Thursday, April 3, 2014

Rescue on Hula - Epilogue

Nick and I compared some notes after this happy ending to that adventure. 
  1. In Nicks’ expert assessment, he thought that given the condition we found the two men and the way they were barely moving,  had we waited until morning to begin the search, we would have needed to bring body bags. 
  2. While I was asleep next to the fire, Nick talked to the guys to see what happened.  Ats it turns out, they were both in the canoe and standing up.  A massive gust of wind swooped in and knocked them both clean out of the canoe into the water.  They latched on the side of the canoe but could neither stand, nor swim in the shallow water and endless mud bottom of Hula.
  3. They actually fell in at 6 PM.  They could hear Ted yelling for them but the wind was so strong, and they so tired, they were hidden in the waves and ineffective in yelling back to Ted.  It took them more than two hours of sliding the canoe forward in the water/mud to get to where they ended up. At one point the canoe overturned.  They lost all their gear.  
  4. Under their raincoats, they both wore wool underwear – not cotton – and we theorized that the wood contributed to their being alive as wool insulates even when wet.  They were muddy from head to toe.
  5. They struggled to pull the canoe far up the rock because they were terrified that the wind would take it away.  Once on top of the rock, they were so cold and tired, they tried to get out of the wind by gong over the edge of the hill.  Nick surmised that they were hallucinating at that point because the little guy said they tried to light a fire but the grass was green and would not burn.   It was May 17 – there was no green grass on that rocky hill.
  6.  At that point, it was pitch black, they were exhausted and both fell asleep while trying to breath into their rain jackets to conserve body heat.   It turns out that Nick and I had just barely woken them up.   The little guy thought he was dreaming when he heard us yelling and almost didn't respond.
  7. Nick  thought  if we’d been an hour later, that would have meant the end for a least the big guy.
  8. In retrospect, I’ve kicked myself for not going with the wind and into the rough water which would have accounted for their drifting direction.  We would have found them much earlier with a counter clockwise rotation on Hula.  
  9. I’ve maintained hope for many years that I would never have to do this again. Fate has kindly cooperated with me, thus far.  But the next time I have to go on a rescue , we’re going into the rough water first.



Once this story got out, I had several parties call me and ask to hire me to go in to  find a group of boy scouts up on the Echo Trail, find a young couple on Insula,  get a message to someone on Knife Lake.  I had to apologize and refuse.   "Joe Baltich - Rescue for Hire" LOL! That’s really not my line of work.

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Comment if you'd like. I'd also like to hear your stories of staying at Northwind Lodge.