97 | The Mountain Angel: A Life of Search & Rescue in the High Sierra w/ Dean Rosnau Part 2

Today, we’re continuing our conversation with Dean Rosnau. If you haven’t listened to Part I yet, I highly recommend checking that out before diving into this episode.

We pick up with one of the most personal and tragic stories in Dean’s life: the loss of his close friend, Pete Schoerner, in an ice climbing accident. This part of the conversation is heavy—graphic at times—so please proceed with that in mind. But it’s also an important story, one that opens the door to a deeper conversation around grief: how it manifests, how we process it, and what it looks like to live on the other side of profound trauma.

From there, we shift focus to a more positive side of the SAR experience—a rescue that saved three skiers’ lives after a cornice collapse on Mt. Dana. We explore why, despite the complex technical skill required and the real risk involved, nearly all search and rescue work remains volunteer. What does that mean for the people who do it—and what drives them to keep showing up?

We also talk about the long-term emotional effect of saving a life. To witness someone you’ve rescued go on to live, have children, and impact the world—it changes something in the rescuer too.

We close the episode by talking about Matthew Greene, a missing climber Dean has been searching for over the past 13 years. We go into the details of his disappearance, the painstaking efforts to find him, and the difficult question: when is it time to stop searching?

You’ll hear both Dean and I reference a book throughout this conversation—The Shortest Straw: Search and Rescue in the High Sierra. It’s Dean’s memoir, filled with some of the most powerful stories from his 35 years in SAR. This podcast only scratches the surface. I encourage you to grab a copy and dive deeper.

 You can find the link to the book HERE

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Resources

Dean's Book "The Shortest Straw: Search and Rescue in the High Sierra"

Dean's Website

Dean's IG

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:36 The Loss of Pete Schoerner
• 50:16 A Rescue on Mt. Dana
• 1:02:47 Why Are Most S.A.R. Members Unpaid?
• 1:11:54 The Long Lasting Benefits of Saving Lives
• 1:17:36 The Story of Matthew Greene

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:09:24
Kyle
Welcome to the Climbing Majority podcast, where I capture the stories, experiences and lessons of nonprofessional climbers, guides and athletes from around the world.

00:00:09:26 - 00:00:14:17
Kyle
Come join me as I dive deep into a more relatable world of climbing.

00:00:15:26 - 00:00:35:29
Kyle
Welcome back to the Climbing Majority podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Brockman. Today we are continuing our conversation with Dean Rosenow. If you haven't listened to part one yet, I highly recommend checking that out before continuing with this episode. We pick up with one of the most personal and tragic stories in Dean's life, the loss of his close friend Peter Turner in a climbing accident.

00:00:36:01 - 00:01:02:26
Kyle
This part of the conversation is heavy, graphic at times. So please proceed with that in mind. But it's also an important story, one that opens up the door to a deeper conversation around grief, how it manifests itself, how we process it, and what it looks like to live on the other side of profound trauma. From there, we shift focus to a more positive side of the search and rescue experience a rescue that saved three skiers lives after a corner's collapse on Mount Dana.

00:01:02:29 - 00:01:24:09
Kyle
We explore why, despite the complex technical skill required and the real risk involved, nearly all search and rescue work remains volunteer effort. What does that mean for the people who do it and what drives them to keep showing up for others? We also talk about the long term emotional effect of saving a life to witness someone you've rescued go on to live, have children, and impact the world.

00:01:24:11 - 00:01:31:27
Kyle
It changes something in the rescuer too. We close the episode by talking about Matthew Green, a missing climber that Dean has been searching for

00:01:31:27 - 00:01:33:21
Speaker 1
For almost 13 years.

00:01:33:21 - 00:01:46:27
Kyle
We go into the details of his disappearance, the painstaking efforts to find him, and the difficult question when is it time to simply stop searching? You'll hear Dean and I reference a book throughout the conversation.

