July 10, 2011 – Sheriff’s Department.

Plain is classified as a wilderness setting when it comes to treating medical stuff. All of our services are volunteer like the fire department and paramedics. We got back from our IK training got all of our gear put away and our River Manager got a call from the Sheriff asking if we could be a part of a rescue on the Wenatchee River. It was quite humorous because we were all walking up the hill on the ranch towards the Lodge where most of us live and Shane stops walking to talk on the phone and a couple of guy guides are giddy at the fact they get to take part in a rescue… well I guess we were all a mixture of giddy, worried and ready for action. So Shane tells Sheriff Mike that he has his team assembled and we will be there in 10 min. Sheriff Mike was expecting a response time of at least an hour or more so he was pretty shocked. So we run… and I mean all out sprint to get our wetsuits and PFD’s. We weren’t given much info about what the rescue entailed so we took enough guides/paddlers to fill two boats if needed. We drive over to the scene that was 5 min away from our location and all of the fire trucks/aid cars/ rescue vehicles from the area are in these people’s yards so we rig up our raft. In the end we were thankful that it was a really simple rescue scenario. An older couple somehow had run their “raft” otherwise known as a K-Mart Coffin into a strainer in the middle of the river and had been able to get on top of the tree but needed a ride from the tree back to shore. One of our guides tried to get their raft loose so that it wouldn’t become river trash but it was thoroughly stuck (side note we floated by it 3 weeks later and it was still there) The sheriff mentioned at the end how thankful they were for our help and quick response. He really hadn’t expected any rafting outfitter to be able to assemble a team that was sober enough to respond since the rafting community isn’t known for its soberness but we proved that we are a different kind of outfitter.

Many hands make light work of rigging a raft.

In my sprinting and grabbing gear I grabbed the DSLR but I couldn't quickly put my hands on my long lense so these photos are less then exciting but better than nothing.

A quick trip to the middle of the river to pick up the two stranded passengers and now it is time to de-rig the raft.

But first it had to be carried through a lot of people's backyards.