National Park Ranger, a.k.a., "Bleeding Green & Grey"

AuthorHouse

Contents

Dedication................................................................viiBook Review...............................................................ixForeword..................................................................xiIntroduction..............................................................xiiiAcknowledgement...........................................................xviiChapter 1 Sadness on The San Juan.........................................1Chapter 2 Definition of Wilderness........................................10Chapter 3 Guard Dog at 9,000 Feet.........................................18Chapter 4 Miracles Do Happen..............................................23Chapter 5 Picking Your Nose Can Kill You..................................32Chapter 6 Youth Versus Experience.........................................35Chapter 7 All Water Flows Downstream......................................43Chapter 8 Motorcycles and Meth............................................49Chapter 9 Looking for a Needle in an Alaskan Haystack.....................59Chapter 10 You're Fired!..................................................66Chapter 11 The Worse Day of My NPS Career.................................71Chapter 12 Party Time at Your Boss's House!...............................79Chapter 13 Clean Hair Can Kill You!.......................................84Chapter 14 Radical Snow Dude!.............................................92Chapter 15 Sar & Geritol in the Glades....................................101Chapter 16 Ever Skin a Griz?..............................................108Chapter 17 Caribou and Outhouses..........................................120Chapter 18 Motion Sickness Sissy..........................................127Chapter 19 Jack Mormon....................................................137Chapter 20 Pain For Everyone..............................................147Chapter 21 Scuba Diving with Machine Guns.................................157Chapter 22 All Wedding Days Should be this Memorable......................164Chapter 23 Sleeping on the Job............................................171Chapter 24 A Killer Dog...................................................182Chapter 25 Life at Minus 50 Degrees.......................................186Chapter 26 Cocaine and Illegal Aliens!....................................199Chapter 27 Cat Kills Dog..................................................209Chapter 28 Sliced Lunch Meat..............................................214Chapter 29 A Traditional Ozark Wedding....................................219Chapter 30 Dogsled Zombies................................................230Chapter 31 Snagging Salmon................................................243Chapter 32 Hey Doc!.......................................................253How to Contact The Author.................................................261Other Recommended Reading.................................................263

Chapter One

Once again my government residence phone was rudely ringing and it was still dark outside. Looking at the clock next to my bed, I knew from experience that it wasn't good because it showed that it was only 2:15 a.m. It was Park Dispatch calling and they had just received an emergency call from someone in Kansas saying that a male friend of theirs had called them from a cell phone somewhere on the San Juan River in Utah. The man was reporting that he had, "just killed his wife." This was a "not good" situation in anyone's book. I guess the original caller had tried to call 911, but couldn't get a hold of anyone local in Utah. So, he called everyone he could think of until he finally contacted a friend in Kansas. The RP (i.e., police talk for the original "Reporting Party") didn't say that he thought that his wife was hurt or sick, nor even possibly dead. He just flatly said, "I just killed my wife." Now what does that mean exactly? We law enforcement rangers call that "a sign," which means I have to get my butt out of bed now. So much for my beauty rest tonight!

Dispatch gave me what information they knew, which wasn't much. But it was enough for us to go start searching for our possible victims. I was told to respond to a boating accident with serious internal injuries somewhere up the San Juan River, or about 40 miles upstream from where the river empties out into Lake Powell and Glen Canyon National Recreational Area, Utah. At least two people were involved, with one of them reportedly "dead." I knew the area and it was very remote and hard to access.

I lived in the Bullfrog Ranger Station area on Lake Powell, which is located at lake buoy number 95 (i.e., 95 miles up-lake from the Glen Canyon Dam). The San Juan River empties into Lake Powell at buoy #57 which means we have to drive a rescue boat, in total darkness and with no moon, at least 38 miles just to get to the mouth of the river. And then head upstream another 40 plus miles to where the accident "might be."

I was also told that Steve, the Hall's Crossing Sub-district Ranger was en route to pick me up at the Bullfrog Marina, and that I was to be ready for anything. I asked dispatch to contact the local Medevac helicopter, place them on standby status, and that we would most likely ask them to launch their ship as soon as they legally could at first light (remember that most helicopters don't fly in the night unless they are equipped with night vision goggles). I already knew that this specific medical helicopter could only fly by VFR flight rules (Visual Flight Regulations) and not IFR (Instrument Flight Regulations), so a night time flight was out of the question.

My job as the Up-lake District Ranger for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (NRA) was to supervise the northern half of the park and all aspects of the Visitor and Resource Protection Division for my district. Basically the rangers protect the visitor from the resource, and the resource from the visitor. If we didn't intervene, they both have a tendency to eventually hurt the other. Sometimes I like that concept, and other times I would pay for it by working endless overtime hours. In the busy summer months I was never allowed a full night's sleep. Welcome to supervising in a large National Park.

