by Eric Blehm
In July 1978, David Cunningham was reported overdue from a backpacking trip in Yosemite. The search lasted two and a half weeks and cost the NPS more than $20,000—a significant amount at the time. Search teams were exposed to hundreds of hours of hazardous terrain, including steep snowfields, wild rivers, and sheer rock faces. As stated in the case incident record, “All this effort was unneeded because Cunningham was not lost, but had decided to leave his wife and family for personal reasons” without telling anyone. The mystery was solved only when a friend received a postcard from Cunningham weeks after the search had been called off. He had taken a bus across the country and was lying low in Bangor, Maine.
DeLaCruz’s conversation with Lyness began with the same scripted disclaimer as with all his interviews: “I know this is difficult for you—being a friend of Randy’s—but I hope you can understand that we’re trying to get to the bottom of this. There are some difficult questions I need to ask you, and I hope you understand it’s in the best interest of finding Randy and the safety and well-being of all the searchers involved.”
From a distance, the conversation appeared casual but, as the increased volume and body language indicated, “you could tell Lo wasn’t taking the questions kindly,” remembers Durkee, who was mingling with some other rangers nearby. It didn’t take long—DeLaCruz ended the questioning when Lyness broke down, crying. In the interest of privacy, DeLaCruz will not divulge the dialogue between himself and Lyness, but he does acknowledge that it was the most difficult interview he conducted during the SAR and that, due to her emotions, Lyness hadn’t offered “any information that was of benefit to the investigation.” He was, however, “absolutely certain” she was completely genuine in her distress and honestly had no idea where Randy was.
Indeed, Lyness wrote in her logbook, “By today, there can be no question that Randy’s seriously injured or no longer alive.” She went on to describe the interview with DeLaCruz: “Got home to face interrogation by ‘investigations.’ Obviously pursuing a heavy suspicion that RM either left the park or did himself in. Neither option is one any of us who knew him well find possible. He would have to have turned into a person none of us knows to do either of these things. And the insinuation that he might be ‘hiding out’ is patently absurd. All of those options rate right up there with aliens and a spaceship. When you don’t turn up clues, it’s always easier to believe the person isn’t there. I find the intrusions into Randy’s personal life to be jarring and harsh. An unpleasant evening, at best.”
ON THE OTHER SIDE of the parks, soaked from a different cloudburst, backcountry ranger Nina Weisman was returning to her station at Bearpaw Meadow. She represented a faction in the parks who struggled through one of the most frustrating, helpless duties in the Morgenson search—not taking part.
Weisman had adopted Randy as her mentor in 1988, the season he’d impressed her “more than words can convey” when he called out over the radio to make sure Robin Ingraham—the climber who’d lost his best friend on the Devil’s Crags—was not left alone. Another time, Randy had talked her out of an embarrassing situation when she was a newbie trailhead ranger who got lost her first time off-trail. She hadn’t actually been lost, she’d just doubted herself, and it was Randy who came to her rescue via radio. His calm voice had put her immediately at ease. He asked her about her surroundings: What trail had she left from? What did the terrain look like? The trees? Did she hear water? Where was the sun in relation to the peaks? After more than a dozen questions, he reassured her that she was exactly where she thought she was. “He gave me the confidence I needed to go on that day,” says Weisman, “but in other ways, the confidence to follow my dream to go for it. Become a backcountry ranger. He nudged me over the edge—off the trails—where I learned to enjoy the real magic of being totally and completely alone in the backcountry.”
More than anything Randy had taught her to “pay attention and don’t walk too fast. You might miss something.”
After having worked eight years at various positions in the park, from toilet scrubber to trailhead ranger to bear management specialist, Weisman had finally earned her ultimate assignment in 1996: a backcountry ranger with her own station. Randy was one of the first people she’d shared the thrilling news with, and she looked forward to many more seasons working with Randy, whom she described as “one of the kindest souls to ever walk the trails in this park.”
