I seem to remember a weekly diary titled thus, and haven't seen it for awhile. So, I'm bringing it back. After watching CSPAN this morning, I feel inspired.
My happy story is about a great athlete, Danelle Ballengee, falling off a cliff while on a training run, and her dog leading the rescue team to her. After two nights in sub-freezing temps, with a broken pelvis and many other injuries. That must have been a long two nights.
It's quite a story, and being an ex-avalanche search dog trainer and dog lover (yes, I love pooties, too!) it really connected with me. Let me tell you about it over the jump...
The athlete is Danelle Ballengee. The hero is Taz, a rather scruffy looking three-year old German Shepherd/golden retriever mix. Danelle is an accomplished endurance athlete, a member of the world champion Team Nike adventure racing team, a four-time Pikes Peak Marathon winner, and the female record holder for climbing all 55 14,000+ foot peaks in Colorado in 14 1/2 days, so people weren't too worried about her not coming back from a training run at first.
Meanwhile, Danelle had slipped on a tricky part of the Hurrah Pass trail outside of Moab, where she lives. This slip on black ice led to a multi-pitch fall of about 70 feet, resulting in numerous injuries, the worst being a pelvis broken in four places. Basically. she had bounced off her butt, out of control, over several cliffs.
And now she had to get out.
Her neighbors in Moab were the first to notice her not returning. And her parents were soon called. But no one wanted to sound the alarm too quickly:
"With all of the things Danelle does, we didn't really want to bother people and make a big deal of it if she was just out training. But we just had a gut feeling that we needed to do something, and thank God we did," her mother, Peggy Ballengee, said. "We've told her before to be safe and leave a note about where she's going or go with someone, but that's not always possible. Sometimes she can't find someone to train with because she might be going out for a 30-mile run, then a 100-mile ride. Those are the things she does. That's her job."
But officials were called, her car was found, and then Taz was spotted. But Taz was on a mission, and it didn't involve getting fed:
As the search team gathered at the trailhead, a dog matching the description of Taz was spotted by police a couple of miles down Kane Creek Road. It was heading toward town but suddenly changed directions when authorities tried to apprehend it.
"We were going to try to identify the dog, but the dog basically didn't want to be caught and instead turned around and headed back toward the trail," said Curt Brewer, chief deputy of the Grand County Sheriff's Office. "When that happened, the search crew decided to follow the dog. And the dog took our rescue personnel right to her..."
Now that's a good dog!
Someday I'll share the story of my avi dog Crystal and I almost finding a missing person in the middle of a blizzard in Alta. The wind was swirling so hard, and the snow was so thick, that in the darkness we just couldn't quite hone in on him. I knew she could smell him, as she kept poking her nose in the air that inquisitive way. But we just couldn't find him in middle of that storm...it ended up dropping over five feet of snow.
Crystal found him the next day, about an hour after I broke my leg in a bit of an avalanche control incident. My co-handler was with her, as I was in a hospital getting ready to have a stainless steel rod inserted into my tibia. The worst part was Jamie's body was less than 20 feet away from where we had been searching at one point, buried in a tree well. We were that close.
It still crushes me at times. We might have found him in time, as it had only been about eight or ten hours then.
It amazes me, when I think back on that period in my life, just how many dead people we dealt with. It's a very unforgiving environment. Yet one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It's the only place I have ever seen an ethereal quadruple rainbow in a cross shape, right beside Mt. Superior hanging brightly in the alpenglow.
But anyway, any one out there got another happy story? It's a beautiful sunny Sunday morning here in Bend and my little Jack Russell has already informed me she's expecting a walk along the river soon :)