00:01:46:27 - 00:02:04:24
Kyle
The Shortest Straw Search and Rescue in the High Sierra. This is Dean's memoir, filled with some of the most powerful stories from his 35 years in search and rescue. This podcast only scratches the surface, so I encourage you to grab a copy on your own and go dive deeper. You can find the link to the book in our show notes.

00:02:04:26 - 00:02:22:13
Kyle
Going to end this conversation with a quote from Matthew Green. In our future travels and endeavors, no matter where they take us. We must not lose our youthful imaginations. We must not be too scared to take risks. And most of all, we must live life to the fullest.

00:02:35:12 - 00:03:05:05
Kyle
You have, seen a lot of, of death in your time in sa, And a lot of loss both to, to, you know, the people around you and people you don't know. I kind of like to dive into this topic of, of death and grief. And how kind of large of a role it's played in, in your life.

00:03:05:07 - 00:03:31:28
Kyle
And to me, the I think the story that really kind of paints the picture for how serious things can get is, is the story with Pete. And so, you know, if that's something you're, you're still willing to go into, I'd like to dive into that story and kind of the details around what happened and, ultimately kind of use that story to lay the foundation for, dealing with things like that moving forward.

00:03:32:01 - 00:03:53:07
Kyle
So, you know, the story, from, from what I read, which I found the circumstances of the accident I found extremely interesting, especially with your kind of role in it, where there's this very ephemeral ice formation forming up very high on the wall. It's going to be in for conditions. Look, great for it.

00:03:53:07 - 00:04:20:25
Kyle
You're planning ahead with a party of three, and then all of a sudden, the conditions start to worsen and the window is shortening, and you have to get up on it sooner. Which, because of your work, you are unable to participate in the objective, which I found extremely interesting. My first question for this is what was the job and why did it?

00:04:20:27 - 00:04:26:02
Kyle
Why was it so important that you bailed on this objective, that you were so psyched on?

00:04:26:15 - 00:04:47:10
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. So, Yeah. That formation formed up for the first time, and, the three of us really started looking at it hard. Hard? Excuse me. And, and then the weather changed and started getting warmer in. A storm was inbound. And typically those Pacific storms push a lot of warm air. This was in June Lake, where I lived.

00:04:47:12 - 00:05:11:05
Dean Rosnau
I mean, I could see the route from my house, and, we had seen this weather coming and, and, and Pete especially kind of threw up the red flag and said, man, we, you know, with the weather changing this thing, could, you know, the route could fall down. And so we need to get on it right away. So we moved up the schedule and, and it was like we were having this conversation and it was going to be the next morning.

00:05:11:05 - 00:05:26:18
Dean Rosnau
And I had a I was a builder and I had a, scheduled inspection with the county on one of my projects that I had to be at. And I, I just to further the job, I couldn't cancel it. I had to be there for it. So I just told the guys, I said, man, you know, my job.

00:05:26:18 - 00:05:51:17
Dean Rosnau
So I has a just a commanding view of the wall. So you guys go do the route and I'll just keep an eye on you and enjoy being a spectator. You know, I'm bummed that I won't be able to go, but I'll be rooting for you, you know? So. Yeah.

00:05:51:20 - 00:06:23:09
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. I think the fact that, I was a spectator that day, Really benefited Doug. My partners, you know, we're Doug and Pete, and, and, being able to, you know, I mean, witnessing that event was was a hard thing to watch, but, being able to get the response going immediately, there would have been no other way.

00:06:23:09 - 00:07:04:26
Dean Rosnau
If I hadn't been watching. There would have been no other way for other than Doug to get all the way down and hike out. You know, to get a response going. So, yeah, that played a huge role. And, and in, in kind of, hindsight kind of way, me witnessing that event and then subsequently, you know, being involved in every the aftermath and everything that came from from the results of that incident, was a real learning experience for me that that ended up shaping a lot of my, my soccer career.

00:07:04:26 - 00:07:24:00
Dean Rosnau
It really changed a lot of my the way I looked at things, the way I responded to things. And a lot of that was from because of Pete and who he was and how he was kind of like a mentor to me and saw just the way he went about it. You know, kind of a rebel.

