Tin Mine Canyon Rescue

April 20, 2016
Tin Mine Canyon – Cleveland Nation Forest
2016-016

Written by Eric Holden

At 2230 hours we get a call out for a missing female at the Tin Mine Canyon Trailhead. I meet Cameron at the trail and we find that she was spotted by an Army helicopter and they were able to give us coordinates of her location. Her coordinates put her about 2 miles out in the Hagadar Canyon area. I made a quick call to Ray Weden to have him send her a text to hopefully pinpoint her location, unfortunately she never had data. We knew Glenn was on the way with the truck so Cameron and I decided to head on out and Glenn would run base upon his arrival. After about 45 minutes of trail hiking, we had to bushwhack through steep terrain to finally get to the subject and her dog.

While Cameron spoke with Glenn about the plan of action, I spoke the subject, Jessa, to find out what had happened. While hiking, her dog "Buffy" broke free of her leash and ran away. Jessa gave chase and eventually caught back up with Buffy, but she had to go through the same steep terrain we did with much less gear. She fell a few times and suffered a nasty looking bump to the head. She tried to hike up more to get out of the brush but unfortunately the brush just keeps getting worse the higher you go. Darkness eventually set in and she dialed 911.

Subject and Dog

Cameron-LightHead and Jessa and her Dog
Photo by Eric Holden.

Getting Jessa and Buffy back to the trailhead was quite the team effort. We put a helmet and harness on the her and Cameron belayed her down the steep stuff, while I acted as a human machete and began to carve a path back down the hill to the trail. Glenn was back at base organizing medics to be on scene by the time we got back to base. Even though cut, bruised, and bumped she was quite the trooper and demonstrated great tenacity. After about 90 minutes we reunited Jessa and Buffy with their family. Many hugs and tears were a great reminder on why we do what we do.

RMRU Members Involved: Cameron Dickinson, Glenn Henderson, Eric Holden and Ray Weden.