The call typically comes at night. Joe Blattner answers his phone, and on the other end is either the sheriff’s office or one of its deputies. “Hey, Joe,” they’ll say. “We’ve got something.”
Depending on the season, that something could be any number of emergencies: A hunter who never came out of the woods. An angler clinging to a strainer in a raging river. A hiker who lost his footing and fell off a rock face. An alpinist buried in an avalanche. A body that needs to be recovered.
“One way or another,” Blattner says, “our job is to bring people home.”
As the chief of Missoula County Search and Rescue, Blattner oversees a unit of 32 other Montanans who brave harsh conditions in dangerous country to assist adventurers. And, like many SAR teams in the country, they’re all volunteers. “We’re people who love the outdoors, who have strong ties to our communities, and who just want to help,” Blattner says.
In a given year, his team—which includes river, ground, K-9, rope, air, and avalanche units—will put in 4,000 hours of work. This winter, they invited F&S to follow along as they conducted a simulated mission. The kind of mission that typically starts with a late-night phone call to Blattner—and is followed by a dispatch to his team: “Respond to the warehouse right now. We’ve got something.”
In this training session, members of the winter unit race through Lolo Pass toward a victim buried by an avalanche. Each rider wears an avalanche beacon on their base layer in case another avalanche occurs. Inside their packs, they carry metal shovels, avalanche probes, food, water, and extra clothing.
Tom Fowlks
In this simulation, Seth Whitfield lowers Bowen Newell and a rescue litter, which Newell will use to secure the victim before he’s lifted back up the rock face.
Blattner, who enjoys high-altitude mountaineering when he’s not overseeing an SAR mission, says these rope rescues can get intense. “As soon as you go over the edge of a cliff, your heart rate goes up,” he says. “That’s a good thing. It forces me to focus on every move.”
The rope team’s work isn’t limited to the mountains, though. They’ll also come in to assist with swift-water missions. Blattner recalls an instance when an inflatable raft had become pinned on a logjam at the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers. The two rafters got to safety, but their boat was left stuck. “We came in so that someone else didn’t die trying to recover it,” Blattner says.
Tom Fowlks
Mission complete.
What I love most about this job,” Blattner says, “is helping other people and seeing their response to our help. And I just love working with SAR people. We enter some harsh conditions with each other, and that creates a really special sense of camaraderie.”
Tom Fowlks