Urgent help needed - local wheeler missing in the Jemez (1 Viewer)

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alia176

SILVER Star
Joined
Aug 21, 2003
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791
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Location
Tijeras, NM
HDC members,

A local four wheeler, Jen Smith, is missing along with her yellow JK Jeep. The flyer is attached. Local 4x4 community is stepping up and helping with search efforts in the Jemez mountain. She's been missing since Monday of this week when she camped for a night near San Antonio hot springs. I know Jen and her fiance Brad who must be going out of his mind.

I'd like our club to help with the search effort by skipping out on breakfast tomorrow, Saturday and head to the meeting place in Fenton lake. We'll be given our grid assignments for search and rescue. Since quite a few of us have HAM radios, I think we'll be an asset to this effort. If you want to help and don't have a ham radio, please step up. If some of you need a quick lesson on how to work the Megalink repeaters, I'll be happy to help out.

The group is meeting at the Warrior gas station on Hwy 550 in Bernalillo at 0700 hrs tomorrow, sat 8/20/16. Then we'll head to Fenton lake for a 9am debriefing. Bad Ass coffee is next door for your coffee fix.

Plan on a long day(s) and bring food, water, shelter, etc. It might rain on us up there so prepare accordingly. We could camp up there as well if needed.

If someone with a Ham can monitor the Sandia repeater on the megalink repeater system , one of us may have to raise you on the Megalink and make a phone call through you!

HDC folks, let's show our support!!!

Thanks.




Missing Jeeper alert poster.jpg
 
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Sounds like a good plan, Ali. I'll post up in the breakfast meeting thread that the meeting has been postponed until next weekend.
 
Sounds good Larry. I'm thinking this will be a day of driving and hiking. A good excuse to take the dogs out!!!
 
I'm in. I will go directly to Fenton Lake and meet up there.
 
I saw this on FB, and was thinking, with all the traffic up in Jemez, I think if she was there, her vehicle would have at least been seen. I wonder if she is somewhere else. I saw one post that said she may be up in Farmington/Durango area.
 
Update 8/18/16

Updates: Air search was uneventful this morning. Forest service will be in the area over the next 48 hours combing the forest with two special vehices. APD investigation is ongoing and picking up steam and getting units mobilized.
 
Do you know if they flew the Lojack plane?
 
Hmmm I planned to be on Jemez Sunday... I think I can juggle things in order to get up there.
Anyone want to ride along let me know. Ali, if you see this, pm me your cell #. I have no ham
 
Got an update from Brad, the fiance half hour ago. They searched quite a few of the trails today. Tomorrow's group will be large so we should be able to hit a larger area than today.
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Unfortunately we are on our own. We have exhausted our (official) resources at this time. Hopefully we find something to go off of tomorrow and can start mobilizing different agencies again. This expedition will be completely coordinated within this group.
 
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6:17 am

We're taking Isabelle to her friend's house which is way down on south hwy 14 so I doubt we'll be at the Gas station at 0700!!! But, we'll stop by and top off before heading to Fenton lake.
 
End of the road ... sort of.
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Sorry I couldn't make it yesterday - we had a previous commitment in the afternoon.

What's the status of the search effort?
 
Thank you HDC for showing up and assisting in the search. I know Brad appreciated with the huge turnout as well. Unfortunately, the ending was a tragic one. It was a well organized search that involved only private citizens. Her family must be devastated I'm sure and she leaves behind two children. Truly a sad day for everyone.

I heard the news on the Megalink right before lunch and after lunch our group split up. Few of us went looking for more adventures and they sure found one!

As I predicted, the radio comm was poor due to myriad of reasons, I think only two other mobile operators were embedded in the other groups. Just because someone has a handie talkie, doesn't mean they can reach the repeater, or know how to operate it. In future searches, a mobile vehicle HAM operator needs to embedded into each search group and the incident command must also be an operator. This was a good lesson learned from this exercise. The megalink was monopolized by old farts yacking about their prostate and such.

Pappy experienced a brake issue on the way home but he was fixed up in no time. I found lots of potential camping spots that are secluded.
 
As I predicted, the radio comm was poor due to myriad of reasons, I think only two other mobile operators were embedded in the other groups. Just because someone has a handie talkie, doesn't mean they can reach the repeater, or know how to operate it. In future searches, a mobile vehicle HAM operator needs to embedded into each search group and the incident command must also be an operator. This was a good lesson learned from this exercise. The megalink was monopolized by old farts yacking about their prostate and such.

I think I will disagree. The comm worked. You heard it on the radio. I think I can easily argue that ham was not the solution out there. There were too many times when the Mega-link was not available. There were even times when I could not communicate with you or Frank/Larry on full power. Ham is not even close to perfect, or optimal. It's just a useful tool that works under its own terms, and even with a state-wide repeater system it has limits.

Taking this a step further, the only realistic solution for communication would have been sat phones in each group, and sub-group. Not very practical, and in that terrain, with the trees, there is a chance sat phones might have been limited. I was probably the only one in the search group that was satellite communication capable. But having that ability was of no use because I wasn't in the wrong place at the right time.
 
The comm didn't work. I heard the news but not many folks heard it. I don't know if the incident commander was a Ham guy but he got the news after someone came over and told him, much much later.

IMHO ham radio was the solution out there as I had no problem keeping in touch with the Megalink. Often times the repeater was coming in scratchy but I was able to ping it. Of course, hearing couple of old farts yacking on the Megalink about nothing was bothersome but typically an event like this does have the right to ask the repeater operators to keep their chatter to a minimum. If you can't ping a repeater, simply move to a higher ground.

Now, having spotty comm with each other on Simplex over rough terrain isn't a gauge in my opinion, this is to be expected. I think the typical S&R incident command has repeater access so people in the field can check in which didn't happen in this case.
 
Mega-link reception at Fenton Lake was almost non-existent. I tried. The only way for the folks at the command center to get word would be if somebody drove in and told them.
 
so, was this an accident where she crashed, suicide or a suspicious death? I guess I have some curiosity based on safety when we go camping out there.
 

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