Severe altitude sickness can strike indiscriminately and without warning, affecting experienced mountaineers and first-time hikers alike. On the morning of Sunday, September 1, dispatch received a call about a patient in the early stages of High Altitude Pulmonary Edema at his 11,000ft camp by Elinore Lake in the South Fork of Big Pine Creek. Dispatch […]

Around 15:00 on Sunday, September 1, Inyo SAR was called to assist a woman near Upper Boy Scout Lake in the Mount Whitney region. She had injured her ankle after slipping on wet granite. Two rescuers from Lone Pine headed up the trail and reached the injured party around 16:30 just above the steep, exposed […]

On Tuesday, August 20, at around 22:30, SAR teams and Inyo County Sheriff’s Deputies began searching for an experienced local hiker and former team member who had not returned from a day hike to Wheeler Peak. The night searchers cleared the trail to Tamarack Lakes and the Sand Canyon road from Swall Meadows to Tamarack […]

At around 22:30 on 08/13/13, members of Inyo SAR were called out for a potential case of altitude sickness near the Outpost Camp on the South Fork Mt. Whitney trail. The reporting party was a family member at the trailhead, and further information quickly revealed that the subject was also missing. Despite the complexity of […]

The call from the Sheriff coordinator came at 15:30 on August 11, just as a car of SAR ladies hit 395, returning from a relaxing weekend backpacking trip out of Rock Creek. Just over two miles up the Rock Creek trail, a 50-year-old male had been unable to get out of his tent all day, […]