By Alex Day, Marketing and Communications Director
When visitors set foot in Olympic National Park, they come seeking adventure, beauty, and a connection to nature. But for some, a day of exploration can take an unexpected and dangerous turn.
Each year, Olympic’s rangers respond to around 150 emergency calls ranging from twisted ankles on the coast to life-threatening accidents deep in the wilderness. And when that call for help comes in, it’s critical that search and rescue (SAR) teams have the right training and equipment to respond quickly, efficiently, and safely.
That’s where Washington’s National Park Fund (WNPF) donors step in.
Chris Erickson, Olympic’s Law Enforcement Supervisory Park Ranger, has spent his career in technical rescue. When he arrived at Olympic three and a half years ago from Denali National Park in Alaska, he quickly realized the park’s search and rescue teams needed some essential winter equipment.
“We have a lot of winter recreation — skiing, sledding, snowshoeing — but we didn’t have a great way to move people who got injured in the snow,” he explains. Park rangers often had to rely on volunteer search and rescue groups to step in, resulting in long waits before an injured visitor could be helped.
One of the first game-changers was a high-tech rescue toboggan — lightweight, carbon fiber, and built for backcountry rescues in deep snow. At $5,000, it wasn’t an easy expense for the park to cover, but WNPF’s support made it possible. “That toboggan allows us to move injured visitors quickly and safely,” says Erickson. “It’s a huge shift in our ability to respond.”
WNPF has also funded ongoing technical rescue training with Rigging for Rescue, a technical ropework training seminar, ensuring that rangers have the expertise to respond to complex emergencies.
Over the past two years, a select group of rangers has received advanced training, resulting in the ability to teach basic rescue techniques to additional rangers in-house. Erickson’s team will engage in the third year of this specialized training in the coming weeks. “That’s a huge win,” Erickson notes. “Instead of waiting for outside help, we’re able to respond immediately and professionally.”
The park’s search and rescue training and equipment was put to the test one winter weekend when two vehicles went off the road at Hurricane Ridge within minutes of each other. Several people were injured, including two so severely that they couldn’t walk. Four trained rangers split into two rescue teams, extricated the injured, and had them stabilized and warm at the roadside before ambulances even arrived.
“A few years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to respond that fast,” says Erickson. “Now, we can get people out faster, safer, and with less suffering.”
A perfect illustration of the dedication that search and rescue requires in a park as diverse as Olympic — and one of the most complex rescues in Erickson’s recent memory — involved a hiker with a severe compound leg fracture near Sol Duc Park, nine miles deep into the wilderness.
A storm grounded helicopter operations, meaning the rescue would have to be done entirely on foot. A team of rangers, carrying only the most lightweight gear, trail-ran the nine miles to get to the visitor, stabilized their injuries, and set up an overnight camp to monitor them.
The next morning, when conditions remained unsafe for air rescue, a mule team was sent in – but the final mile proved too steep for the mules to navigate. That mile of the evacuation had to be done manually, lowering the visitor using ropes; only then could they be transferred to the mules for the long journey out.
“That rescue took an incredible amount of coordination and teamwork,” says Erickson. “It’s a perfect example of how we have to be flexible, creative, and use every resource available.”
Olympic’s search and rescue teams handle a staggering variety of emergencies — from lost hikers deep in the backcountry to flipped kayakers in Lake Crescent to climbers stranded on Mount Olympus. The park’s diverse terrain, combined with its three million annual visitors, makes it one of the busiest and most challenging national parks for rescue operations.
And through it all, WNPF donors are making a difference.
“Part of our role as first responders is to help ease the suffering of someone who came to the park expecting the best day of their life, only to have it end as one of the worst,” Erickson says. “The funding we receive for search and rescue equipment and training makes a huge difference in our ability to keep visitors safe and help them in those moments. It would be hard for me to pull out a single incident that didn’t tie back to WNPF’s support in some way.”
Your generous donations help ensure that when the worst happens — when a hiker falls, a skier crashes, or a kayaker overturns — Olympic’s rangers have the tools, training, and equipment to respond. Supporters are quite literally helping save lives in one of the most beautiful and wild places in the country.
When adventure turns to emergency, every second — and every resource — matters. Thank you for standing with us, and with park rangers, to keep visitors safe.
Washington’s National Park Fund is the official philanthropic partner to Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks. Donations fund scientific research, youth and family experiences, and projects that will keep these parks strong and vital now and forever, for everyone. If you’d like to support critical search and rescue efforts, consider making a donation today.
Curious about SAR operations in all three parks? Check out this Virtual Field Trip from 2023, where we interview park staff from Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks about the ins and outs of safety in the parks.
Cover photo by NPS/Olympic National Park.
Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in National Parks Traveler.