For my area of responsibility, I supervised 4 Sub-districts and about 15 to 20 Protection Rangers. To make things interesting, this NRA alone has more coastline to patrol then the entire coast of California, Oregon, and Washington combined (and that's a lot of shoreline!). Also, on any given Saturday night in the summer months, the park has between 15,000 to 20,000 visitors temporarily residing on that lake. And a large majority of these folks were under the influence of some alcoholic beverage to various degrees. Can you spell, F-U-N? O.K., then how about, D-A-N-G-E-R-O-U-S?We averaged 15-17 fatalities there every summer and that doesn't even consider the number of arrests, call-outs, vehicle or boat accidents, citations, medicals, boat fires, searches, and technical rescues we also responded to. The job of being a Park Ranger on a large recreational lake is never boring during the summer months. Matter of fact, it can be a real burnout for some staff that aren't used to the fast pace.

On most federal lands managed by the National Park Service (NPS), when you call "911," you get a Protection Ranger because it's federal land and not the state or county's responsibility or jurisdiction. Most folks don't realize that NPS rangers today are federal police officers with full law enforcement authority and arrest powers. But generally speaking, Park Rangers today are also medics or Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT's), fight wildland forest fires or suppress structural building & vehicle fires, and perform any kind of search and rescue that you can imagine from the mosquito infested swamps of the Everglades in Florida, to the high cliff walls of Yosemite in California, to the beautiful blue waters of the Virgin Islands, to the frozen Arctic glacial ice of Alaska.

Dreariness is something you usually didn't encounter while working as a National Park Protection Ranger. I have heard that we don't get paid a lot in salary because we make it up with "sunsets and rainbows." That old saying only lasts for a few years into your rookie career and then it gets archaic very quickly. I actually think the reason that we love our jobs so much is because of the team concepts of such things as dedication, integrity, honor, respect, and loyalty. That last sentence sounds really corny but deep down we all feel it, just like our fellow brothers & sisters working as fire fighters, cops, soldiers, and medics do. Every day you are literally putting your life on-the-line, and by god something better push you to do it because the pay sure as hell isn't that good! Plus, we all are a bunch of adrenaline junkies from responding to all the never-ending calls trying to save the idiots of the world. You know the ones that have watched way too much T.V., and think warm and fuzzy thoughts while not realizing the grizzly bear will eat you, falling off the rim of the Grand Canyon can kill you, or climbing to the top of Mt. Rainier without proper equipment is a really bad no-no.

Please get back to our story here Greg. Sorry. Anyway, the San Juan River starts from rain or snow falling in the upper hills of the majestic Navajo Mountain located in the Navajo Indian Reservation and just north of Page, AZ. It becomes a medium sized river which then drains into Lake Powell, and immediately upstream from the Dangling Rope Marina and Ranger Station. All this area is a part of Glen Canyon NRA. Normally there is at least one ranger at Dangling Rope that could respond to any incident, but on this specific night they were not in the area so the Bullfrog rangers were assigned this rescue mission.

Driving the rescue boat from Bullfrog to the accident site was something that I was definitely not looking forward to because of a previous serious night-boating accident that I had been involved with up at North Cascades National Park years earlier (but that's another chapter). Needless to say I had white knuckles on this entire trip. Keep in mind that when operating a high speed boat at night, you normally run in total darkness (except your required navigation lights which show other boaters where you are, but they don't give off any light for you to see what you are about to hit).

On this night, I was thankful that my partner, Steve, was probably the best ranger in the park when it came to boating operations, especially at night. Steve seemed not to worry at all, but then again he was chain-smoking cigarettes the entire way. It didn't matter because I was scared enough for the both of us. Why you ask? Because even though the boat's radar equipment will show you the walls of the canyon, it doesn't show you anything floating on or beneath the water that you are about to collide with while operating at 40 miles per hour. Remember, I've been there, done that already, and not wanting a repeat performance of another boating accident that I could be involved in.

We finally arrived at the accident site just as dawn was beginning, but still a long way from the sun coming up. The victim's boat was supposedly 27 feet long, but now was at approximately 23 feet in length due to it crashing into a vertical solid rock wall at a high rate of speed. From the looks of all the damage, I was shocked it hadn't sunk by now. I told Steve to put the bow of our vessel up to the stern of the victims' boat, and that I would jump onboard to access whatever it was that we were about to handle. At this same time, Steve then attached the two boats together (with mooring lines) so he could now physically control the damaged vessel.

In the back of the victim's boat, lying on the floor, I immediately observed an adult female that had multiple unpleasant looking facial trauma, and was obviously deceased. The entire floor was covered with spattered blood so I knew she didn't die instantly. I didn't need to check her pulse or do vital signs because of all the traumatic facial injuries and massive blood loss. I could also tell that the victim was in the first stage of rigor mortis.

I also observed that the entire inside walls of the boat were relocated or destroyed from hitting the rock wall at such a high speed. The normal bathroom, located inside this small cabin cruiser, was half its original width and everything in the vessel was thrown forward 2-4 feet due to the impact forces. Anything that was originally bolted to the deck of the boat was now torn from its fittings.