Now he was missing, and she was angry because she had not been chosen to take part in the SAR, despite her knowledge of the search area.
Weisman had spent the day cleaning fire pits around Mehrten Creek; on the way back, the rainstorm hit. “I was a mile from home after a depressing 12-mile day,” she says. “I was listening to the radio traffic about the search and was really upset. I couldn’t help thinking something bad had happened to Randy, so I was just plodding through the rain, getting madder and madder that I wasn’t invited to help in the search—kind of having one of those internal conversations—and I tripped on some rocks, fell forward, and ripped my knee open.
“I was close to home, so I wrapped a bandana around it, and there was blood and soot from the fires and it was streaming down my leg from the rain. The pain started throbbing, and I thought, ‘Geez, I was depressed and mad and it made me not pay attention, just for a second, and look what happened.’
“I knew from training that Randy was having a really bad summer and was depressed about stuff, and it hit me that he was probably not super careful, not on his toes, not in that place you have to be mentally out here, and he might have just tripped, except in a very bad spot. I was on a trail and just hit rocks. Randy, I knew, was somewhere off-trail. I got more and more depressed—it was hard for those of us who wanted to help but had to listen to the radio and watch the helicopters flying all over the place. That night I couldn’t help but think Randy was out there seriously injured.
“I can’t tell you how many times I considered abandoning my post to go join in the search. That’s how worried I was. But then I realized I wasn’t the only one. There were other rangers who wanted to take part, but there was still a park full of people. There were still bears stealing food, and injuries to attend to, and permits to check. My presence was needed here at Bearpaw. I told myself that every single night of the search.”
AFTER THE DISAPPOINTING results of day three of Randy’s SAR, the overhead team members at the Cedar Grove fire station command post racked their brains for alternative search methods. While conversing with one of the California Highway Patrol officers whose unit was donating personnel for the cause, Dave Ashe was told that the Army Air National Guard in Reno possessed a special asset that could prove helpful—a night helicopter equipped with forward-looking infrared (FLIR), which detected body heat. Ashe, who had already used California’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) to disseminate their needs to the SAR community, again approached his OES contact with the hope of gaining access to the military’s state-of-the-art technology. The initial problem was that the SAR was in California, and Reno is in Nevada. But since the California Guard’s ship was not available, the OES contacted Nevada’s Department of Emergency Management, which authorized the mission.
Chief Warrant Officer III Bob Bagnato and Chief Warrant Officer II Darren Chrisman got the call a little before 9 P.M. on Saturday, July 27. Their OH-58 (Bell Jet Ranger) helicopter landed at Cedar Grove three hours later.
At 0100, Bagnato and Chrisman, dubbed “Recon 71,” were high above the search area and getting a bearing on the boundaries of the assignment by referring to their GPS and visual landmarks—in this case, massive granite ridgelines that glowed green through their night-vision goggles.
Even though many military pilots had bootlegged low-level flights into Kings Canyon National Park, this was apparently the first authorized night flight. Coffman’s admonition to “try and focus on the higher, more rugged terrain that isn’t easily accessible on foot” was something Recon 71 had agreed to, “if conditions allow.” Now so
me of the higher ridgelines were shrouded by cloud cover, but the wind was mercifully light, making navigation a little less wicked.
The biggest concern with any search, but especially a search at this altitude, was maintaining enough speed and altitude to allow pilots to fly out of any potential mechanical failures while sticking to their search-and-rescue mantra: “slow and low.” That meant 20 to 40 knots; any faster and they’d lose their edge as an effective search tool. Bagnato and Chrisman were dedicated night fliers, so their missions were often poised between the operational periods of searches. Normally, there is very little small talk during briefing and often they don’t even know whom they’re searching for. “Just a warm body,” says Chrisman. But this time they knew it was a ranger, and that it was his seventh night out there alone.
“That just stuck out for me—lucky 7,” he says. “I started that night out with real high hopes that we’d find him.”
