Nick's Summer Update!

Hello All! Hope you all had a great summer! While I did not do an internship this summer due to me already having done 2, I was very busy. For most of the summer I worked full time back at home. When I wasn’t at work though, I was out hiking local state parks, riding my wave runner on the local lake, as well as taking classes at my local community college for my fire department. Taking those classes through the summer also gave me skills that I will be able to take with me when I become a Ranger, even though they are fire related. Over this semester and until the academy next year, I will be hard at work with a lot of school work, as well as still working full time! Also, I will be continuing my education with different fire school classes with skills that I can use at parks such as rope rescue, swift water rescue, and confined space rescue! Even beyond the academy, I am looking at Master programs with security and intelligence so that it can greater enhance my career and skills, so stay tuned to hear more! Enjoy pictures from my many adventures this summer! 

See you Monday

This week, my last week, I was lucky enough to grab lunches with Ranger Town and Chief Schonzeit. They gave me great female perspectives and the story of their careers certainly motivate me further.

On Tuesday I watched the wonderful dispatch ladies at work, and I’m still in awe at the number of programs they simultaneously operate.  A new dispatcher had just finished their background check, so I joined in on their orientation.

From Wednesday on I was back with VRP. A new initiative to more deeply ID everyone we contact was introduced. At a minimum, we ID people by name, but management has asked that we run everyone and have dispatch check NCIC for warrants, repeat offenders, and to make sure people are who they say they are. The obvious con of this would be the inefficiency in calling dispatch constantly, but the pros that motivated the initiative are identifying repeat-offenders of PCS, dog off leash, etc. It also increases our chances of finding hard-crime offenders, like in the past case of Mark Apples.

The homeless population of INDE is exactly what you would expect of a city, and Washington Square is a very common place for people to ‘camp out’- lay out cardboard or blankets, using bags as pillows, anything that turns a bench into sleeping or living quarters. While we have resources that we offer consistency, there's been a greater push to get resources to people in need since winter is approaching.  For example, I spent some time calling different shelters and providers in hopes that we could find assistance for well-known family that frequents Washington Square.

If you live in Philly, you may have seen this incident in the news. A bright orange cat got “stuck” in a tree in the rose garden of our park. Since he had been seen moving to different heights of the tree, we aren’t really sure if he was stuck or just hanging out. A high-reach would have been too difficult to bring into the rose garden, and the ladders we had and that were offered to us by others didn’t quite cut it. The cat was too apprehensive of the crowds below to come down during the day, and we have no idea if he came down at night. By day 3 or 4, the public was extremely concerned. Public officials and fox news members were reaching out to the park service, demanding this cat be brought down. Thankfully, what I’ll call for all intents and purposes a “professional tree climber”, managed to get the cat down and animal control promptly caught him. The public named him “Ben” after Ben Franklin.

On my last day, alongside prolonged good-byes, I witnessed both a small socialist protest against I.C.E.  at the Bell and a public intoxication incident at Christ Church.  The protest went peacefully, and the intoxication incident came terribly close to including public urination, but the rangers got the situation under control.

By the time Saturday came, I could not have said enough “thank-yous”, and still can’t. I’ve learned so much from all the rangers and staff willing to let me into their world, and I will without a doubt carry it with me into my career. Even though my 10 weeks are up, I found myself wishing I’d be back on Monday.

Not quite painting the town red...

Except for some excessive heat, INDE’s been blessed with tons of sun this summer. This week made up for all of that. 

Working around dozens of visitors at any given site makes maintenance hard enough, but rain is just problematic. In case it isn't obvious, painting in the rain is useless. 

               The painters are another friendly and dedicated maintenance team just as gardening had been a few weeks back. The week was a game with the weather. We’d start the day painting bollards at Independence Hall, feel a drizzle, and rush back inside to paint some benches or gloss arrowheads. One eye trained on the window the entire time, waiting for the sun to come back out. 45 minutes later the rain would stop, we would power-walk back out to the bollards, and paint for 30 minutes before the rain began again. Of course, we had to do extra coats and touch ups on everything because of the rain damage, but everything turned out good if I do say so myself.