Then a faint voice, moaning in pain, could be heard coming from the forward cabin compartment of the boat. Due to the damage of all the inside walls of this vessel, I had to go outside and walk around the boat railings to gain access to the bow. Once inside the front compartment, I observed an adult male that was complaining of pain to his chest and arm pits, suffering from multiple fractures, was showing classic signs of shock & mild hypothermia, and most of his clothes were covered in blood. He couldn't stand up but could talk to me some. From past experience, I knew that he was dying and didn't need my help. What he really needed was a trauma surgeon and a hospital, and fast!

I went back outside to retrieve the extrication and medical supplies I considered essential and asked Steve to call for an ALS (Advance Life Support) helicopter to meet us ASAP somewhere on the river.

The place where this accident took place was nothing but 100 foot tall vertical walls with no place to put any boat up on shore. So I asked Steve to drive both boats to any emergency landing zone he could find to meet up with the incoming helicopter. Remember that Steve had already secured the two boats together because we were afraid that if we didn't, the badly damaged vessel would be at the bottom of the lake when we came back later to conduct the fatality investigation.

It only seemed like seconds or minutes to me, but Steve located a LZ (Landing Zone) 10 miles upstream just as the medical helicopter arrived in our area. I had been a tad busy inside the bow of the victim's boat immobilizing fractures, stopping the bleeding, conducting a medical assessment, and trying to stabilize the seriously injured male. We transferred the patient over to the helicopter staff and for the first time in 5 hours, took a breath of fresh air and let the adrenaline slowly drain from our bodies. Both Steve and I were pretty trashed from the past night's incident & excitement.

During the time that I was medically treating the patient, he informed me that the accident had occurred around 7:00 p.m. the night before, but that he could not make contact with anyone nearby on his cell phone. He then told me that he had performed CPR on his wife for about 45 minutes, and until he was too exhausted to continue. He knew that she was dead but didn't want to stop doing CPR until help arrived to take over. He also said that he was unconscious most to the night due to his own injuries and loss of blood. I was shocked that he was still alive with all of his injuries I was treating him for.

After the sun came up, two more federal police officers arrived at the incident scene to assist with the investigation on how this accident unfortunately happened. We located three weapons lying in the water and two boxes of bullets were found scattered on a ledge on the rock wall. I later asked the husband in the hospital why the weapons and ammunition were located where we found them. He said that after he knew his wife was dead, he wanted to kill himself. So to prevent that from happening, he threw all the weapons into the lake. I guess that makes sense.

Also retrieved from the lake bottom, in this same area, was a glass smoking pipe which we commonly see used with marijuana smokers. No marijuana was located at the accident scene however. Hmmm. As a police officer I knew that we better request that the local coroner and hospital perform a blood test on both of these victims for possible drugs in their systems, and a possible cause for the accident.

After all was said and done, we came to the conclusion that while heading up-river in the dark to find a campsite, the husband was driving the boat with his wife standing to his right shining a flashlight on the canyon walls. We don't know why they didn't see the vertical wall but they sure as heck hit it at a high rate of speed. The woman was thrown forward striking her head violently against the frame of the window which caused the facial trauma, and most likely, she succumbed to those head wounds. The driver was thrown against the steering wheel and received multiple internal chest injuries and fractures. Later he would recover from his injuries but have to come to terms with the death of his wife. They had just recently married and were still on their honeymoon.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. I knew that responding to this accident site by boat in total darkness was crazy, and that we had a good chance of crashing or at least hitting something under the water surface level. That is part of what we do as Protection Rangers. What I didn't know was the fact that we were extremely fortunate and made it without incident, or even dinging a prop on the boat that night by striking something solid in the water. This was brought home on our drive back to Bullfrog in the daylight hours the next morning when I was shown just how blessed we actually were. Everywhere we looked we saw shallow areas and rocks that could have caused us and our boat major problems had we collided with any of them.

Yes, we have a depth gauge on the very back of the rescue boat but when you are traveling at a high rate of speed and the water depth changes instantly (as it can do in this man-made reservoir), you can have an accident at any time no matter what your depth gauge reads.

It would take me a long time to recover from my first night boating accident (which is covered in another chapter and occurred in North Cascades NP), and I don't think this last night's rescue helped me any with all my ghosts bouncing around in my head.

Chapter Two

I love to fly fish. Being raised in the Midwest I did a lot of fishing for catfish, smallmouth bass, yellow perch, northern pike, largemouth bass, muskellunge, bluegill, and carp. But that was with a rod and reel and not a fly rod. When I moved to Katmai National Park in Alaska, this is where I learned to actually fly fish. You can say I've been "hooked" on it ever since (sorry about the pun but I couldn't help myself). In Alaska we fished for rainbow trout, arctic grayling, freshwater tarpon (called sheefish), and any of the five species of salmon (red or Sockeye, pink or Humpy, chinook or King, silver or Coho, and the dog salmon). And if you like to eat fish, salmon differ just like apples varieties, and none of them taste the same. Sockeye salmon is considered, by most folks, to be the best tasting and most expensive; whereas dog salmon are typically caught in the far north and mainly used to supplement feeding your sled dogs.

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Excerpted from National Park Ranger, a.k.a., "Bleeding Green & Grey"by Gregory W. Moss Copyright © 2012 by Gregory W. Moss. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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