From Cascade climbers.com From one of the rescuers:
>.Quick update: sorry but again i have not read every page to see what is being discussed..bear with me. Again it would help to limit speculation at least to the folks that were there.
James did not have a sleeping bag or bivy sack. His backpack was under his torso, no insulation under his feet. Extreme living conditions existed. This is what i meant as limited equipment if you find my last posting. I did not see a stove. For all those ready to critique his gear requirements, I have also done similar routes with limited resources.
A few comments on SAR and how we plan a search may help some folk.
ONE method is to use POA (probability of Area ) and POD (probability of Detection). After looking at all the AVAILABLE facts, the search area is divided into sections. Each section is given a POA priority ie the highest priority section is searched first etc. Each team going into the field has to ask/answer questions like,
what is the percent chance that i can see/hear the missing person?
what is the percent chance that the missing person can see/hear me?
what is the percent chance that the person is consious/unconsious?
what is the percent chance that the person would be moving if s/he could.?
All these effect the probability of detection. If its cold and you are injured, you might be holed up in a tree well and so the POD is low and lower yet if you are unconsious. Please if this happenes to you. Mark the nearest Tress or Rock with some marker.
OK so when you get back to SAR base and report in, all this info is takedn down. A POA of 1 with a POD of 50% means another team will go search the same area to try to bring up the POD to a number where we can say we think s/he is not there. At any time the Sheriff can look at the map and see POA and POD as each day developes. POA's are also subject to change as more data becomes available.....hope this is clear.
On climbing, passion in this world is everything and also sadly lacking. In my experience, people that find passion in the mountains bring it down with them and share that passion with others, many non climbers. Many people would have you stay safe in your house, live without passion if it means nothing bad would happen to you..and suddenly you are 80 years old and have done nothing passionate with your life. I am not saying that you have to climb to have passion, you can be passionate about reading. Both its clear that these men were passionate about climbing among other things....sorry to veer off the climbing facts.
Quick note to Debra Leming-Ross ....Mark is one dedicated person.
Very Solid and a honor to work with.
Sean for you and all of the guys on the summit you are my heros. My brother was with you. I have the highest respect for all of you and what you do for people. I hope you are as proud of yourselves as we are of you.
Debra Leming-Ross <<
>>Thanks luzi3, to confirm what he said, I was on the team that got inserted at the summit and was actually one of the two folk that found James ie I was actually in the cave on Sunday. So those were the facts. <<
This scenario, is what was actually observed by the SAR.