By Aaron Collins

Matthew Ybarra, 13, went missing this winter in the mountainous far southeastern corner of Tulare County near Sequoia National Forest and the Chimney Peak area during a sledding trip with his family. He wandered away briefly just before sunset, unnoticed in the growing darkness as the others horsed around in the snow.

Matthew went to find a higher run and a greater thrill, but what he got was a dark, frozen night spent lost and alone in the deep winter snow, with overnight lows dropping below 15º F.

Things didn’t look good for Matthew. Sixteen hours is a long time in the cold. He lost a glove, and a shoe and sock along the way. Before long, his feet were beginning to blacken. Then, moderate hypothermic shock began to set in.

“I thought I was gonna die,” he told a reporter following rescue, the day after he went missing. The fare for his thrill ride to a Bakersfield hospital via a helicopter, aside from the considerable monetary costs, was a couple of frostbitten toes. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said.

Fortunately, there are rescue teams on call, like Sequoia Mountain Rescue, a nonprofit group of dedicated all-volunteer mountaineers. Groups like this exist for just such dire occasions.

The nonprofit group, sanctioned by the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and working adjunct to that agency’s Search and Rescue Unit, draws upon broad and deep knowledge and certified technical training in just such occasions as Matthew’s emergency.

SMR shares a culture with other such organizations that means avoiding the limelight, though their dedicated volunteers make highly technical and heroic rescues.

Established in 2003 and granted nonprofit status the following year, the group works behind the scenes, called out to vast emergency scenes with little notice when hikers and tourists become lost in Central California’s great outdoors.

Tremendous Teamwork

Teamwork is vital to the group’s efforts. Ed Lorenzi of Visalia says he and the team, which consists mostly of men, like working with teammate Kristi Nanamura. “Not only is she fearless, but she’s thin and lightweight,” he says of the Porterville area resident. “That’s a real advantage when hoisting her up when she goes over the edge on a rescue or training mission.”

Putting her in means other team members are freed up to perform other urgent tasks: A single rescuer is required to sustain a 50-pound lift, which means only two team members are needed for the featherweight Nanamura, compared to the four men required to lift a 200-pound male. And in the chaos of emergencies, having two additional men free to perform other tasks means Nanamura’s physiology plays an important role when circumstances strain the human resources at hand.

“I don’t know if there’s anything she’s afraid of,” Lorenzi says. “She’s very adventuresome. And if there is anything a man can do well, she wants to do it first, or do it just as well or better as a man can do.”

Just as in law enforcement circles, a special bond arises when team members must rely on one another for their safety and survival, admiration for a team member is mutually returned in this tight-knit group.

Lorenzi “has the true heart of a volunteer,” says Nanamura. “And he keeps moving forward with his training, for which he often has to travel outside the area.” The group is also called out to rescues beyond its sanctioned area of Tulare County for rescues in surrounding counties.

“Ed is truly dedicated and an outstanding and humble individual,” says Nanamura

To say a group consists of volunteers has a way of downplaying their professionalism and skill and also of obscuring the fact that these people all have day jobs and highly responsible careers.

Skilled Volunteers

Nanamura now runs the Porterville-area food processing and retailing company founded by her parents in the1970s. When her mother passed away in late 2008, Nanamura took over the day-to-day business operations, which meant taking time away from SMR calls. However, she continues as the group’s treasurer, a role aided by her business experience.

“Each of us can’t always leave our jobs to go off on a (search and rescue) mission, but everyone takes the time when appropriate to do so,” says Lorenzi, who works in the citrus industry.

He says that others in the group bring a diverse range of technical skills to their volunteer work that stem directly from their primary careers. When the next family outing to the Sierra turns tragic, the Tulare County-wide team will grab gear and head for some of the highest and most remote land in the lower forty-eight states. They include a high school art teacher, a retired commercial airline pilot, a farm equipment business manager, a retired commercial photographer, and an aviation manager for a large farming operation who previously flew air tankers for the U.S. Forest Service.

In describing the breadth of skill members bring to each effort, Lorenzi says that one member has the memory of a ‘user guide,’ and has been a great asset as a training officer. Another founding member is an avid climber and outdoorsman with exceptional ability to teach people skills.

Members Make the Difference

Newer members include a sports medicine trainer with a local college “who can tell you just why that hurts when you do whatever hurts,” Lorenzi says. There’s a veterinarian and surgeon who has participated in climbing expeditions; a man who runs a local foundation for public outdoor awareness and environmental stewardship; an attorney with the District Attorney’s Office who is an avid kayaker and outdoorsman; and a man who owns his own construction business yet finds lots of time to cross country ski.

There’s also an EMT who is always entertaining with his adventures; an insurance agent with extensive back country experience; an electrical engineer, who Lorenzi says, has lots of back country hiking experience; and a fireman who also teaches rope rescue to the Forest Service.

“All of these people have a love of the outdoors and possess a very strong desire to help others and to this end volunteer their time in our community,” Lorenzi says of the diverse professionals who use their skills to save lives when they can, or retrieve the bodies of loved one for the grieving when they cannot.

These are the good-hearted and highly-technical volunteers who just show up—hardly the untrained villagers seen on the nightly news scouring the forests, armed with little more than flashlights and good intentions. SMR people know their way with pitons and artificial chocks. They can give a round lashing or a square lashing, too. Luckily for the next guy who gets stranded on a ledge high in the Sierra, they know their Munters from their Swiss Seats from a hole in the ground.

Perhaps just as amazing as SMR’s feats and skills and dedication is the group’s annual budget: Between just $5,000 and $8,000.

If your community organization would like to put Sequoia Mountain Rescue on its programming, contact Sequoia Mountain Rescue, PO Box 6904, Visalia, CA 93290. If you have technical skills that you might want to contribute to the group, review SMR’s technical certification requirements on the Web at www.sequoiamountainrescue.com.

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