Lost & Found

GIANT WHITE PINE CAMPGROUND--A motley group gethered under the canopy of tall pines trees.

They all had their talents and their resources--some with sturdy four-wheel-drive vehicles or versatile horse, some with man-tracking skills or just a love and interest in outdoor survival and rescue.

They had one mission--to find some lost guys.

Seventy-one people from groups and clubs encompassing Latah, Benewah, Shoshone and Whitman counties met last weekend for the annual Latah Search and Rescue Council training at a U.S. Forest Service campgrounds northeast of Harvard.

The council, made up of representatives from various search and rescue groups, coordinates and implements emergency searches whenever a person is reported lost in Latah County.

For the training, two men had hiked into the forest surrounding the campgrounds and were acting as lost hikers.

It was the council's job to find them as quickly as possible.

"We got two people," said Dareld Hazeltine, overhead team coordinator, as volunteers listened intently and scribbled notes.

Hazeltine described everything from physical appearance to the tread prints from subjects' shoes.

He's been in the woods a lot. Has been lost once before--did wander," Hazeltine said of one subject, 19-yearold Dan Hamilton.

Hamilton, the self-avowed "lost guy," also had volunteered to be lost and found in a previous year's training search. For this year's search, Hamilton was joined by Bill Lyons, 19.

Latah Search and Rescue Council coordinator Marv Pillers, wearing his favorite floppy gray hat, told volunteers one of the training session's purposes was to experience an extended search. He had instructed Hamilton and Lyons to elude any search teams until Sunday afternoon so the search would be continued overnight.

"One of these days we're going to get a three day search and we're just not going to last that long," he said, as volunteers leaned against their brightly colored backpacks. "We've never practiced doing it because we've never had the need, but one of these days we will."

Then the search began.

High in the woods above the campground, Orrin Riebold's eyes scanned the ground for shoe prints as his horse, Lucky, clip-clopped along a densely forested path.

Reibold, Latah County Mounted Horse Posse coordinator, had been assigned to cover the search area's western perimeter and look for any clues.

Pausing for a moment at a break in the trees, Riebold motioned toward the majestic view of dark green tree-covered hills. "Isn't that gorgeous?" Riebold said. "That's another reason I do this."

Dressed in a navy blue shirt, faded blue jeans and gray cowboy hat, with a shiny silver sheriff's posse badge on his chest, Riebold was the epitome of his work with the horse posse.

"It's awful hard to get lost out here," he said, pointing out Bald Mountain and Three Trees Butte. "But it's real easy to take a long walk."

Riebold first joined the horse posse in 1986. Since then, he has been involved in a number of searches, including a search for two 10-year-old boys lost in the same area where the training took place.

Riebold remembers that search well. He was with the horse team that found the two boys. Ironically, the team--confused by fog and wet conditions--had taken the wrong road when they came upon the two wet, hypothermic boys.

"We were cold and miserable when we found them and then we weren't cold and miserable anymore," he said.

Back in base camp, the rhythmic hum of a generator filled the early evening air as volunteers roamed the campgrounds planning for the night.

"We've had 10 teams in the field--two horse teams and one dog team," said Annie Pillers, overhead team coordinator, leaning over a map marked with brightly colored lines indentifying trails covered during the days' work

The overhead team works from a white "Command Post" truck equipped with radio equipment, maps and assignment sheets. Search teams radio in their fingings and positions while the overhead team compiles the information and works to determine the best strategies to find the lost men.

"We've had sightings of tracks, evidence of possible campsite and a report of campfire... Six teams are in the field at strategic locations," she said. "We expect to be in full gear at sunrise."

Last Updated: Tuesday, June 27, 1995

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