Recent Mission/Tracking at Night

[Roger Howe]

I had a very interesting mission with Klickitat County Search & Rescue on 03/18/10 on the White Salmon river near Hood River,Or. A missing male high school student had been gone for over 12 hrs near the Conduit Dam. I was called at 1:15am to track. I was the only tracker to begin with. I found a tennis shoe heel mark near the vehicle within 5 minutes using a 3 D cell yellow light. Later I had an experienced tracker arrive and we worked all night following a dirt road which paralleled the river. When the sun came up around 6:30am we tracked a different direction and immediately found the same tracks I originally found near the vehicle. We tracked down stream aprox 1/2 mile finding heels marks, scuffs, broken twigs,compressions, continuity of sign,etc. before our kayak team found the subject in the river. We continued to track to the exact spot where the victim had actually sat on the cliffs edge.When the sunlight shown early in the morning we were able to see clearly where the subject had sat (seat marks). We could also see a broken twig on a tree which he broke when he fell. The fact we were able to track from the vehicle to the victim helped the County Sheriff in their investigation greatly. A very sad outcome for the victim but a very rewarding outcome for the trackers.

post script:06/21/10 I just received a request from the Sheriff regarding the above mission. Wanted a "sworn statement" for the courts. This should be a good reminder to keep your own set of very accurate records of your missions.