00:07:24:03 - 00:07:27:20
Dean Rosnau
And I really related to that part of him. But,

00:07:27:20 - 00:07:35:23
Kyle
So I guess, take the opportunity to kind of, describe Pete and and give him kind of an image for, for who he was and what he meant

00:07:37:02 - 00:08:01:24
Dean Rosnau
Yeah, he was, Pete Turner was one of those guys that everybody loved. I mean, the girls loved him because he was just doggone handsome married guy. But that guy just had it going on. But, and just a great sardonic sense of humor, and, he was a ski patrolman in the winter up on the ski area and then a paramedic for the county.

00:08:01:27 - 00:08:24:19
Dean Rosnau
And then he also was a really fine craftsman. He was a mason, you know, doing concrete work and block and stuff. So the guy just had a guy just ooze talent, you know, and then personality. And, you know, he was a short guy, but just peaches had a really, go for it attitude with everything he did. I mean, whether it was first Descents and it was all on pins, that guy never locked his heels.

00:08:24:19 - 00:08:49:24
Dean Rosnau
He did these amazing first descents on on three pins and patrolled on three pins was, I think, the first patroller in mammoth, you know, in the whole eastern Sierra there two patrol and three pins. But, you know, whether it was that or climbing or mountain biking, kayaking, the guy was just a go for it, you know, and he always he always seemed to have a way of kind of squeaking out, you know, just sucking the marrow out of life.

00:08:49:24 - 00:09:12:12
Dean Rosnau
You know, Pete, just going out with him on anything was just this real adventure, you know, you knew you were going to have a good time. And then on missions, you know, he he always made it, he always would take the edge off, you know, and we did a lot of recoveries together. And he just had a way of, kind of using, you know, gallery gallows humor, which is kind of kind of a term that's used a lot in the military.

00:09:12:12 - 00:09:36:09
Dean Rosnau
But, you know, just just, almost kind of a sardonic comedy to take the edge off of a situation that was just really brutal, you know? And unfortunately, deaths in the mountains is is very much like battlefield wounds. It's it's often not very pretty. So you got to kind of take that edge off. And Pete was just, he was just really good at it.

00:09:36:12 - 00:10:02:28
Dean Rosnau
Something he taught me how to do. Yeah, but he was just a, a man's man, you know, he was someone that everyone wanted to be like, and I honestly, I can't remember a single person ever saying that they didn't like the guy. You know, he was that he was one of those guys. Yeah. Father of three. And just, amazing guy.

00:10:03:28 - 00:10:12:10
Kyle
What were the circumstances of the accident. What was that. Like how did that end up happening.

00:10:12:10 - 00:10:35:17
Dean Rosnau
So, yeah, the circumstances of of that incident was, this route it formed up and and the the real prize on the route was this this pillar that looked to be about 40ft tall, free hanging, you know, like a fang that was detached from the wall attached at the top, attached to its base. And, man, it just looked so good.

00:10:35:17 - 00:11:03:16
Dean Rosnau
And, and so it was like, you know, all hands on deck. Let's go get this thing. And then, you know, I was able I was having to bail out because of work issues, but, Doug and Pete just hiked up to that thing, and there was about, 400ft of mixed climbing, rock and ice climbing, to get up to the base of the pillar.

00:11:03:19 - 00:11:23:11
Dean Rosnau
And so I just set up at my job site with a pair of binoculars and, man, it was like I was sitting in this totally empty house, you know, in a comfortable chair, looking through the window stand nice and warm, you know, and, just scoping them with the binoculars and the binoculars brought me so close I could actually see their breath.

00:11:23:11 - 00:11:43:02
Dean Rosnau
Clouds, you know, on this cold day. So it was like, I was like, in, a hovercraft, you know, or in a in a drone that we have today just right behind them. And so I was digging it and, I think the way I describe it in the book was it was kind of like watching action TV with the sound off, because I couldn't hear a thing.