              

Later in the week we touched up the base of the high-rise  with some glossy orange paint. Photo credit goes to Ulises who, with his master photography skills, refused to let me take this photo without some sort of posing.  

Storytellers

I spent this week with the crafty storytellers of the park. Interp rangers and guides have a RIGID schedule, down to 5-minute travel blocks. They may spend an entire day at the visitors center, but they often have 20 minute to one hour stints at multiple locations throughout the day. Minus the stress of needing to travel quickly, most rangers like the variance, it keeps the day from being monotonous.

All the rangers and guides were beyond friendly, and didn’t hesitate to tell me their stories. They each have a unique background and there's no one way that someone becomes an interp ranger- some are veterans, some became rangers well into their 40s after careers as teachers, and some joined right after college.

       

 One of my favorite places to spend time was in the West Wing, which houses important versions of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Here rangers could have regular, in-depth conversations with visitors. And before anyone asks, our Declaration is actually older that the one in Washington.

Interp is challenged with both a ‘lightening’ of their job and angry visitors. While I haven’t seen it at our park, rangers are hyper aware that others have contracted out interpreters and expect rangers to have a lighter hand in interpretation. On the visitor side, rangers are the first to deal with people who are unhappy with the interpretation being done. Rangers expertly handle visitor’s issues with topics as small as the way INDE describes Hamilton versus the musical, to something as big as hate for the new LGBTQ exhibit.   Visitors also tend to rush to highlights of the park- the bell, the hall, etc.- without stopping to talk to interpreters or hear a deeper story.

Interp at INDE also takes care of  another of my favorite sites, the Edgar Allen Poe National Historic Site. It's only open Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and since it's all the way up on Spring Garden Street, rangers are scheduled ahead of time to spend the entire day there. It houses a great self-guided tour, a fun video, and a few Poe-style decor. 

Highlights

Witnessing the ringing of the Centennial Bell. 

"Standing Trial"

Park Ninja Ranger

A different type of PT

Bad Apples

This week was the 4^th of July!!

On the 3rd, I shadowed Ranger Clark and was supposed to observe the Pops Concert, but thunderstorms prevented that from happening.

The 4th on the other hand was a busy, exciting day.  The highlight was the parade, where I got to practice my crowd-scanning skills and enjoy the show a little. Despite the low attendance from the ridiculous heat, the parade was a fun mix of music, Philadelphia cultures, patriotism, and unicyclists (my personal favorite).  As per usual, we had a ton of heat exhaustion calls.

On the 5^th I was debriefed on the craziness that happened during the night shift on the 4^th. There were a few wild fights and light posts down but nothing that isn’t expected on one of the country’s drunkest days of the year.  Rangers are responsible for supervising any set-up and break-down of stages around INDE, especially if it involves any traffic interference.  So while observing the break-down in front of the Hall, Ranger Keiffer was called to help one of the workmen ‘break’ into his car.

Around the time of the Philly I.C.E. protests, Philly PD asked for mild ranger backup. If you’ve seen the videos, you’ve seen the crowd control Philly PD has done. For my sake, the Rangers showed me videos of that day, and videos of past crowd control, and talked about their experience there, doing the usual after-action report of what went well and what could have gone better.

This week was also a huge arrest of a man we’ll call “Mark Apples”, for the sake of anonymity. INDE has a large homeless population, and rangers often talk to them and get to know the regulars around the area. It helps foster a more positive and safer environment.  Apples was known to hang around a particular bench and fist-bump people passing by. No malicious intent, no harassing, just overly-friendly fist-bumps and “hellos”. But sometimes, Apples would drink, get loud, and start grabbing people if they didn’t pay attention to him. That’s when rangers get called in to calm the situation down.  

In the morning we got a call that Apples was being the more aggressive version of himself. So we went out to investigate and talk with him. Rangers had never gotten a positive ID on him before, so they decided to chat and try to get some information. Apples wasn’t angry or aggressive, but he was very uncooperative in giving any information. He would give a few different names, claim he couldn’t remember his birthday, and interrupt any questions with exclamations on music he listened to recently or things he found interesting, all the while walking back and forth from the rangers, not entirely part of the conversation.