Between the two, Bagnato had more mountain flying hours, so he was the designated pilot in the right-hand seat while Chrisman operated the FLIR camera in the left-hand seat. Standard strategy was to fly one “high recon,” about 1,000 feet above ground level, to take a look at the search area and identify any points of interest: trails, creeks, anywhere a person would likely gravitate toward. Then they would make a lower pass over these points of interest, which could include game trails that were difficult to see on the ground but with night-vision technology looked “like a sidewalk.”
Once these two passes were made, a low-level grid search would follow strict GPS coordinates, first east to west and then north to south. The two systems, night vision and thermal, work well together: what one can’t see, the other can. In densely vegetated or wooded areas, the same lines are flown both directions to better see into the varying degrees of cover.
The pilots conversed almost constantly, Chrisman focusing 70 percent of his attention on the FLIR screen in front of him and 30 percent out the window. Meanwhile, Bagnato was focused 100 percent out the window, scanning left to right for any potential light source. A lit cigarette a mile away was all it would take to send them off their grid pattern to investigate, but only after marking the exact location where they diverted.
The parks’ helicopters weren’t equipped to fly at night, so when the search teams camped at the Bench Lake ranger station heard the distinct, deep whoop-whoop-whoop of the Jet Ranger blades cutting through the cold air at two in the morning, it was a bit disconcerting. Nobody had alerted them about the night operation, which Durkee summed up with two words: “voodoo spooky.”
The moon was nearly full and the surrounding granite basin was lit in ghostly Sierra light. When the helicopter passed overhead, treetops rustled. Then its darkened shape, clearly outlined against the stars, faded away to the north. Despite the searchers’ exhausted bodies and minds, rotors beating wind invoked an adrenaline rush that kept some awake for the rest of the night.
Around 3 A.M., Bagnato said, “I have a campfire.” Chrisman confirmed, and Bagnato descended into the depth of what was LeConte Canyon. Well off any trail was a figure, apparently sleeping beside a fire. With night-vision technology from two miles away, the small, smoldering fire had looked like “a circus, or the Vegas Strip.” Going low, Chrisman used the finger touch pad on his controller to zoom the thermal camera in on the person, then videotaped the scene, simultaneously recording the exact GPS coordinates. The coordinates were relayed back to the incident command post, where someone would be assigned to investigate on foot since landing in the narrow gorge was not possible.
No other solo warm bodies besides those of the resident wildlife revealed themselves that night, but Chrisman had watched a large buck urinate (through the thermal imaging, the ground around the deer’s hind legs appeared “white-hot” as the puddle spread). “Serious wild kingdom footage,” says Chrisman. “It was the capper for the evening.” Both pilots felt confident that the solo hiker huddled next to the fire was the missing ranger.
By sunrise, everyone at the Bench Lake ranger station was aware that the “voodoo” ship had been a military loaner. Shortly thereafter, it was confirmed that this technologically advanced, multimillion-dollar eye in the sky had identified one potential warm body. The person was discovered not to be Randy.
ON THE MORNING OF JULY 28—day four of the search—various volunteer groups and state and federal agencies had joined the Sequoia and Kings Canyon rangers, upping the total number searching for Randy to sixty-three, including thirty-four ground searchers, five helicopters, and four dog teams.
At the Bench Lake staging area, Rick Sanger learned his assignment was to sweep the high ridges northeast of Mather Pass, a locale he found “unbelievable.”
“Why are they assigning me these high, impassable ridges that any meadow stroller like Randy would just shake his head at?” he thought at the time. Sanger’s incorrect assumption was that the aging naturalist would have avoided such vertical granite mazes. In reality, Randy loved high places and had finessed his way up into many of the parks’ zones generally reserved for the resident mountain sheep.
Moments later, Sanger was introduced to the dog handler who would be accompanying him, an official-looking officer from the Department of Fish and Game. Her camouflage pants and 9 mm pistol holstered at her side gave her a Special Forces mystique. Sanger’s immediate reaction was “I wouldn’t want to get caught poaching by this person.” Then he saw Kodiak, her rottweiler search dog.