00:11:43:09 - 00:12:09:15
Dean Rosnau
But I'm watching them climb, you know. So, Pete. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Pete, you know, they set up a belay off to the side, you know, with rock anchors, which was good. Inevitably ended up going off to the slight side, slightly, where Doug was planned, and Pete took off and. He started up to the base and of the pillar, and, it kind of landed on this ledge.

00:12:09:15 - 00:12:30:02
Dean Rosnau
And, you know, the way you climb those things safely is you chimney up behind between the the wall and the backside of the pillar where it's detached. And you, you kind of chimney up in there and you set gear in the rock and then you come back down, and then you then you climb the thing. That way if the pillar detaches while you're climbing it, you're not attached to it.

00:12:30:04 - 00:12:53:17
Dean Rosnau
And you just swing, you know, onto the gear that's on the rock wall behind it, and the ice just falls away. So I'm watching this, and Pete disappears, you know, behind the the pillar. And, and then all of a sudden, you know, a few minutes go by and, and he's back down, at the base and, and I'm thinking, oh, this is so cool.

00:12:53:17 - 00:13:24:02
Dean Rosnau
You know, I'm going now. He's going to start up the pillar. And sure enough, you know, after a rest for a couple minutes, he starts up. And so I'm just totally digging this, you know, just watching this completely silent, action. And, all of a sudden he stopped about, two thirds of the way up and he banged in a, a specter, which is, you know, a ice piece that's quicker than putting in a screw.

00:13:24:02 - 00:13:43:25
Dean Rosnau
It's kind of like a little aid piece, you know? And you just hammered in real quick with one of your axes. And I just remember saying, Pete, no, what do you what do you do? And he knew better than that tend to attach himself to the ice, you know. But I just thought, well, maybe he's getting pumped or whatever, you know, who knows?

00:13:43:25 - 00:14:16:24
Dean Rosnau
I mean, I'm not there. I'm just watching. So he hammers in the Spector clips, the rope in, and then he starts climbing again. And I mean, this thing is, you know, dead vertical. It was probably, five, six feet wide at the base and maybe eight feet wide, eight, nine feet wide at the top. So he's getting within about maybe ten feet of the top of this thing to where he would actually be able to stand on a reasonably, you know, maybe a four foot ledge at the top and be in a full rest position.

00:14:16:27 - 00:14:50:07
Dean Rosnau
So he's within ten feet of the thing. And all of a sudden I saw this, this little puff of crystals of, of ice go out either side of the pillar. And then just seconds later, this horizontal crack that was maybe two feet above where his axes were, and the whole pillar just went all and and settled. You know, I didn't hear anything, obviously, but I just saw this settling and and I was just speechless, like, what?

00:14:50:07 - 00:15:32:24
Dean Rosnau
I, you know, what am I about to see? And, you know, this crack was probably 3 or 4in wide, completely severing the pillar all the way across. And Pete stopped for a moment, and then all of a sudden he just there was this, this flurry of swings and, you know, front pointing up. And he got one ax above the crack and was about to swing his second ax in, and and the whole pillar parted from the wall just dropped straight down with his front points in it.

00:15:32:26 - 00:15:39:23
Dean Rosnau
Yeah.

00:15:39:25 - 00:16:14:28
Dean Rosnau
Yeah, kind of. Yeah. And everything for me at all. It's only been 29 years and it's still hard to talk about sometimes, but, everything just seemed to go in a slow motion. Kind of. And I just remember him as the. I started down, Pete fell to his left, and when the ice dropped, it literally pulled him right out of his the slings on his axes, which eventually we found his axes at the base.

00:16:14:28 - 00:16:46:22
Dean Rosnau
But it it just pulled him down because his front points were in the ice. And, and Pete turned to the left and then went completely inverted and then went down with the ice and, and disappeared in this, you know, the ice went down about 130ft and hit some lower angle rock, some slab where the wall was a little bit slab there, and it just disintegrated instantly into this huge cloud of ice chunks and, you know, splinters of ice and everything.