His 'names' weren’t found in any system, which the rangers expected. A few hours later we get a call that Apples was now belligerently drunk and had offered alcohol to minors on park property. After interviewing the minors, we found Apples and decide to follow him at a safe distance while waiting for backup. Based on his heavy stumbling and his adventures through the middle of the street, he was clearly drunk. Once backup came they contacted Apples, got a consensual search of his bag (which did indeed have a bottle of alcohol in it ), and tried once again to ID him. He became increasingly belligerent and angry with the rangers.  Since you can't cite someone you can't identify, and knowing that it was unlikely PPD would hold him for identification, rangers agreed to confiscate the alcohol and leave the contact for a later time while they try to identify him- there was no doubt he would back at his bench tomorrow. 

Apples had claimed he was a veteran, so Ranger Cooper and I drove over to the local VA to see if they were familiar with Mark Apples. They weren’t sure they knew him, and as we were leaving we get a text from a supervisor stating, “Oh! That’s Mark Apples”. He had been dealt with by the supervisor about 5 years back, and hadn’t been seen around since. Come to find out, this friendly fist-bumper has multiple warrants and failed to register himself as a sex offender.

30 minutes before the end of shift, as the rangers are planning his arrest for the following day, we get a call that Mark Apples was harassing people at the Liberty Bell line and was headed into the Visitor Center. An hour later Mark Apples was in custody, undergoing a full search by a ranger, and headed to the hospital because of his extreme drunkenness. Ranger Cooper led the case, so she was responsible for staying with Mark Apples until she could transfer custody over to the Philadelphia Sheriffs, even if it meant hanging out in the hospital for 3 hours after her shift had ended.  

Search and Rescue on the Green River

I started the last week of July by responding with Ranger Russell and Ranger Jaynes to a potential cave search and rescue. We received a call about a visitor passing out while on the wild cave tour. We loaded the stair chair into the truck and I followed the rangers to the elevator. Thankfully, with assistance, the visitor managed to make it to the surface by the time we arrived on scene. It was great news that the visitor had made it to the halfway point of the tour, because any search and rescue efforts deeper into the cave would have been extraordinarily difficult. The visitor refused medical transport and I transported him back to the visitors center.

Later in the day I also assisted with an abandoned vehicle. While on patrol Ranger Russell noticed an abandoned vehicle and trailer parked on the side of the road. I gathered traffic cones and put them out along the roadside to warn motorists of the truck parked along the curve. Later, I returned to the area to check the status of the vehicle. The owners had returned and driven off, which took care of the problem.

The next day I rode along with Ranger Clemons as he ran RADAR in the park. I learned more about how to use RADAR and I got the chance to try and use the unit myself. I also learned more about what to look for while running RADAR, including possible signs of someone driving under the influence. As the day came to a close, we got the call that several people in canoes and kayaks had capsized and were trapped in a strainer. Ranger Clemons, Ranger Sacia, and I launched the rescue boat and went up river in search of the canoers. We found three people on a sunken tree trunk in the middle of a fast moving current and two others similarly trapped. We secured the group of two people first, and towed them over to shallow, slow moving water, where they could safely stand and walk. Next, Ranger Clemons and Ranger Sacia removed the people on the tree trunk, one at a time, while I stood further downstream with a throwbag ready lest anyone be carried downstream. Once everyone was safe and out of the water, we transported them down to the Green River Ferry. Then, we went in search of the capsized canoes. One was pinned in a strainer, and the other was capsized further downstream. We put our swift water rescue skills to the test and thankfully everyone made it off of the river safely.

The next two days were dedicated to my program visit, but that is deserving of its own post -- and I don't have fast enough internet to download and upload the pictures from the visit at this moment.

