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Survival Story
Harsh Lessons at 11,000 Feet
By VALERIE CLARK
Rising more than 11,000 feet in the heart of Oregon’s ancient, volcanic
Cascade mountain range, the state’s tallest mountain peak is at
once awe-inspiring and intimidating, and some who haven’t shown
it the proper reverence through the years have paid the ultimate
price. One person who has felt the wrath of Mt. Hood and lived to
tell about it has since summited its towering peak, but he’ll never
forget the day the mountain showed how dangerous it can truly be.
Michael Leming, chief talent scout for Nike and a dedicated athlete,
got into climbing as an extension from his other outdoor activities,
which includes running marathons.
“There’s this whole spiritual side to climbing that makes it really
special,” said Leming, who returned to his native Portland about
10 years ago after stints in Europe, Asia and South America. A chance
meeting with some members of the Portland Mountain Rescue team in
the Timberline Lodge parking lot piqued Leming’s interest in the
organization, which he quickly became a part of. “It was a great
way for me to get a lot of training from world-class climbers,”
he said. “It was pretty selfish motivation, but the whole idea of
giving back was cool too.”
An experienced veteran of dozens of trips to Mt. Hood’s summit,
a climb on January 17 promised to be no different from any other
mountain climb for Leming. “It was a perfect day, with great conditions,”
Leming said, adding that there were some “weird temperature inversions”
that weren’t a cause for concern at first, but would prove to foreshadow
the events that would soon unfold. Leming was about 200 feet from
the top of the mountain on what he thought was a routine route,
when disaster struck. He compares the vertical portion of the climb
to ascending a ladder, except that in this case, the ladder fell
apart. “We weren’t roped off; I wasn’t too worried about it. I’d
done it 100 times.
But this time, the building collapsed.” A block of ice broke apart,
throwing chunks of ice and snow at him and the friends he was climbing
with, and sending him down the mountain. With no time for fear,
instinct took over. “It’s always slow motion,” he said. “There’s
no fear, you’re just thinking of getting out of the situation. I
just knew that I needed to stop.” After a 200-foot sliding fall,
Leming’s crampon caught in the snow and stopped him, dislocating
his ankle in the process.
The unstable mountain continued its punishment. “I was pummeled
for three and a half hours and if I hadn’t hammered my ax and clipped
in, I would have been taken out for sure,” he said. Not only did
the ordeal injure his left ankle, but it also shredded ligaments
in his right ankle, rendering him unable to move even a few feet
and hindering his rescue. “The pain was pretty bad,” he said.
He would have to wait several hours for rescuers to reach him, strap
him into a harness, and lower him to a flat spot on the mountain
called the Devil’s Kitchen, where a helicopter could land safely
to transport him off the mountain. “It was in kind of a difficult
position. There was a constant bombardment of ice where he ended
up after the fall,” explained Erik Broms, an eight-year veteran
of Portland Mountain Rescue, and one of the first people to reach
Leming that day.
His job was difficult, he said, because he was trying to help Leming
while taking his own safety and that of the other rescuers into
account. “I didn’t want to put myself in harm’s way and get hit
by ice,” said Broms, who logged 300 hours of mission training and
time last year with the all-volunteer Portland Mountain Rescue.
“That’s not our job as rescuers.” Eventually Broms was able to get
a rope to Leming, who was then safely maneuvered behind a large
grouping of ice and rocks that sheltered him from the falling chunks
of ice and snow.
Portland Mountain Rescue paramedic Troy Norman was able to examine
him, and he was airlifted off the mountain about five hours after
the initial fall. Leming’s journey was just beginning, as he would
face weeks of physical rehabilitation. His ankles are still stiff
and swell up occasionally, but he says he’s about 70 percent recovered
now. In fact he summited Mt. Hood just 13 weeks after the accident.
“I had to get back up as soon as possible,” he said, adding that
he was a bit nervous about the climb. “You’re gun shy for awhile,
absolutely. I have confidence in my ability, but you can’t control
everything. The mountain was doing something that I wasn’t predicting.”
He said he has learned from the experience that you can’t take anything
for granted on the mountain. “I should’ve been on a rope, and I
would’ve been fine,” he said. “I’ve got to stop playing Russian
roulette. There’s other things in this world that are more important.”
