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By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
6-13-09 A Bishop man was recently recognized for his bravery by being nominated for the California Medal of Valor, the state’s highest honor.
Dave Grah, Bishop’s Public Works director, was nominated for his heroism in the search and rescue of a Caltrans employee lost in the Sierra Nevada backcountry in September 2007.
Grah was nominated by Tom Hallenbeck, Caltrans District 9 director and Grah’s boss at that time, when friend and colleague Charlie Hench started his trans-Sierra Nevada hike that led to the search and rescue mission.
“Dave took his own time, his own plane and risked his life – no small cost – and he did locate him,” Hallenbeck explained to Bishop City Council members on Monday as to why he nominated Grah.
The story of Hench’s fateful hike and heroic rescue have been memorialized in a Reader’s Digest story, “Lost in the Mountains,” by Lynn Rosellini.
The piece centers on Hench, working for Caltrans in Cambria, who decides to “cook up an adventure to get lost in.” The monotony of life had become too much for Hench, who would be turning a half-century old in a few months. His plan was for a solo trans-Sierra hike from Lake Thomas Edison, about 40 miles east of Fresno, that included traveling cross country over Italy Pass, down to Pine Creek Pass, just north of Mt. Tom, and eventually Bishop – a distance of approximately 25-30 miles that Hench planned on completing in five days.
This hike, while not incredibly long or difficult, is not easy, especially alone and during the lure of the Indian summer, when warm fall days can give way to freezing temperatures at night and sudden, violent storms.
Hench left the shores of Lake Thomas Edison on Monday, reaching his half-way point, Lake Italy, on Wednesday. That night, 50 mph winds ripped across the lake and his tent, and by Thursday morning the snow was coming down hard, blowing horizontally. Hench was stuck in his tent as two-foot snow drifts banked up against it.
The sun came out on Friday as Hench set out to ascend the 1,200 vertical feet of snow-covered boulders to Italy Pass.
By that afternoon, he had made his way to the ridge line, but amidst the snow, Hench had lost his bearing and ended up too far north of the pass. While surveying and reading his map, Hench slipped and fell on the snow-covered rocks, breaking his wrist and slashing open his cheek. He tried to get up and fell again, and then made it up again only to fall yet again, this time sliding down onto a precipitous ledge.
Hench was now trapped, with icy terrain he could not navigate with a broken wrist, and the risk of tumbling down the couple hundred-foot drop to the other side of the pass.
Grant Krueger was waiting for Hench at the Pine Creek Pass trailhead on Friday, and immediately called Hench’s girlfriend, Julie McGuigan, to gather friends and coordinate a search when Hench didn’t show. Hench’s friends and colleagues would start searching from both sides of the Sierra, while Search and Rescue teams from Inyo and Fresno counties would begin foot and air searches on Monday.
Before Krueger left Monday to search for his buddy, he left a note on the desk of Grah, then an engineer for Caltrans.
Grah said this week, he clearly remembers that note sitting on his desk, staring at him with the words, “Going to start looking for Charlie, if there’s anything you can do, do it.”
Kruegen left the note because Grah was a good friend of Hench, and also an avid hiker, peak bagger and small-engine pilot with intimate knowledge of the Sierra backcountry.
In fact, Grah had quite a bit of experience with Italy Pass. Thirty years before Hench took a wrong turn at the pass, Grah’s brother had fallen and twisted his ankle in the same area. Grah added that, as if a premonition of things to come, he’d been to the area climbing peaks earlier that summer photographing the spot his brother had fallen.
The search began for Hench on that Monday. The Digest story continues with Hench being able to hear the helicopters, but not being spotted.
On Tuesday, Hench reviews a map he thought he’d lost and discovers he is at least a half-mile from the pass. The search teams will never find him if he doesn’t get closer to the pass, where the teams expect him to be. Hench tries to move closer to the pass, but only ends up getting stuck, stranded standing up on a lone, dry boulder. Later that night he begins to compose a last will and testament on a scrap piece of cardboard.
Grah said that on that Tuesday, he couldn’t stop thinking there was something more he could do and also about the place of his brother’s accident.
In the early hours of Wednesday, Hench’s sixth day after the accident, Grah flew his 1950 Cessna 170 straight toward Italy Pass. Grah said he knew he’d have to fly low to find a lone person in an ocean of snow-covered boulders, but he said he also knew of the dangers of flying too low in the mountains. The steep peaks create unpredictable up- and down-drafts that have forced plenty of planes into the sides of mountains, cliffs and valleys in the Sierra.
“Charlie’s a good friend of mine, and I had to do something,” Grah explained this week. “I flew right to the spot of my brother’s accident, but didn’t see anything. I flew around Lake Edison then took another pass at the same spot and spotted this man on a rock waving a pole with a piece of red fabric on the end.”
To Grah’s surprise, Hench had fallen in almost the exact spot Grah’s brother had 30 years prior.
Additional heroism and courage on the part of Fresno Search and Rescue was needed to put a helicopter down close enough to Hench to get him out safely.
The Fresno Sheriff’s Department gave the Hench rescue a rating of 9.9 on a difficulty scale of 1 to 10.
It would require 12 pins to hold Hench’s wrist together; he also suffered a chipped vertebrae.
Grah said he is still in awe of the fact those two men fell in almost the exact location, 30 years apart.
While Grah did not receive the Medal of Valor, Hallenbeck awarded him with a large plaque in recognition of his courage.
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