Boomerang Rescue

Thursday, April 17th 2003 - Ralph Powers

Location: Boomerang Cave Trip Leader: Ralph Powers On Trip: Clay Gentillon, Eddie Henicksman, Kory Soderquist, Cory ?, Ralph Powers The self named “rednecks” of Idaho had been wanting to go caving with me for quite sometime. Since I didn’t have a problem going on a Sunday, it was going to be the best date for all of us as employers tend to look down on their employees taking un-authorized days off just to go caving. I of course have no such problems as I suffer from chronic UN-employment. Finding the place where I was living at proved not so difficult and we stopped at a maverick to pick up my breakfast and drove on up the canyon. We got to the ski-lodge’s parking area and waited for the two Cory’s to show up, which they did roughly a half hour later. While we were getting our gear together a truck pulling a trailer with two hot-rod snow-mobiles showed up. There was talk of asking the snow-mobilers to give us a ride up the hill. I took it as a joke but found out that one of them was serious enough to ask after helping them pull their snow mobiles off the trailer. They were happy to help us. One by one they sped us up the hill at top speed til we reached the lift house. Honestly after my last trip up, taking the actual ski-lifts and now a ride on a fast moving sled, I was thinking myself being spoiled of not having to hike up the hill at all. The snow was a lot slushier this weekend as warmer temps prevented us from hiking on top of the snow during the “level” portion of the hike. Either way this route is definitely much better than going straight up the draw in any weather. We got to the entrance in good time and rigged up. Order of descent was established with me taking up the rear. Once down climbing up the next portion wasn’t as hard as it was when I was last here. But it was much slicker than last time from all the moisture due to the run-off / melt. The trip through the cave was good and without incident. The ascent out of the entrance was another matter. One of the Cory’s, and I still can’t differentiate between the two was the last one out. He wore himself out about half way up. Originally he was using a Texas system and it wasn’t well put together. Adequate but not efficient enough to do such a deep drop. I had re-rigged his Texas into a frog and he enjoyed the difference at the bottom of the cave and the second drop. However the entrance was too much for him. Turns out that he made the common mistake of using his arms to pull himself up the rope rather than standing up on his legs. That was an over-sight on my part in telling him to place his feet directly beneath him and standing up from a squat instead of pulling himself up. The good thing was we had brought extra rope with us. I had the foresight to bring a couple of pulleys and Clay had some gear as well. To my surprise when we were getting the gear ready one of the guys had hiked in a set of edge-rollers and these were put to good use. Clay had gone down on a separate rope to check out Cory’s condition. He climbed back up and told me that the guy was just plain worn out and about 40 to 50 feet down below the lip. A quick discussion and we decided that it would be best to haul the guy out the rest of the way. Drawing upon everything that I learned from UCSR and other single rope rescue techniques I managed to rig up a haul system which ended up being a 2:1 with a re-direct. Clay had sacrificed some 7mm cord to make prussik captures on the re-direct pulley. Clay went back down to where Cory was waiting and rigged a pulley to Cory’s harness and threaded the rope and brought it back up to us. Then Clay went back down again to keep an eye on the hauling since we would be out of sight and could not see if there would be a problem.. Eddie and the other Cory and myself would perform the actual hauling with myself in the lead to watch the whole system and take care of any snags. There was only one where the knot tying two of the ropes together had reached the re-direct pulley. Within about ten minutes we had Cory up and safely out of the cave. He was thankful and so was I that we were able to perform a “self-rescue” without having to call for outside help. Cory rested up and ate and was able to walk out on his own to the lift house. The way down was rather fun. The group brought up some Mylar sheets and the idea was to sit on them and slide our way down the hill. Not much control but a fast way to get down. One of the Cory’s had brought his snow-board and was able to make his way down better than the rest of us. The other Cory had a pair of short skis and beat everyone down. Other than the rescue/haul it was a good trip. I’m glad that I spent the time learning how to rig up different systems, the education proved invaluable in this circumstance. I hope I never have to use it again.