Trading Steel for Stone: Tales of a Rustbelt Refugee Turned Rocky Mountain Rescuer

by Tom Wood

Overview

When the author began his career as a volunteer mountain rescuer with the Alpine Rescue Team in Colorado seventeen years ago, he was a clueless Youngstowner fresh off the interstate from Ohio who didn't know Gore-Tex from Tex-Mex. He had a lifetime of ridiculously dangerous pursuits and backcountry sins to atone for, so he became a Rocky Mountain rescuer with the intention of repaying the massive karmic debt he had accumulated. This is the story of how a career in volunteer service to others transformed a self-absorbed Rustbelt redneck adrenaline junkie into one of the nation's leading voices in technical rope rescue.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555664671
Publisher:	Bower House
Publication date:	05/30/2016
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

Table of Contents

Prelude 1

Introduction 3

Meet the Reporting Party 11

They Died Doing What They Loved Best and Other Lies from Rescue World 12

Rustbelt Recollections: My Dad, the Devil, Ice Age Prophecies, and the Orange Bears 28

Falling Down and Getting Dirty 46

Dynamite and Two Motorcycle Helmets 55

The Initial Call-Out 63

Broken Hearts, Shattered Glass, and Second Chances 64

The Alpine Rescue Team-Its Like Baywatch on Skis, Right? 72

Irritable Bowels, a Big Mountain, and By the Way, Have You Met My Nephew? 84

Search 100

A Tale of Two Marines: The Thin Line Between Pity and Disgust 101

Being Found is Not the Same Thing as Being Saved 115

Rescue 124

Shepard's Prayer 125

The Poor Man's BASE Jump and Reflections on the Aroma of Gangrene 143

Recovery 158

Suicide: The Low Side of That Rocky Mountain High 159

To Touch the Face of God 182

Debrief 205

A Fool's Circle: Learning the Hard Way-Again and Again 206

Acknowledgments 214