The Fine Line

Chuck and Brenda Markham were vacationing with friends when they decided to kayak the Buffalo Fork River. The most experienced kayaker in the group, Steve Fretz, took the lead. What they didn’t know that day was that the river was pushing flood stage, running much faster than usual for July. All the runoff had pushed woody debris into the river creating a maze of strainers and log jams that snagged and stranded some of the boaters. Teton County Search and Rescue volunteers KC Bess and Cody Lockhart rowed to the rescue. This podcast is produced by Backcountry Zero, with support from the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole. Backcountry Zero is a project of the Teton County Search and Rescue Foundation.You can support this project and the Teton County Search and Rescue volunteers by making a donation today. Visit www.tetoncountysar.org/donate. If you like listening to The Fine Line, please share us with a friend.

In August of 2017, Will Grenier, his younger sister Cassie and their friend Erin Gibbs were headed up the Middle Teton. They were all experienced hikers. At the time, 24 year old Cassie worked as a recreational therapist and her job involved taking kids with troubled backgrounds into the great outdoors. Going up the Middle Teton was supposed to be a day off, but as they scrambled up a talus slope a massive rock slide cut loose and Cassie was right below it. What should have been a typical day hiking in the park turned into a fight for survival.

Caty Harris loves being outdoors and that's how she wanted to spend her birthday. So she and her boyfriend, BJ Appell rented snowmobiles to explore the trails around Togwotee Pass. Although they followed the map, they took a turn onto an obscure trail that the guides no longer use and soon found themselves stranded and alone in a snowstorm. This podcast is produced by Backcountry Zero, with support from the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole. Backcountry Zero is a project of the Teton County Search and Rescue Foundation. You can support this project and the Teton County Search and Rescue volunteers by making a donation today. Visit www.tetoncountysar.org/donate.

When you move to Jackson in your 20’s, you can suddenly find yourself thrust into an extreme playground where the stakes are literally life and death. Accomplished ski racers Jim Ryan and Connor Nolan had the skills to tackle some of Jackson’s burliest lines. Their desire to ski those big lines blinded them to the level of risk they were taking until the day they attempted Gothic Couloir and the Triple Crown. When they had to call for help one of their rescuers, Cody Lockhart, knew just how they felt.

A Jackson resident with a long history of rescuing others suddenly finds himself at the mercy of a community of strangers on Teton Pass in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Once the head of the Himalayan Rescue Association in Nepal, Dr. David Shlim treated all of the survivors of the 1996 Everest expedition detailed in Jon Krakauer’s book, "Into Thin Air." Rebecca Huntington hosts The Fine Line, real stories of adventure, risk and rescue in the backcountry of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This podcast is produced by Backcountry Zero. You can support The Fine Line and Teton County Search and Rescue volunteers by making a donation today. To learn more at www.tetoncountysar.org/donate.

What happens when a hiking blind date turns into a rescue and the person at your side is someone you just met? Grand Teton National Park employee, Millie Jimenez, recalls how she was hiking on her day off with a new friend in the rugged Avalanche Canyon when a slip turned into a life-threatening fall. Although she had just met her hiking companion, Millie already knew most of her rescuers, fellow National Park Service employees worried about saving one of their own. In this episode, Millie recounts the rescue with Matt Wilber, Snake River District Supervisory Ranger, and Chris Bellino, Jenny Lake District Supervisory Ranger and Incident Commander for the October 12, 2015, rescue. backcountryzero.com

On a Sunday in late June in Grand Teton National Park, rescue rangers started fielding multiple calls. The first call came at 5:55 p.m. An exhausted hiker was stuck on a steep snowy slope in Upper Granite Canyon. Just 35 minutes later, another call came in. A 27-year-old climber was seriously injured on Disappointment Peak. Park rangers called in two helicopters and Teton County Search and Rescue to help with yet another call for missing boaters following an accident on the Gros Ventre River. In this episode, we talk with climber Fio Lazarte and Jenny Lake climbing rescue ranger Nick Armitage about the longest and most challenging rescue that day. This podcast is produced by Backcountry Zero, a project of Teton County Search and Rescue. Support Backcountry Zero, a community vision to reduce fatalities in the Tetons, by simply sharing this podcast with friends and family. backcountryzero.com

In this episode, two Jackson Hole boaters recall an epic spring when big water lured them to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. With the traditional boat launch closed, they put in at Marsh Creek, a tributary running fast, cold and choked with woody debris.

An ideal ski day on March 3, 2017, turns into an epic rescue and stunning revival on Maverick Peak in Grand Teton National Park.

Rene Etter-Garrette had been living in Jackson Hole for six winters. He'd found mentors willing to share their backcountry knowledge and skied challenging lines in Grand Teton National Park. On Feb. 4, 2016, Rene and two friends decided to ski the Spoon Couloir on Disappointment Peak. Rene had started to question the risks of backcountry skiing after a close friend had died in avalanche just a few weeks earlier. But on this day, avalanche danger had been rated moderate, and Rene had skied the same line several times before without trouble.

Backcountry skiers call the Mosquito Creek Drainage, "The Black Hole." It's a place where the terrain looks disarmingly similar, luring skiers downslope, away from Teton Pass, until it's too late and you're at the bottom. It's an easy mistake to make but can have life-threatening consequences as Craig Benjamin and Zach Jakub discovered during a backcountry tour on January 20, 2002, when a storm blew in.

It's a parent's worst fear. Your children, all three of them, vanish in the wilderness. In 2015, three sisters, Megan, Erin and Kelsi Andrews-Sharer, embarked on what started out as a dream backpacking trip into the Gros Ventre Wilderness. This is Part 2 of our story. Listen to Part 1 to hear how the sisters lose their way in the face of disappearing trails, endless river crossings, avalanche debris and dwindling food supplies. In this episode, we talk with the sisters, their parents and a Search and Rescue volunteer about how the Jackson Hole community mobilizes to find them. The sisters have no way to call for help and have left few clues to pinpoint their location.

It's a parent's worst fear. Your children, all three of them, vanish in the wilderness. In this episode, we talk with three sisters, Megan, Erin and Kelsi Andrews-Sharer, about what started as a five-day backpacking trip in the Gros Ventre Wilderness in the summer of 2015. This story has so many twists and turns, we split it into two parts. In Part One, we find out how even when you know where you are, you can become trapped by the unexpected.

A sudden, prolonged snowstorm on Sept. 11, 1985, stranded two parties on the Grand Teton. One party included Greg Findley, Nils Green and John Atthowe, all in their early 20s. Findley and Atthowe met at a National Outdoor Leadership School course in Lander, Wyo., in l98l and met Green, who was about to be married, that summer in Jackson Hole. The other party, Paul Johnson, 40, and his climbing partner of 15 years, Ken Webb, 37, had driven down from Seattle to climb the peak. Grand Teton National Park climbing rangers Renny Jackson and Jim Woodmencey recall the harrowing rescue that unfolded.

Grand Teton National Park backcountry ranger John Carr and Bear Management Specialist Katherine Wilmot discuss a close encounter with a mother grizzly and two cubs and discusses the behaviors and response that likely saved his life.

In the first episode of The Fine Line, ski mountaineer Jesse Stover describes how a single step on Teewinot Mountain turns the perfect ski day into a fight for survival. We also hear from Teton County Search and Rescue volunteer and medical advisor Dr. AJ Wheeler and Grand Teton National Park rescue ranger Philip Edmunds who were both involved in the harrowing rescue to save Jesse's life and limb.