“What happened was the result of a bad decision,” Broms said, adding
that many people climbed Mt. Hood that day, but took a safer route
by climbing up the Mazama Chute. “It was the safer route to go,”
Broms said. He stressed that climbers who want to climb Mt. Hood
should bring along the essential safety gear, go with someone who
is experienced, and keep a close eye on the weather. About 40,000
people fill out permits to climb Mt. Hood each year, and since record
keeping started in 1896 there have been over 130 fatalities on the
mountain, according to an article by CBS News.
Survival
Story
Lost in the Woods
by VALERIE CLARK
photo courtesy of Gary Till
"I’m sure the road is just up ahead,” Gary Till told himself,
speeding through an icy September rain on a borrowed 4-wheeler.
As he raced through the trees north of the Three Sisters wilderness,
he struggled to maintain his composure, though he could feel the
edges of raw, pulse-pounding panic begin to creep in around him.
Everything looked the same no matter which way he turned, and in
the driving rainstorm, the experienced woodsman couldn’t rely on
the sky to help him get his bearings. As hours passed and the late
afternoon sun quickly set behind the darkening storm clouds, Till
found he had no way to guide himself back to his campsite. The adrenaline
rush of panic slowly turned to a calm resignation as he realized
he would be spending a cold night in the woods.
Till, who lives in Newberg, made the drive to Central Oregon in
late September 2007 for a weekend deer hunt with his extended family
near the Three Creeks area south of Sisters. He had no idea that
a quick ride about a quarter mile away from his campsite to dispose
of a deer carcass would change his entire weekend – and the rest
of his life. He left camp on a designated road, but it quickly faded
into the woods.
On the way back from his errand, Till made a fateful wrong turn.
“I decided to go back to camp a different way,” Till said. “I didn’t
hit the road, and that’s where the whole fiasco started.” He later
learned that the road he was searching for turned south just past
the camp. “I missed it completely,” he said. He tried to search
for familiar landmarks, even as the wind and rain howled through
the trees, and he unknowingly wandered farther and farther away
from his campsite. “Talk about an uneasy feeling,” he said. “There’s
no way to describe it other than panic. It was raining sideways…a
big storm was coming in. I didn’t have any bearings at all. The
weather just took all that out from under me.”
A frequent camper and outdoorsman, Till never leaves home without
a pack full of ‘goodies’ — a GPS unit, compass, water, food and
materials to start a fire, but for his quick errand into the trees,
he found himself woefully unprepared for the elements. “I didn’t
have anything with me but a Leatherman tool,” Till said. After a
couple hours spent seemingly riding around in circles, Till found
that he was no closer to his campsite than when he’d started. “I
just got more and more disoriented, and started to hear things.
It was probably around 7 or 7:30pm, and I decided I was just going
to stop,” he said. “I made the conscious decision to stay the night
out there.” Till remembered advice from the Discovery Channel’s
Survivorman show, where one man pits himself against the elements
with only his wits to rely upon. “I told myself: ‘Don’t panic, just
stay calm and sit still. Don’t do anything stupid,’” Till said.
He decided to stay in one place rather than make his situation even
worse by wandering in the dark, and started searching out a spot
to make camp. Sgt. Scott Shelton, commander of Deschutes County
Search and Rescue, said Till definitely did the right thing by staying
in one place through the night. “Finding a moving target is much
harder than finding one that’s stationary,” he explained.
Till found a relatively dry place to hunker down, and prepared for
a long night. “I found a nice big fir tree with some really heavy
lower boughs and I just kind of crawled under there. I laid there
for probably an hour,” he said. Sometime during the night, the rain
finally gave way to the quietest snowfall Till had ever seen. Despite
his situation, he found himself calmed by the stillness and beauty
of nature at its best. “It was incredibly quiet, which was actually
kind of nice. It was neat out there, all by myself and quiet.”
The silence gave him a chance to reflect on his thoughts, which
always turned to his family. “I kept looking at my wedding ring
and thinking of my wife and my newborn son, my friends and family.
And I thought: ‘I have to get through this, I have to do what it
takes to get through it,’” Till said. Meanwhile, the Deschutes County
Search and Rescue team had mobilized and formed a search perimeter
around the area where Till was believed to be. Shelton said the
wintry weather made the case a critical one for the staff and volunteers.
“We knew we had an urgent response,” Shelton said. “There were some
pretty nasty weather conditions going on.” Amazingly, Till could
hear search parties calling his name, but he didn’t dare venture
into the dark forest to find the source of the voices. “I basically
heard that all night,” he said. Shelton explained that searchers
use “sound sweeps,” calling out or using whistles or air horns to
see if the subject is near enough to respond.
