Barney's Rock

On Tuesday evening, Blue and Gray SAR Dogs got a call for a missing person in Marshall, Virginia.  I rushed home from work to pick up the dogs and switch trucks, when no more than 10 minutes down the road another page came in, subject found.  Big sigh of relief.  But, another call came in for a lost berry picker.  Only this one wasn’t the next county over, but about 300 miles away in deep southwest Virginia, Wise County to be exact.

I had to psych myself up for not only the epic overnight drive  without sleep, but also the next day: 8 hours of searching and the reverse 300 mile trip home.

We were looking for an older gentleman that never returned from berry picking.  He has lived in the area all his life and intimately knew this part of the Jefferson National Forest.  The police found out that his favorite spot to hang out at was a place called Barney’s Rock.  Problem was, no one, not even his family knew where this place was.

Barney’s Rock is named after a local guy.  Sometime in the 60’s this Barney got in trouble with the law.  And, rather than face up to his crimes, he headed up into the mountains with his daughter.  They came to an unfortunate end though, passing away up in this little hide out.  No one is sure if they died of natural causes or what happened.

So the team is sitting at base, waiting for their tasks, but the search management team hasn’t made it there yet.  There is nothing more impatient than a dog team waiting for something to do, you really want to give them something or they can make the search managers life miserable.  We are doers not planners.  To us time is our enemy.  We want to be out there looking for the subject, not sitting in base and chit chatting.  We are trained from the very beginning how to attack a search, what the subject profile is and how to develop an initial search strategy.  One of my teammates finally had enough of waiting and developed three dog tasks, starting from base and radiating out.  Laurel Strotter and her dog  Baby were searching along the top of a ridge, when Baby takes off.  She goes over the top of the ridge, through some thick mountain laurel, and Laurel loses sight of her for a little while.  Baby comes rushing back and indicates and takes Laurel back to…. Barney’s Rock!  She and Baby found it.

Baby is trained to find articles as well as people and she found some articles that our missing person left behind at the rock.  This only the second or third mission Baby has been on as Laurel just got her certified this past spring. 

Barney’s Rock is a boulder as big as a house.   The original squatter, Barney, quite inventive with the caves under it.  He picked the most spacious cave and made it into the main living area.  He put up a wall of stone to block off the opening of the cave and make a doorway.

He was clever to design the fireplace and chimney so that the smoke dispersed without a sign.  He put the chimney in a large crack between two halves of the boulder.

Can you find the chimney?

the fireplace

I don’t know that I could live like that for too long without absolutely losing my mind.  Mainly because of my claustrophobia.  But black doesn’t describe how dark it is in that small cave, even when we were there in the middle of the day. And cold, even in July. 

the spacious living accomadations

back porch

front porch

haute cuisine

The day I got there (the first day, I tried to make it, but woke up with food poisoning, bleh), the search managers were calling for HRD dogs (cadaver dogs) because he’d been missing for so long and there’d been absolutely no contact with the family.   So my task was to cover the drainage from the road up to the Rock and down the ridge on the other side.  The police officer that was with said that it only took him and his team 30 minutes to get to the top earlier in the week, but they weren’t looking for a body, but wanted to try and sneak up on him.
  

With an HRD dog, you’ve got to work much more slowly.  Because scent can do funny things and trick you.  So as a handler you’ve got to be able to think about not only major climate conditions, but also the microclimate.  What is the air current doing around that large rock, is scent being drawn in or can any scent escape, what about that hole there, is it big enough for someone to fall into, if the person is deceased, have the animals gotten to the subject and are there places small enough for things to be cached.  

Many things go through a handlers head while they are working their dog, we don’t just walk behind them.  It took me and Cora about an hour to make it up to the boulder.  She kept getting drawn up the drainage next to the boulder, but nothing ever panned out.  We waited for the other dog team to make it to the Rock, giving Cora a break and some water

Me and the other handler figured out what our next task would be from that area and off we went.  I went down the ridge on the other side of the drainage.  I turned to take one last look at the Rock before we headed down, and it was completely gone.  Couldn’t see the cave and I was only 50 yards away.  What a great hiding place, but not any longer.

can you see the cave?

Here’s what the out come was: http://www2.tricities.com/news/2010/jul/23/hubert-ramey-found-facing-charges-ar-348747/