Technical rescue team5/2/2023 ![]() “Our focus is rapid access,” says Isaac Baker, another founding member of the team and the head training officer. As such, the team’s DNA is built around medical care. Somewhat uniquely, each member of Magic Valley is a working paramedic, rather than the firefighters, law enforcement officers, or other specialties. The team is called to dozens of rescues a year around the Snake River Canyon, nearly all of which call for quick, technical responses on jagged cliffs that vary from desert heat to ice and snow. Yet, call for call, man for man, the Magic Valley SORT might be the best technical rescue team in America. And the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has a corps of helicopter-borne rescue medics large enough that the service has its own Twitter feed. In major national parks like Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and the Grand Tetons, lifelong mountaineers might put in years of visitors center duty just to get a chance to try out for backcountry positions. To pluck climbers and hunters from Alaskan mountains and glaciers, the Alaska Air National Guard has a 60-man team of pararescue specialists, supported by a fleet of kitted-out Black Hawk helicopters. To be sure, there are bigger and better-funded rescue teams. Photo by Marty Skovlund Jr./Coffee or Die Magazine. The membership of the Magic Valley Paramedics Special Operations Rescue Team hovers around 16. In a good year, they’ll raise maybe $25,000. The team raises most of its budget each year with an annual gala dinner, the Paramedic Soiree. Some grew up around mountains, but most hail from southern Idaho, a landscape that is, other than its deep river canyons, mostly flat farmland. ![]() None are particularly active recreational climbers or mountaineers. They are all serious rescue professionals, but they are not typical ones. Luke’s Hospital system, which funds and manages the team. All are full-time ambulance or flight paramedics for St. The team is relatively small with a full membership that hovers around 16. The anchor for it all is the team’s oversized Ford F-350, covered in beefy attachment points, storage bins, and stickers with the name of the team: Magic Valley Paramedics Special Operations Rescue Team. The team moves methodically and with confidence, each with a small job: running lines through hefty pulleys and brake systems, building a large tripod, keeping coiled ropes free and uncrossed. The jumper flies down to a sandy spot on the river’s shore as a houseboat races to pick him up, the driver one of a handful of local entrepreneurs who have fashioned businesses around the rugged landscape of the canyon (the hotel Coffee or Die Magazine’s team is staying at boasts special “jumper rates” and keeps a conference room open for packing parachutes).Īfter watching the jumper land, Smith smiles and turns back to the dozen or so men and one woman wearing climbing harnesses who are setting up a complex system of heavy-duty ropes, extending down into the gorge. Still, he yells out a courteous “yeah!” when the jumper leaps forward from the bridge and free-falls momentarily until a parachute snaps open, whipping the man’s body straight. He’s seen maybe 1,000 - maybe 10,000 - jumpers make the same leap. Things are like that here.Ī few hundred feet away, at the top of the brown canyon’s cliff face and tied into heavy-duty climbing ropes, Chad Smith briefly looks over at the bridge to watch. ![]() The jumper has no permit, hasn’t paid a fee, hasn’t asked for permission, and isn’t worried that a park ranger or cop is about to drive up and stop him.Īt the Perrine Bridge, unlike nearly every other well-known BASE jumping spot in the US, you can just show up and … jump.īut this is Idaho. The jumper is halfway across the Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, probably America’s most wide open and unregulated BASE jumping mecca. Behind the man, four lanes of highway traffic roar past, a rushing mix of 18-wheelers, oversize campers, and tourists in rental cars. Almost 500 feet below is the Snake River, met on both sides by massive sheer cliffs that are stained dark brown by volcanic basalt rock. A base jumper climbs onto a handrail and looks around.
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