Though Till could hear them, his voice wasn’t loud enough in the
wind and snow for them to hear him. The long night grew colder as
the clouds parted, and Till knew there would be no rest for the
weary. Each time he allowed himself to doze off even for a few seconds,
his shivers quickly woke him back up. “I realized: I can’t sleep;
I have to keep moving, or this isn’t going to be good,” he said.
He found two logs that he fashioned into a crude stair stepper,
and he made a 40-yard trail in some pine straw and walked around
in circles.
“It kept my core warm,” Till explained. It also gave him a purpose
and a focus that took his mind off of being scared out in the wilderness,
with only his Gore-Tex rain gear to keep him warm as the temperatures
plunged to about 20 degrees. “It wasn’t bitterly cold, but it was
cold enough,” he said. He took breaks from the moonlight marathon
of exercise for the tiniest drinks of water from dew or snow he
found on pine needles, or to sit for brief spells in the wheel well
of the 4-wheeler, which he kept idling all night.
“I would rev the engine just to make some noise,” he said. And so
passed the longest night of Till’s life, spent in bursts of exercise,
quiet moments of contemplation or just watching the moon creep across
the sky. “It was an incredibly long evening,” he said. Somewhere
around three in the morning, the 4-wheeler ran out of gas, but because
he was its previous owner, Till knew that there was enough of an
emergency reserve in the tank to fuel his ride to safety. Finally,
dawn began to break on a beautiful Central Oregon autumn day and
Till set out on his journey. “I just kept the sun to my back and
rode west,” he said.
Ordinarily, he points out, he doesn’t believe in cross-country 4-wheeling,
and stays on roads or trails. He hit a drainage creek and followed
it until he came to a campsite that, as it turned out, was just
two miles west of his family’s site. “I’m just hungry, tired and
very thirsty. I’m like, ‘Do you guys have any water?’ They said,
‘You must be Gary. You’ve got some people looking for you,’” Till
said. The helpful campers drove Till back to his campsite, and he
was amazed by what he saw along the way. “I just started seeing
rigs,” he said.
“Police, search and rescue, Deschutes County, snowmobiles, a media
rig.” For a split second, he wondered what was going on, and then
it struck him that all the attention was for him. “I was just in
awe of what was happening,” he said.
DESCHUTES COUNTY SEARCH AND RESCUE He was greeted with bear hugs
from his wife and other family members, and someone gave him a cup
of hot chocolate that he describes as “the best thing ever.” And
he was amazed and humbled at the scope of the Deschutes County Search
and Rescue operation.
“They are a well-oiled machine. They undoubtedly would’ve found
me. They do not screw around,” he said. Shelton said the organization’s
trackers are second to none. “We have one of the best teams in the
West right now,” he said. Deschutes County Search and Rescue is
prepared for anything, with a dedicated team of volunteers always
ready to help, a staff member on call 24/7, and equipment for any
kind of rescue operation that might come up in Central Oregon, from
snowy mountains to rushing rapids.
And Shelton stresses the importance of the ninety or so search and
rescue volunteers who have made it through the county’s extensive
application process and training academy. “They’re the neatest people
in the world,” he said. “What they give to the community – it’s
incredible and you can’t put a price tag on it. They’re amazing.
The community is very fortunate to have them, and the sheriff’s
office is extremely fortunate to have them.”
Till says the lessons he has taken away from the experience sound
like clichés, but are valuable just the same. “Never take anything
for granted,” Till said. “I took for granted what I thought would
be a 10-minute trip, and ended up spending the night. You just never
know.” He still camps out frequently, and always carries some kind
of firestarter, a pocketknife and bottled water. He also recommends
carrying a GPS unit or a whistle, or even renting a satellite phone
for the most remote excursions. “Another cliché: Stay calm and don’t
panic. Stay in one place until you can get your bearings,” he said.
“Always keep things in perspective. Think out what’s happening;
that really helped me out.” Shelton agreed. “If you don’t keep your
head about you and keep your wits, you get in trouble,” he said.
“Stay rational. We will find you.”
Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch
Home of Rescued Dreams
Story
by Sondra Holtzman
Photo by Emily Green
Upon first glance, the land was barren, devoid of life. Framed by
panoramic views of the Cascade mountain range, the entire upper half
of the property, carved out of a western-facing hill, was mined for
cinders that would coat high desert roads in winter. Nothing grew
here on this unwanted, devastated piece of earth, guarded solely by
scorpions and lizards. It was the only piece of property Kim and Troy
Meeder could afford in 1992.
Determined to restore and rehabilitate the land, the couple asked
neighboring ranches in the surrounding area for their waste – manure,
stall shavings, moldy hay – anything organic that could be spread
on the floor of the cinder pit. And for the next two years, they covered
the ground by hand, shovel- by shovel-full. At the time, Troy Meeder
was working as a landscape contractor and began bringing trees to
the property that were either blocking someone’s view, had fallen
from visual grace or were destined to be destroyed. “The pine trees
you see around our house today were once in a forest fire that burned
through eastern Bend,” Kim Meeder said.
“Troy was asked to take the trees to the dump, but after scratching
their bark discovered they were still green inside, still very much
alive. So we planted these crispy, black little briquettes around
our home and before long, they began to thrive. Like us, all they
needed was a chance. Few days go by when I’m not entirely grateful
that I wasn’t thrown away when I was blackened by the fires of this
life, when someone gave me a chance.” In 1995, while volunteering
at a breeding ranch not far from their property, Kim observed a horse
whose face was beaten so badly a vet had to be called in to repair
the extensive damage. Another filly was so emaciated, it had lost
one-third of its body weight.
Profoundly impacted by the atrocities that occurred there, she thought,
“Someday, this needs to change. Someone needs to step up and do something.”
It was on this day she realized, sometimes “someone” is us, and sometimes
“someday” is today. These were the first two horses to come home to
what is now known as Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch. From those humble
origins in 1995, the Meeders combined more than 40 years of youth
work experience to create a beacon of hope for children and horses
that have known abuse and neglect.
“When we purchased the property, we had no grandiose vision of what
would happen next,” Kim Meeder said. “We just knew if someone didn’t
intervene for those horses they wouldn’t survive. So we brought them
home to a rock pile and unbeknownst to us, we could never have been
aware of the chain reaction that was about to take place - how our
broken property filled with broken trees and horses would become the
perfect fit to heal the hearts of broken children.” Soon, the couple
began seeing children they didn’t even know arrive at the ranch, having
heard it was a haven for rescued and abused horses. Anxious to help,
they cleaned out paddocks, brushed the animals down and planted flowers
and trees around the ranch. “We began to see that in their efforts
to make the horses better, the kids started getting better,” Kim shares.
“They weren’t coming for what they could get because the horses weren’t
strong enough to carry a rider. They were coming for what they could
give, and it was in the giving that they themselves were made whole.”
In her first book, Hope Rising, Meeder shares a story of witnessing
a selectively mute young girl who hadn’t communicated with any adult
speak freely to a destitute horse. Today, this same young woman who
chose to remain silent for years went on to work in an orphanage in
Peru -teaching English. Kim Meeder reflects on the true beginnings
of the ranch when she tragically lost her parents at a very young
age.
“I look back as an adult and realize out of that tragedy and because
of God’s love I began to heal,” she says. “I couldn’t have known on
the day I was galloping away with tears flying back that the healing
I would know through the love of a little horse and the mercy of God
would become the figurehead of this ranch today. Troy and I want to
pass on what has been extended to us – this is a place where anyone
who needs help, love, healing, security, laughter and peace is welcome,
and it is offered freely.”
As a kid growing up, Troy Meeder remembers working on his uncle’s
ranch in California, mending fences and hanging out with horses. “I
always felt content and at peace there,” he reflects. “Those simple
values of faith, family, hard work and sharing a meal at the table
together had an enormous impact on my life. Here at the ranch, we
have a Barn Fellowship every other week. It’s a time where families
gather with staff and friends to share a provided meal, sing a few
songs and hear a simple word of encouragement from the Bible. The
heart and soul of this time is about bringing families together. One
mom told me what a blessing it was for her to not have to cook, knowing
she could come here and feed her family. Faith is the glue that holds
this place together.
" The fellowship is our gift back to the community and the reason
the ranch exists.” For the past 14 years, the ranch has never charged
a dime for the services it has extended to over 40,000 visitors (many
were repeat families who came year after year), even despite some
early years when there was $12 in the checkbook and $9,000 in bills.
