Mountain Rescue Doctor

I was at the library looking through some books to see what they had to say about altitude sickness and noticed the book Mountain Rescue Doctor. The author Christopher Van Tilburg is an emergency room doctor who is part of a volunteer mountain search and rescue team called the Crag Rats in Hood River Oregon.

Each chapter is the story of a rescue (and/or search). In addition to each rescue story he goes into discussions of other topics like the risk reward trade off of outdoor activities (and how having a family changes that), his background, tips for survival, and so on.

There are search and rescue teams that run in with a litter (stretcher) and carry the person out. The group this book is about take care of the situations where they need to set up ropes and climb to get to the person.

The individual stories are fairly good. Even though he describes a variety of situations, it does get a little repetitive to read about, but not too bad. I liked getting a sense for the search and rescue side of rescues. I was actually surprised by how willing they were to send out rescue missions. I was also surprised that in most states, unless you do something especially negligent the state actually pays for the rescue mission and that large parts of rescue missions are done by unpaid volunteer groups. One amusing item is that while everyone says you should have basic survival stuff (like a map, compass, whistle...), in a large portion of the rescues the most helpful item was a cell phone (well, sufficient food, water and shelter were also fairly key). In one of the stories of an extended search they even had the cell phone company triangulate the position of the climbers.

The book did drive home the need to make sure rangers know your plan in as much detail as possible. Even knowing stuff like what gear you have and your experience level can help guide their search (more important when doing technical climbing than hiking). Also making sure you have enough equipment to deal with unexpected situations and how helpful it can be to have a partner with you. He also pushed that if you get in trouble you should stop and take a moment to evaluate your situation rather than just pushing on. He also discussed how important it is to get medical attention quickly for serious injuries and that the first hour is especially critical (this is where cell phones become really helpful - normally someone would have to hike out to get to a phone, add in a gps device and the search can be way faster).

Semi-related, after reading the book I bought a gps app for my phone that gives me the raw gps data since knowing the closest address isn't terribly helpful in the woods. I find it kind of strange that the standard map program won't just tell you the raw coordinates.