An Alaskan Send-Off

I am quite sad to say that this was my last week at Denali National Park and Preserve.  I learned a great deal from a fantastic team of rangers and met many cool people along the way.  While I would be happy to stay a while longer in Denali, I know that I am one step closer to becoming a Park Ranger myself.  And who knows, maybe I will be back.

Though I only worked three days, this was a pretty eventful week.  On Monday, Ranger Page and I were making our usual morning rounds when we were told about two young enlisted men who were late returning from the backcountry.  They had failed to report to work and were therefore AWOL, so the military and their family members were calling the park trying to find them.  Ranger Page and I searched for them on social media to see if they had made any posts suggesting they had returned from the backcountry, which they had not.  We looked for their vehicle in the parking lots and found it, assuring us that they had not left the park.  While they weren't yet that long overdue, the fact that they were in the military and had failed to report to their post and that one of them had a life threatening, exertion induced medical condition were causes for alarm.  The rangers began poring over maps of the backcountry units they had gotten permits for.  Their plan involved crossing the Muldrow Glacier, something reported to be quite difficult.  After determining some potential routes they may have taken, the helicopter was called in.  Ranger Page and I prepared recovery kits for those who would be responding.  The helicopter refueled and took on the gear and personnel. 

During this time, Ranger Page and I responded to a bus leaking fuel at the visitor center bus stop.  It was a slow leak, and the private company already had their own mechanics en route.  We provided some oil absorbent pads and waited for the mechanic to arrive, also calling in one of the park's mechanics to come and help.  While there, we saw the helicopter take off and head west into the park. 

The helicopter wasn't quite in the air for two hours when we received a call that our missing persons had walked into the Eilson Visitor Center.  It turned out that they had crossed the Muldrow Glacier as planned, which they found incredibly difficult.  After camping on the other side of the glacier, they decided that rather than retrace their steps, they would hike back to the road on the far (west) side of the glacier, where they would have to cross the McKinley river (fed by the Muldrow) to return to the road rather than the Thorofare river.  They reached the river, and with the past two weeks or so of unseasonably high temperatures, found it too difficult to cross.  After making several attempts, they decided they would be forced to return the way the came, thus resulting in their delay.  It was really a best case scenario for this kind of thing.

Later in the day I helped Ranger Pilot Brett Nigus with some work on one of the planes.  I got to sit in the cockpit and move the stick back and forth while Ranger Nigus made sure everything was in good working order.  The plane's elevator was sticking a bit, and he wanted to make sure it was just some tightened bushings and not a mechanical problem.  Everything seemed to be in good shape.

Later that evening there was a huge moose jam right at the park entrance.  Dozens of people were out of their vehicles, crossing the highway on foot in order to see the largest member of the deer family.  Ranger Page and I responded along with Ranger Stack.  We got people back to safe distances, slowed down traffic, and instructed poorly parked vehicles to relocate.

The action did not stop on Tuesday.  Nearly first thing in the morning there was a medical call just up the hill from the ranger station.  A maintenance employee suffered a possible stroke, and was taken to the nearby clinic in the ambulance.

Then Rangers Page and Beheller and I took a pack test with a group of other park employees.  They all needed to take the test to renew their red cards for wildland firefighting.  Since I am not yet red carded, I took the test to lend moral support and to see how it was.  For those unfamiliar, the test consists of walking 3 miles in 45 minutes while carrying a 45lb pack.  You are not allowed to run, meaning the test is rough on the shins since you have to power walk the whole time (the average person walks a mile in around 20 minutes).  Ranger Page was a little nervous that she might not finish in time, so I walked right behind her to make sure she didn't slow down too much.  It turned out that she didn't need my support at all, finishing with plenty of time to spare.  Everyone else taking the test finished quite quickly as well.

After resting for a bit, Ranger Page and I headed out to the Savage Cabin to check out a possibly vandalized broken window.  We took some photos and poked around.

We went out to the Savage Check Station, where we were given an old chewed up tent found in the backcountry by some day hikers.

