Team short-hauls into cave to free stranded rappeller

A climber who was exploring Keyhole Cave north of Sedona in the Coconino National Forest was able to walk back to the Sugarloaf Trailhead uninjured after she was rescued by a multi-agency team on Saturday, June 6.

Crews from the Sedona Fire District, Arizona Department of Public Safety, Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, first-responders from Coconino County and the volunteer Verde Search and Rescue Posse operation.

Keyhole Cave is “basically an alcove on the side of the mountain there, that water’s just eaten away at it and created a little pocket on the side of the mountain, and then a little bit of a pour over,” SFD Battalion Chief Todd Miranda said.

“In that alcove that is directly above the cave where the victim was, it’s verdant, it’s got lots of bushes and trees that have collected and grown there over the years, and that is also where the entrance to what is called the Keyhole passage is,” SFD Rescue Specialist Brent Johnson said. “So if you can imagine the side of a mountain, the alcove above it has trees in it. In that alcove, towards the back of the alcove, is this just-a-little-bit-bigger-than-a-person-sized opening that shoots about 20 to 25 feet through the rock, and then punches through to the cave beneath it. It’s like a cave within a cave.”

The climber was rappelling through the Keyhole Cave area and became entangled on her rope system and was unable to descend any further.

“There’s rigging in that little what they call the ‘Keyhole,’ for anchoring, and that’s where the victim had anchored her ropes to and descended through that keyhole into the lower cave where she got stuck,” Johnson said. “Part of that was due to some entanglement issues at the anchor point.”

Johnson and SFD Capt. Cooper Carr were short-hauled into the upper alcove of the Keyhole Caves area by an Arizona Department of Public Safety Ranger 3 helicopter, where they set up a rope system using trees as anchors to allow a member of the Coconino County Search and Rescue get to the woman, who was then able to get her down to the ground below.

The woman was back on the ground and off her rope at 12:10 p.m., and Johnson and Carr later flew out with the remainder of the rope gear.

SFD received the call at 10:10 a.m., though YCSO first had the call before the complexity of the rescue warranted bringing in SFD.

“We don’t often get called for climbers in trouble because they’re pretty savvy and can get themselves out of a jam,” Johnson said. “In this situation, I think they just weren’t able to resolve the rope from where she was at, so it’s not like they did anything wrong. And they had appropriate gear, so there’s not really any warning coming from this, other than I would say what really saved them is having good communications, charged cell phones, having enough water, because they were there way longer than they expected to be.”

VSAR started the three to four hour, 1,000-foot elevation gain hike as a backup plan if the helicopter availability was altered or windy conditions prevailed, VSAR posted to social media describing its role and noting it was mission number 47 this year for the volunteer group.

Ground teams were also positioned at the top of the mountain with a contingency plan to rappel down into the Keyhole area and perform the rescue from above if the helicopter mission was unsuccessful.

The woman being able to hike out on her own accord, Johnson said, was a relief “because our concern was, when somebody sits on a rope for a long time in a harness, you can get compartmentalization of your blood and your body parts, and they can run into health problems, but that didn’t happen. She was able to keep her circulation going, and she was completely uninjured.”

“SFD does not bill for rescues,” Miranda said. “We do not have a mechanism for that. We only bill for ambulance transportation and medical services rendered. DPS as well as both Coconino and Yavapai Search and Rescue are already funded through citizen taxes, so there is no charge for something like this.”

Note: A week later, a male climber in his 50s fell to his death while rappelling inside Keyhole Cave, near the Sugarloaf Trailhead in Sedona, on Saturday, June 13. The Sedona Fire District and Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office responded at about 1:30 p.m. An Arizona Department of Public Safety Ranger helicopter arrived on scene around 1:50 p.m. Another climber at the scene attempted life-saving measures.