VERLOT — There’s no room for groceries in Scott Welton’s trunk.
Instead, the back of the 57-year-old Edmonds man’s car is full of ropes, ice axes, parkas and fleece clothing. He’s ready at all times to be called out to the mountains.
Jan. 4 was no exception. Wrapping up a busy work week, Welton and his wife, Suzanne Elshult, 52, were planning on dinner and a movie. Around 5:40 p.m., their pagers went off.
That meant another night in the mountains. This time, a teenage girl was trapped in an avalanche.
Welton, Elshult and Bosse, the couple’s yellow Labrador retriever, are members of Everett Mountain Rescue, a team of rescue volunteers. Welton is the group’s chairman.
Everett Mountain Rescue was called to look for Emily Swanson, the 13-year-old Mukilteo girl who died near Lake 22.
“When it comes to the mountains, it’s Everett Mountain Rescue. They’re the point of the spear for us,” said Snohomish County sheriff’s Sgt. Danny Wikstrom, who coordinates Snohomish County Volunteer Search and Rescue.
Wikstrom directed the search for Emily that night. The girl was swept away while hiking with an adult and six other children, ages 12 to 16, on the popular trail off the Mountain Loop Highway.
Around 2:30 p.m., an avalanche roared down a narrow chute and swept up four of the children, officials said.
A boy dug himself out and the group rescued two other girls. They looked for Emily for an hour before hiking out to call 911 for help.
Everett Mountain Rescue’s pagers soon started buzzing.
When rescuers gathered at the trailhead, the weather was terrible and the avalanche danger high.
Still, Wikstrom decided to send an Everett Mountain Rescue team up the trail.
“We knew that we were probably facing the worst in terms of Emily’s chances of survival,” Wikstrom said. “They did everything they could to give her the only chance, as remote as we believed it was, of surviving.”
The team set out, each member equipped with an avalanche beacon, a transponder that can be used to quickly locate someone buried in the snow.
Boeing engineer Mark Glidden, 50, was on the first team to head up the trail.
“It was dark, of course, and it was raining,” he said. “It seems like it’s always dark and raining.”
A second team, led by Welton, also made the trek. They were prepared to rescue the first team should a second avalanche roar down the slopes.
This already has been the deadliest avalanche season in the state in modern history. Heavy, unstable snowpack has built up even at low elevations, creating extreme risk that is “a gross aberration from what we’re used to dealing with in Snohomish County,” Wikstrom said.
Each team member goes through rigorous application and training. Everett Mountain Rescue was started in 1954 by a group of Mountaineers. They realized that the allure of the mountains demanded a skilled and trained team of rescuers, Welton said.
They were among the first organized group of search and rescue teams in the country.
Now, the group works closely with the sheriff’s office but operates as its own nonprofit organization. It is based in the county, but the members help on missions throughout the region.
The membership mostly is made up of professionals with busy careers. No one is paid and in addition to giving up countless hours, they also must buy their own gear, which can cost as much $5,000, Welton said.
Welton, a real-estate broker, usually tells his clients that his rescue pager could go off at any time, forcing him to cut short meetings. That usually happens at least once during a project, he said.
For Glidden, an Everett Mountain Rescue member since 1994, the call to look for Emily came while he was getting ready to spend a night at home with his fiance.
“I had no idea what I was getting into when I first joined,” he said.
High on Mount Pilchuck’s slopes, Glidden said, looking for Emily at first seemed like it would be searching for a needle in a haystack.
Training helped focus the teams’ efforts. They also were aided by some steps taken by Emily’s group after the avalanche.
Avalanches are like rivers, Glidden said. Experts can look at their debris and see eddies and other places where a person might be trapped.
Clues left by the hiking group also helped. Before leaving to call 911, the group placed poles where they dug out the other two girls.
Members of Emily’s hiking party later helped rescuers draw a map of the area where the avalanche occurred.
“The (adult) showed a remarkable presence of mind,” Welton said. He said the group told rescuers they used trekking poles like avalanche probes to search the snow for the girls. “They were instrumental in saving the lives of the people who were saved,” he said.
One girl was buried in 18 inches of snow. The second was found unconscious in about 3 feet of snow and quickly was revived. Those girls were treated for scratches and bruises.
The hand-drawn map sped the search for Emily, Glidden said.
A survey of the debris field showed a pile of snow “downstream” from where the other two girls were found. Glidden and another rescuer used long probes to check the snow.
Working in hardening avalanche debris, it can be difficult to discern between moss, wood, rock and people. As Glidden probed into the snow, “it felt very much like hitting a person to me,” he said.
The rescuers dug into about 5 feet of snow and found green nylon. They knew they had found Emily. It was too late.
“We all do this because we have empathy towards our community and our neighbors and we want to help,” Glidden said. “It’s tough when it’s a kid.”
Sadly, carrying bodies out of the wilderness is a big part of the job Everett Mountain Rescue does, Welton said.
“We’d like it to be otherwise, but half the work we do is recovery,” he said.
On Thursday night, about a week after the Mount Pilchuck rescue attempt, the team met to talk. The discussion focused on the team’s emotions as much as technique.
“It gives people an opportunity to deal with the human component,” Welton said.
Everett Mountain Rescue may re-enact the rescue attempt again at a later date to further analyze their response.
The methodical training is part of what makes Everett Mountain Rescue a standout organization, Wikstrom said.
“They’re like what the SWAT team is to law enforcement,” he said. “These guys and women, it’s such a specialized environment that you have to have people who know what they’re doing and are in top form. I’m always relieved when Everett Mountain Rescue shows up on scene.”
Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.
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