On the way back east we drove onto the scene of a motorcycle accident.  There were two vehicles stopped in the road, with the drivers moving the motorcycle off of the road, after appearing to have already helped the driver, the only one involved in the accident.  At first, the driver appeared completely fine, as he was sitting up and talking.  After coming over to talk to him we could see that he was probably injured.  Ranger Page called for assistance and began conducting a medical assessment while I wrote down the information.  She determined that he probably had a broken collarbone.  He described going over the handlebars, luckily, he was wearing a helmet.  Medic one (the ambulance) arrived along with several other rangers.  I began directing traffic along with several maintenance employees who stopped to help while the rangers finished the assessment and loaded the man into the ambulance.  He remained in good spirits throughout and we drove him to the clinic.

Wednesday was Safety Day at Denali.  There were some presentations in the morning in the theatre in the visitor center and then there were stations that everyone rotated through.  The presentations included an overview of the day and a video about mental health resources. During one presentation, Mountaineering Law Enforcement Ranger Chris Erickson gave a captivating account of a rescue he was on of a man who had fallen into a crevasse near one of the camps on Mount Denali. 

The stations consisted of: Active Shooter, Road Lottery, Stretching/Dancing, Fire Extinguishers, Radio Communications, and Sexual Harassment.

This is not me, but it was the first time I used a fire extinguisher

After all that there was a very nice staff bbq.

In the afternoon, I sat in on a fire refresher with several of the rangers and other park employees. This included an overview of the 2017 firefighting season, expectations for the current season, a discussion of margins (as in creating greater safety margins by mitigating risks, having backup plans, etc.), an in depth look at the Nuttall fire (in which backup plans were quickly eroded by unexpected fire behavior, injury, and poor communication), and a fire shelter deployment test.  We had 25 seconds to open the packaged up shelters, shake them out, get inside them, and get on the ground with the edges sealed and as much air as possible inside. Pictured below are practice shelters.

Later this evening I had dinner with some of the Law Enforcement Rangers who were not working.  I think they were sad that I was leaving, but perhaps they are all very good at masking their relief.   

I was off for the last few days I had in Denali.  I headed out into the backcountry for one last hurrah.  I cut the trip short because the weather wasn't the greatest, but it was still a nice excursion.  I went to the backcountry unit on the east side of the Muldrow, near where our former missing persons started out their trip.  I did not cross the glacier, but rather I tried to get up onto a ridge to follow back to try and see where the Muldrow makes its sharp turn.  I camped up on a hill overlooking the glacier the first night, but the next morning it was so cloudy I knew I wouldn't be able to see anything more.  I headed back to the road, and just as I reached it the rain started.

View south across the thoroughfare river valley

Looking northwest towards Kantishna and the two of the Muldrow, covered in sediment and plants

Closer to where the Muldrow turns, covered in sediment but few plants

Glacier Creek

My campsite for the night

Socked in

                           

After my trip, I had a little bit of time to pack up and clean my cabin.  It was a bittersweet time in over in C-Camp cabin 552.  Meaghan came over and baked me a cake to wish me farewell.  We went into the Shaffer to share the cake with the Rangers who were on duty and the dispatchers in the Comms Center.  While there, we learned about the sight seeing flight that crashed in Denali on 8/4.  The dispatchers were busy coordinating the emergency response.  The pilot had reported injuries, but that himself and all four passengers were alive and had emergency supplies. At the time, the weather was too poor to get a helicopter in there, as the plane had crashed on a 10,000 food ridge.  

The next day I finished packing and cleaning and Ranger Beheller gave me a ride to the train station.  I took the Alaska Railroad back to Fairbanks, flew to the twin cities, and then to JFK.  My travel was very smooth, and I am pretty sure I saw the northern lights from the plane.  With the right brightness and angle you can see a greenish shimmer above the light on the planes wing.  It was not the most dazzling it could have been, but it was something I definitely did not expect to see during my time in Alaska and amazing nonetheless.

Since I have been home, I am saddened to hear that responders reached the plane crash site on 8/6 and discovered that all five people had died.  As Ranger Erickson noted in his safety day talk, you can only do the best you can while focusing on your own safety.