The Marin Search and Rescue team stumbled upon a girl stuck in a snow hole while training in Lake Tahoe Feb. 20.
The 10-year-old girl, Samantha White from Sacramento County, had fallen into a snow cave while snowshoeing down Castle Peak with her family near Boreal Mountain Resort. She sustained only minor injuries, including scrapes and bruises, before being saved by Marin Search and Rescue.
Rescuers of the girl included Redwood students Lauren Knott, Nick Forbes, Maddie Jarrell, Max Schoenlein, Francesco Cico and Cole Zesiger. These students are part of a 91-member team, 10 of which are Redwood students. Marin Search and Rescue also started training a new set of members on March 13, which includes two Redwood students.
Despite not having the normal rescue equipment the team would usually use in a situation like this, the group of 14 was able to bring the girl to safety in 12 minutes.
“Normally when we go on a rescue, we have all our rescue gear with us, but because we weren’t in rescue mode and were in training mode, and were climbing a peak, we had ice axes, snowshoes, three 50-foot ropes, and some carabiners,” Marin Search and Rescue manager Bob Gehlen said.
In order to increase the odds of successfully saving White, the team devised three ways to rescue the girl in case one of their options couldn’t be executed properly.
“Plan A was to pull her out via ropes, plan B was to tunnel in further down the creek and see if we could get her out that way, and plan C was have one of our stronger adult members go into the hole head first supported by another adult, grab her, and pull her out,” said Max Schoenlein, team medic and Redwood student.
The team decided to use the rope method because it was the safest option for everyone involved.
“She was at least 10 or 12 feet down, standing in knee-deep water in a rushing creek. She wasn’t hurt, there was no trauma, but she was 10, very afraid, and getting cold. She was inside essentially a snow cave with one exit,” Gehlen said.
Marin Search and Rescue had stumbled upon White’s father in a nearby meadow while descending down Castle Peak.
“He was on his phone, and I couldn’t tell if there was an immediate emergency because he wasn’t jumping up and down or panicking. Other than an intuition that the scene wasn’t quite right, I just couldn’t figure out what it was,” Gehlen said.
After pondering whether the man on the phone needed their help, Gehlen heard him say “helicopter.”
“This alerted me that things weren’t how they should be, and then he pointed down and I saw a hole in the snow. It was about the width of a person. I looked down in the hole, which was very dark, and I didn’t see anything,” Gehlen said. “Then I heard him say that his 10-year-old daughter had fallen through this hole.”
White’s father had alerted authorities, but the Truckee Fire Department said they could not respond for two hours, so Gehlen and his team decided to take immediate action.
Upon their arrival, White was already showing signs of hypothermia after being in the water for 15 minutes. The Marin Search and Rescue team was afraid of a possible cave-in, which would threaten the girl’s life.
“Our fear was that if anybody went anywhere near this hole, we were going to create an avalanche within the rain trap, and a very large amount of snow would probably fall on her and push her down, possibly trapping her underwater. So we had to be very careful about creating any disturbance around this snow bridge,” Gehlen said.
According to Gehlen, Tahoe had received several feet of snow a few days before, and the snow walls surrounding the hole were five to eight feet deep.
When the team lifted White out of the hole, lead medic Schoenlein looked over the girl.
“There was no trauma. We just had to warm her up and get her home,” Schoenlein said.