The three climbed into a waiting helicopter and, as Sanger donned a helmet, Kodiak started growling. The handler told Sanger that she suspected the aggressive behavior was because his green Park Service uniform and helmet resembled the “bite suit” Kodiak had been trained with. Sanger asked if the handler had a “scent item” from Randy’s belongings, but she explained that Kodiak didn’t track that way. Rather, he was trained to follow “disturbed areas,” wrote Sanger in his logbook. Regardless, Sanger delayed the flight while Durkee brought them one of Randy’s shoes.
They landed and, after the helicopter’s departure rotor wash settled, Sanger spread a map on the ground to go over their search route. As he kneeled, Kodiak lunged from three feet away and sank his teeth into Sanger’s hand.
Shaking, Sanger walked to a nearby stream to wash his hand and watched blood swirl into the current from two puncture wounds. Taking deep breaths, he tried to convince himself this day wouldn’t be a total waste of time, even though he was pretty certain Randy hadn’t been packing any animal gallbladders, the one scent item Kodiak had been trained on.
“For Randy,” says Sanger, “I composed myself and returned to the handler, who was extremely apologetic and, taking the role of doggie psychiatrist, guessed that Kodiak might be ‘feeling threatened.’” Sanger wrote in his logbook that night: “I could relate.”
As predicted, their search didn’t provide any clues, but it did serve an important purpose by closing another gap in the search area. That night, Sanger recounted the dramatic day to Durkee, stating how ironic it was that this was the first patrol he’d been on without his duty weapon. Durkee nodded, saying, “It’s a good thing. She looked to be a quicker draw.”
For Kodiak, it was his last day on this search. No room for dogs without good manners.
BY THE END OF THE FOURTH DAY of the SAR—the eighth since Randy had last made contact—many of the rangers were feeling its mental effects. At the request of veteran rangers, Dave Ashe telephoned Alden Nash at his home in Bishop, California.
Most of the rangers searching for Randy had worked under Nash during his tenure as Sierra Crest subdistrict ranger from the mid-1970s until his retirement in 1994. They felt they needed the emotional, even fatherly, support Nash had provided them as their supervisor. In addition, Nash had hiked with Randy more than anybody in the high country and would be a valuable asset.
Nash graciously refused the request to join the SAR, rationalizing that it wasn’t worth risking his life after Randy’s recent admissions. In the first place, Nash t
hought it highly possible that he had left the mountains. A phone call from Ashe early in the search asking if Randy had been in contact with him confirmed that this line of thinking wasn’t solely his own.
But if Randy was indeed injured somewhere, Nash reasoned that whatever he had gotten himself into was a result of the choices he had made in his life. Nash felt that Randy’s mind likely hadn’t been in the right place, that he’d been severely depressed and had made a mistake or even done himself in.
During his thirty years with the Park Service, Nash believed that when he put on the uniform, he had an obligation to uphold what it stands for. “For me, that sense of duty overflowed to all aspects of my life—meaning my family,” he says. “I always thought Randy felt the same way, but he was living a lie. Learning that was a big disappointment. It was like a kid finding out the truth about Santa Claus. Randy had been, in my eyes, the epitome of ethics and morals, and here, all of a sudden, he was human. I knew he was ashamed of it or he wouldn’t have kept it from me for three years.”
Nash’s sense of duty to his family after his retirement was to be around for his grandchildren. He felt fortunate that he’d come through all those years of service for the most part unscathed. He also didn’t like helicopters. “Every time you set foot inside one,” he says, “you’re risking your life.” He had in fact experienced multiple close calls on helicopter flights into the mountains. On one such occasion, he watched a helicopter he’d just stepped off 30 seconds before crash-land because of an engine malfunction. “Helicopters fly,” he explains, “by beating the wind into submission.