My day started off more or less as planned, and then went haywire. I left the house at 11, after transferring the waypoints to my GPS so that I wouldn’t need to take my laptop. I chose to leave the laptop in the end and to turn this into an opportunity for a trail run, carrying only the GPS and water.
I finished zipping back and forth between all of the waypoints for the nav training within about 2 hours, and was literally just about to touch my car when my phone beeped with a rescue. CRAP! RUN!
Ok…emergency light on the roof, I’m trying to drive on a winding road at the same time as I let my SAR team know that I’m coming from the other direction, but of course, I’m in an area with no reception. Keep trying… Now on top of that, I’d told Ana I was going on a run/hike and to expect me to check in within 3 hours. Knowing that if I don’t tell her now I was ok before I go on the rescue, she’ll call it in, I had to get a hold of her. As luck would have it, she was asleep and someone else was using her phone who simply refused to answer the call waiting. DOH! For 10 mins I had to keep trying both numbers until finally I succeeded.
Now, I ditched my car at an intersection of 2 roads near Arad, knowing that this was rather risky. I didn’t have an alternative, so I did the best I could. I parked facing traffic, right up by the road with my emergency light in the window. It would take a lot of guts for someone to steal it in those conditions.
Rescue #1: Two mountain bikers left Arad with about 2L of water, no map, and no general idea where they were going. They could only tell us they were on a green trail, near a burned out car. Fortunately, there is only one such location. It was about 15km of desert driving to get there, so it took us some time. One was moderately dehydrated, but his vitals were fine and we loaded them up into the car after they’d had a chance to drink water.
Rescue #2: We had just hit the road with the mountain bikers still in our jeeps when Ein Gedi’s rescue team called us in to help search for a missing 57-year-old man. We dropped the cyclists off at Kfar HaNokdim and took off again to take a high point over Nahal Zeilim and to drop down in on foot. We had just set off to join them when they found the missing hiker. Unfortunately, he was no longer alive.
Got home at 6pm. Late lunch. Have to take off now to meet friends at 10pm in Hertzliya Pituach. Rush…rush….
Technorati Tags: sar, rescue, search&rescue, israel, arad, mtb
