Everett Mountain Rescue drills for emergencies

EDMONDS — Jim Blake likes getting people home safely when things go wrong deep in the wilderness.

“Then they can have ice cream,” he said.

Blake, 44, is a volunteer with Everett Mountain Rescue, a special unit within the county’s search and rescue team.

Made up of about 50 volunteers, mountain rescue is called on several times during the year to help rescue hikers and climbers when they get into trouble in Snohomish County’s vast backcountry.

When a hiker breaks a leg near mountain peaks, along sheer rock cliffs or in the middle of a glacier, Everett Mountain Rescues’ specially trained crews rush to provide help.

One evening last week, Blake joined about a dozen men and one woman for training a little closer to home.

“We keep drilling and drilling and drilling,” Blake said.

High on a bluff above Meadowdale Park in Edmonds, the group practiced a pick-off exercise.

That’s where people are lowered on ropes to simulate rescuing someone on steep terrain or a cliff, Blake said.

The maneuver requires about half a dozen people to operate a complex system of ropes. For last week’s drill, the equipment was carried about 50 feet from a road. On an actual rescue mission, about 200 pounds of lines and gear would be hauled high into the wilderness, up steep, rooted trails.

Hyer Bercaw, 45, of Kirkland, was strapped into a litter. He wasn’t hurt, just helping some newer volunteers learn the ropes — literally.

Almost every time someone’s hurt in the wilderness, they are loaded into the litter and secured using three sets of webbing, Bercaw explained.

A one-wheeled rickshaw often is used to help lower the litter down a trail, he said.

That’s a system that was used twice on Three Fingers Mountain last fall. When a man fell and hurt his leg, crews were forced to spend the night in terrible weather high on the mountain.

“It was snowing, all the ropes were frozen,” Bercaw said.

The man was safely rescued, and the group tested their skills and stamina. “It was a really great mission,” he said

With the summer hiking season under way, officials said they hope nobody gets seriously hurt.

Still, if something does happen, Everett Mountain Rescue is waiting.

Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437,