00:16:46:25 - 00:17:21:27
Dean Rosnau
So he disappeared in this cloud. And then as in a few seconds, it all cleared and I'm looking and, you know, obviously I was pretty upset. And then I see his body just hanging face up, just hanging from his harness, like, you know, kind of like splayed out and a lot of blood on the wall. I could see very clearly and I just, I just shouted out, expletive.

00:17:22:00 - 00:17:47:11
Dean Rosnau
And, I got this was before, cell phones. And so I got, I had a two way radio system for my, my work. And I radioed my, my wife back at the house and I said, I need you to call 911. There's been an accident, and I. I think Pete's dead. And I ran out to my truck and raced home just a couple minutes up the highway and grabbed my gear.

00:17:47:11 - 00:18:14:13
Dean Rosnau
And, my my wife had called Doug's wife, who live right next door. And so she grabbed her gear. And, you know, within a few minutes, we were racing back down to the power plant where you start hiking up from, you know, where they were, where they had started their approach that morning. And ambulance came and that's that was the start of, a very challenging time.

00:18:27:10 - 00:18:50:26
Dean Rosnau
Yeah, yeah. And that, you know, there's there's two points about that that are critical. Yeah. When I mean, from the get go, we knew even weeks before that Pete wanted that he wanted the lead on the fang, you know, he wanted that pillar. And, and so, you know, it was like, all right, Pete's going to lead the pillar.

00:18:50:26 - 00:19:09:15
Dean Rosnau
And so when, when he and Doug are at the belay, you know, Pete, Pete took off and with about within about 10 or 15ft of leaving, the one of the lenses on his glasses fell out, went to the base and just in a fit of rage, Pete just whipped the glasses off his face and threw him off the wall.

00:19:09:17 - 00:19:33:11
Dean Rosnau
And of course, yeah, I found this out after the fact, I didn't. I was unable to see that. And without his glasses, you know, Pete was, you know, his vision was real. I mean, his glasses were thick. So without them, he was really compromised. So what I didn't know at the time when I was watching was when he got up behind the pillar to set rock gear he couldn't see.

00:19:33:12 - 00:19:51:04
Dean Rosnau
You're in the shadow of the pillar. It's it's shaded back there. And he just couldn't see placements and he was getting pumped. So what I didn't see was he put a screw in the back side of the pillar. And that's what he lowered off of because he was so pumped and dug, lowered and back to the base of the pillar for a rest.

00:19:51:06 - 00:20:12:14
Dean Rosnau
And then Doug told him to untie from his harness. He knew he was in a safe spot there. Untie from your harness and pull the rope through so you're not connected to the pillar. And Pete said, no, I'm just going to climb this thing. And, and Doug insisted, and Pete said, well, if I, if I untie, I'm just solo in this thing.

00:20:12:16 - 00:20:43:00
Dean Rosnau
And it just and so it just kind of, you know, he through the glasses and that tells you a lot about who Pete was and how driven he was. But then he let he let that drive lead him to some really, really bad decisions that ultimately cost him his life. And. And wreaked so much havoc on and grief on so many people.

00:20:43:00 - 00:21:14:07
Dean Rosnau
You know, obviously his family and so many friends. And, I mean, I think I described it in the book, is that the shock of that grief washed over the the eastern Sierra like a tidal wave, because everyone loved Pete. I mean, he was so beloved within the SA community, the paramedic community, ski patrol hospital everywhere. So, you know, he was not only not only did he, I saw him being in the Spector, but he was also attached with that screw.

00:21:14:07 - 00:21:18:08
Dean Rosnau
So it was a bad, bad deal.

00:21:18:08 - 00:21:29:01
Kyle
think drive is a bit different than possession which it seems like he had for this objective. Was that characteristic all of, of PE. Like was that something that you'd seen

00:21:29:24 - 00:21:49:10
Dean Rosnau
Yeah, 100%. You know, again, you know, most of the time, Pete just I mean, he was always a go for it guy, and he just always had a way of milk and stuff to make it even better than it was going to be. You know, he'd find a way to up the ante, you know, whether it was whitewater kayaking or climbing or ski patrol.

