is often mandatory to negotiate the final crux.

But once over that col, the Window Peak drainage pours out below like a land that time forgot—bubbling creeks, wildflowers, and sapphire blue mountain lakes seem to drip down the landscape like eye candy from above. At the bottom, the creeks converge into a narrow chasm, which eventually enters Window Peak Lake, nestled beneath two dominant peaks to the west: Window Peak (named for a hole in the granite that makes a “window” on a ridgeline near the summit) and Pyramid Peak (named for its shape). It was, using Randy's description, “rich country.”

Upon landing at the upper end of the basin, Lowry put the orange shabrack search jacket on Seeker, and the dog's playful demeanor evaporated. Time to go to work.

Bob Kenan and Charlie Shelz, who had been scouring the basin's western slope, rendezvoused with Sanger and Lowry. The scale of this basin was such that two search teams on opposite slopes would appear to each other as dots smaller than ants. Movement was often the only visual clue alerting searchers to one another in this vast mountainous terrain. After a brief discussion, the two teams decided on a strategy that would both thoroughly cover the segment and take advantage of the wind that funneled up the basin with an easterly flow, keeping Seeker in the right zone to smell anything down-canyon. Shelz and Kenan would continue down the western slope, while Sanger, Lowry, and Seeker would cover the eastern slope above where the helicopter had landed, then sweep back down the canyon to the center of the drainage.

Seeker was a certified air-scent search dog that had been introduced to cadaver scent, but not enough to build an alert around. CARDA requires that each dog pass a 20-point skills checklist in preparation for a certification test, during which Seeker found two mock victims hidden in 160 acres of wilderness in under four hours. Likewise, Lowry herself had to pass a laundry list of requirements. Lowry had also trained Seeker in tracking, although the dog wasn't certified. “Tracking is always a skill they can fall back on if the day is extremely hot or a scent is evaporating,” she says.

If Seeker smelled human scent while on a search, she would follow it briefly to confirm and then return to Lowry, who had a tennis ball attached to her belt with Velcro. “She loves to hear that ball rip off my belt,” says Lowry. “It's a big game to her, but it's also her alert—all dogs have their own distinct alert.”

Generally, a search dog is put to the roughest terrain in an area first, but in the Window Peak drainage everything was difficult—talus fields, steep slopes, snow. Normally, in rocky terrain, Seeker would have been “booted up,” but the sporadic snowfields proved too slippery for her neoprene booties. For safety, Lowry kept them off.

As they began the search, Lowry stayed toward the center of the basin, where, Sanger warned her, there was a creek. To Lowry it all looked like a snowfield. With Seeker in search mode, Lowry was so pumped on adrenaline, she didn't even feel her lack of sleep. She did, however, feel the 11,000 feet of altitude, starting with a headache that quickly traveled to her stomach.

On the way down the basin, Sanger fanned off to the east and Lowry gravitated toward a distinct spine near the basin's center—a classic route a person might travel because it provided some elevation to visually scout the terrain ahead. To the west of the spine and the creek was snow; to the east, broken granite. The spine itself was a mix of snow, talus, broken granite—the type of terrain you can't take your eyes off of for a second.

A strong draft blew up the basin from the south and west—perfect conditions for Seeker's nose. Moving down the basin in a serpentine pattern, Seeker would periodically come back up the spine to keep within 50 or 75 feet of Lowry, who had vomited numerous times but refused to abandon the search. “Altitude sickness can be horrible,” she says, “but you have to remember what shape the victim might be in and that you might be their last hope. As long as I'm not a liability, I'm not stopping a search.”

Midway down the spine, its western slope steepened, the wind increased, and the snow took on a different consistency, with slippery sections of ice, some of which had a sheen to it, according to Lowry.
Here, Seeker suddenly deviated from her search pattern and angled down and off the spine. Fifty feet below, the dog broke through the surface of what appeared to be a frozen lake.

Lowry watched in horror as Seeker dropped into the dark water. Lowry couldn't move quickly for fear that she'd slide down the incline and end up in the lake as well. Nobody else was close enough to assist, so she picked her way down the slope, calling out “Allez! Allez!” which in French means “go,” but which Seeker knew as “come!”

Lowry was certain she was about to witness her dog's death. The hole in the rotting ice increased in diameter to 10 feet as Seeker swam from edge to edge, struggling frantically to find purchase. Finally, she lurched up and out of the water, her momentum sliding her toward thicker ice, where she got her footing and scrambled up the slope to Lowry.

Seeker lay panting, shivering, and bleeding. Warming her dog as best she could with a jacket, Lowry then took a reading on her GPS and scribbled the coordinates down: “4084.5 North/370.9 East.”

“Seeker bolting off like that was completely uncharacteristic for her while in a search pattern,” says Lowry. “She did not alert traditionally, but she never really had the chance to come back and rip the ball off my waist. I interpreted her behavior, certain that she'd caught scent of something human, and wanted to mark the location.”

Sanger's radio sprang to life when he was about 100 yards from Lowry's location. “Seeker's got a split-open foot,” she told him.

Sanger's first thought was an image of Randy's bloody foot in Seeker's mouth before he realized that Lowry was talking about the dog's paw. He worked his way down parallel to Lowry and Seeker, who were picking the easiest, most benign route possible for bandaged paws.

They headed toward Window Peak Lake, a prearranged helicopter landing zone. Along the way, Sanger continued his search technique, zigging and zagging down the broken scree. He tended toward the creek, where he could hear water cascading in a falls. Snow dominated the center of the drainage, and he kept an eye out for footprints. Near the falls, he maneuvered along the edge of a cliff. Leaning out on an
outcropping of rock, he poked his head under an ice bridge that had formed across the creek. He was hit by a cold burst of air from the turbulent, rushing water forced through a dark, cavernous snow tunnel. It didn't look like anyplace Randy would be if he were alive, so Sanger continued down the drainage, meeting up with Lowry in time to see her off in a military helicopter around 7
P.M.

Kenan radioed Sanger to let him know his team was going to camp higher in the basin. They were taking it slow, really dissecting the terrain and not leaving a stone unturned. Sanger, who, unlike most of the searchers, was not yet entertaining the idea that Randy could be dead, thought that if Randy wasn't injured, he'd gone south, maybe hitched a ride with some trucker on U.S. Highway 395 to a border town, where he'd slipped into Mexico. “The sky,” after all, “is the limit.” That's what Randy had told Sanger only weeks earlier.

Maybe he was on his way to Argentina, heading for some unspoiled wilderness in Patagonia. Right now, he might be holed up in Tierra del Fuego, sipping beer with a pretty Argentinian, having set up his fellow backcountry rangers with mega hours of overtime and hazardous-duty pay while they searched for a ghost. He could have predated that note and been out of the mountains in the dark before the hermit thrush even woke up. This “gone south” theory was not something that Sanger truly believed, but it seemed a happy vision to dwell on while he set up his camp in a stand of lodgepoles near Window Peak Lake's northern inlet.