The foundation program of Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch is unique in that
it pairs one child, one horse and one leader for each session. No
child is ever left behind or lost in a crowd. Kim says, “Our ‘one-on-one’
learning environment is dedicated to restoring the heart, soul, mind
and strength of our kids. Each child is unique and separate, coming
to the ranch for his or her own special needs. Those individual needs
are identified by the staff and a tailored course of action toward
healing is created and faithfully accomplished for every child, free
of charge.”
Each day, “angels in horsehair” become trusted friends and family
to every child who comes, greeting them with a gentle spirit and a
willingness to make dreams come true. For the majority of these “Equine
Counselors,” the ranch has become a safe haven and retreat from a
lifetime of abuse, neglect and hunger. Emerging from a life of incredible
hardship, they become the healing instrument in a child’s life. After
publishing Hope Rising, the Meeders received an overwhelming response
from people all over the world who wanted to know how to create a
Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch within their own community. After a great
deal of planning on how to share their mission, the couple decided
to open the ranch for two weeks a year, with two separate clinics
four days in length, charging the bare minimum for their services.
Troy Meeder says, “Kim and I share what we have learned and hopefully
keep them from falling into the same pitfalls we’ve experienced over
the years,” says Troy Meeder. “We teach people how to create a non-profit
business, but more importantly, emphasize the values and vision we
hold dear. We’re going into our fifth year and close to 1,000 people
have taken these clinics to date.”
The mission of Crystal Peaks has spread like wildfire. Meeder knows
of 101 ranches that are up and running all over the world, from the
United States to England, Costa Rica, Australia, Tanzania, Canada,
New Zealand and South Africa. He says, “It’s almost like a field of
dreams – if you build it, they will come. People are looking for something
safe, peaceful and quiet; a place set apart from the frantic pace
of daily life. They’re tired of being on the grid all the time and
want to return to what is really important – family relationships,
breathing in fresh air and being in the presence of a horse. We’re
fortunate to be caretakers of these majestic creatures – they have
chosen to allow us into their lives.”
Enter a six-year-old young Arab named Hero, who is well-known to many
in the Northwest. Not long after arriving at Camp Tamarack in Sisters,
the horse sustained a small injury on his leg that kept him out of
the riding program. For unknown reasons, the wrangler in charge of
the horse made the decision to take him out into the woods and euthanize
him. After shooting the animal through the left eye, to the man’s
great surprise, the small horse survived. The man reloaded with a
hollow-point bullet and shot the horse again, three inches behind
the left eye.
This shot broke the horse’s lower jaw and presumably knocked him unconscious.
Believing that he succeeded, the man left him for dead. After wandering
alone for several weeks, this amazing gelding, still wearing his halter
and lead and covered with blood, finally stumbled into a hunter’s
camp. The men called the Deschutes County Search and Rescue and a
woman from the staff walked him out of the woods at midnight in the
dead of winter.
The Meeders were immediately contacted concerning a new home for the
wounded horse. Their answer was a resounding “Yes.” Thousands of dollars
and countless surgeries later, Dr. Wayne Schmotzer of Bend Equine
was pleased to see “Hero” finally come home . . . to the ranch of
rescued dreams. After nearly 14 years of equine rescue, Kim Meeder
thought she had seen it all.
“It was hard to believe, looking at him for the first time, that he
had survived for an undetermined amount of time with a horrifically
infected leg wound, a broken jaw, a destroyed eye and lethal blood
loss, all with two exploded bullets scattered throughout his head,”
she said. “If this wasn’t bad enough, he was also left to wander in
a dense, high-altitude forest while dragging a lead rope. Any one
of these things should have destroyed him, yet here he was, standing
before me, blinking inquisitively at my presence with his one remaining
eye. I was overcome with the thought that it was a complete miracle
he was standing at all.”
It’s true - sometimes just believing in someone is enough for them
to start believing in themselves. Today, Hero is completely healed
of his former wounds and is drawing visitors from across the United
States. Kim explains, “He is such a delight to be around. He seems
to let everyone know that if he can make it, they can too. He has
taught all of us so much about forgiveness and choosing joy, no matter
what your circumstances might be.” After welcoming Hero home to Crystal
Peaks last November, a small child eloquently expressed the true spirit
of this ranch of rescued dreams, saying, “He knows that I love him.
I told him that I don’t mind his scars on the outside – it’s the inside
that I love.” Information: 541/330-0123 and www.crystalpeaksyouthranch.org
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