00:21:49:10 - 00:22:10:12
Dean Rosnau
And, and so he was just a go for it kind of guy, you know, he wasn't going to let a pair of glasses stop him, you know? And I can only imagine in the weeks prior, as that thing was forming up, how many times he mentally, you know, played how he was going to lead that thing. Right.

00:22:10:15 - 00:22:33:19
Dean Rosnau
And so it was kind of like what Alex did with, you know, on a much smaller scale, obviously. But what Alex did with El Cap, you know, just rehearsing and even in your mind just rehearsing over and over again. And so Pete was that way. And, I just think that drive in him just kind of blinded him to the realities of being a, you know, being safe about it.

00:22:33:21 - 00:22:50:15
Dean Rosnau
And then there was also the pressure of knowing that the weather was changing. It was warming up, and that formation was probably going to go away. And and we'd never seen that formation even form in in all the years that the three of us had lived in Gene Lake and those two had lived there a lot longer than I.

00:22:50:16 - 00:23:10:28
Dean Rosnau
So, you know, it was like the pressure of getting in. And for, of something that may not even ever form again. And so there was that. But, that's who Pete was. And unfortunately, it, it cost him and all of us dearly.

00:23:10:28 - 00:23:40:10
Kyle
You know I a gratefully up to this point have not had to digest that kind of level of grief or loss with someone extremely close to me. So talk to me and us kind of who are in that kind of same situation. What that's what the experience is like. I would imagine it's kind of has this like insidious nature where I would imagine it's shock at first, and then you kind of start to really understand things over time.

00:23:40:13 - 00:23:45:00
Kyle
So I guess just to explain the process and what that was like

00:23:45:00 - 00:24:10:01
Dean Rosnau
Well, I've learned a lot about grief. Over the course of especially. Sorry. As you mentioned earlier, 66 body recoveries over the course of my career. It'll be 67 once a, have if I have the good fortune of finding where Matthew's resting place is. But,

00:24:10:01 - 00:24:16:04
Dean Rosnau
You know, every the thing I've learned is that everyone processes grief differently.

00:24:16:07 - 00:24:41:03
Dean Rosnau
And that's important because it's a very personal thing. And you, you have to I mean, you can certainly help someone process grief if they don't know how, but but some people have to figure it out on their own. I, I feel that I was and I talk about this in my, my new book, you know, the follow up book that I'm working on to the Short Straw.

00:24:41:03 - 00:25:10:00
Dean Rosnau
But, I relied heavily on my faith, to get me through those times. And frankly, with the with the amount and level I've experienced, I don't I don't know if I would have gotten through it without faith. And I don't know how people manage it without faith. I, I mean, I've just never known a life without having that.

00:25:10:02 - 00:25:17:25
Dean Rosnau
But, with Pete,

00:25:17:27 - 00:25:58:13
Dean Rosnau
You know, we we I describe it this way in the book. I that day, Pete made some mistakes and for a while I was really angry at him because, you know, you it's not that he. You know, not that he was suicidal or anything, but if you think about it in terms of someone who commits suicide, the the true victims are the ones that are left behind, that are left with all the questions, you know, and, grief doesn't ever go away, but it it changes, it evolves.

00:25:58:16 - 00:26:32:23
Dean Rosnau
And, you know, they say they say time makes it easier. And I think that's true to a certain extent. But I don't think it ever goes away. You're always processing it in some way shape or form. And so I had this anger in me when I found out, especially after the fact when Doug told me about the glasses and, you know, the putting the screw in the back of the column and all that kind of stuff, and it was all things that he knew better not to do, but he chose to do those things and and all of us, you know, certainly he paid the biggest price, but all of us were paying.

00:26:32:25 - 00:26:59:06
Dean Rosnau
And so there's some anger there. But then I had to go back to and this was a part of me processing through it was I had to go back to rather than camping on how Pete died, I camped on how Pete lived. And and that was a huge change agent for me. You know, it changed the whole scope of my healing process.

00:26:59:08 - 00:27:27:26
Dean Rosnau
And, and so and that process now continues. You know, he died on January 29th, 1996, and that date will forever be burned in my memory. As much as I would love to have an erase button to make it go away. But, but I choose to to focus on how he lived his life and, and focus on his three kids and his grandkids, some of whom I've gotten to meet.

00:27:27:26 - 00:27:56:14
Dean Rosnau
And, and I think another thing that I have learned about grief is use it as a motivator to live better, to live a better life yourself, you know? And so one of the things that that I did was I chose I mean, I, I was really committed to SA ahead of Pete's death. But the way Pete lived his life, he never said no.

00:27:56:14 - 00:28:13:23
Dean Rosnau
When the sheriff came calling, Pete never said no. He would drop everything and just go. And so I just decided in honor of Pete that I that was going to I was going to wear that mantle. You know, I was kind of I was going to be that same thorn in the side sometimes to the sheriff, you know, just Pete was,

00:28:13:23 - 00:28:24:10
Dean Rosnau
you know, Sheriff would tell him to do it this way and he'd say, no, we're doing it this way because my always better, you know, and, he would he would push the chain of command sometimes.

00:28:24:10 - 00:28:50:13
Dean Rosnau
And I did, too. It was Pete's way. But he got stuff done, you know, and, and so I chose to work my way through the grief by honoring Pete, by just living well, living better, you know, being a better SA member, being a better teammate, being a better father, trying to be a better husband, you know, just every aspect of life.

00:28:50:15 - 00:29:16:06
Dean Rosnau
And that's not to say I've done all those things well. I've made my share of mistakes, but, again, going back to the grief thing, we all process it's process in a different way. And and I know for Doug and I, we, we ended up processing that together. In terms of, you know, the old saying about you get kicked off a horse, you got a you got to get back on.

00:29:16:06 - 00:29:42:12
Dean Rosnau
Right. And so very quickly, we, we got back out there on the ice. I mean, it was probably a couple weeks that had gone by and, and we just, you know, it was like, hey, you want to go climbing? And it was like, yeah, yeah, let's do that. Let's get back out there. And and we did.

00:29:42:12 - 00:30:09:26
Dean Rosnau
And that was that paid dividends, you know, and, and we kept going back to it's what Pete would have done, you know, had he been in our situation and it would have been one of us dying up there on that wall. It was hard, though. The, you know, the recovery. The next day, we defied. I don't want to spoil the read because it's it's a great chapter, but, you know, we defied a sheriff's order.

00:30:09:26 - 00:30:27:02
Dean Rosnau
They were going to the sheriff wanted felt we were too emotionally caught up in it all and, wanted to call in. Yes. Are to do the recovery. And, that just didn't sit well with us. I mean, as climbers, you take care of your own, you know, and that was our mindset. And that's what Pete would have done.

00:30:27:02 - 00:30:31:03
Dean Rosnau
So.

00:30:31:05 - 00:30:45:27
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. And you know, we knew the route. And again, it was mainly motivated by our love for Pete and the fact that that's what a he would, he would have done for us. So we, we concocted a scheme and we went up and it got in trouble for it, but we did it.

00:30:45:27 - 00:31:04:19
Kyle
I send professional recording equipment to every single guest to ensure that you get top tier audio and video quality, and those costs add up. Right now, the show is also completely ad free and I would love to keep it that way. So if you've been enjoying the Climbing Majority podcast, we'd like to help keep this podcast ad free and want to help me cover shipping costs.

00:31:04:23 - 00:31:22:08
Kyle
Consider joining our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. You can help support the show and you'll get access to exclusive episodes. You can find the link in our show notes or head to Patreon.com slash the climbing Majority podcast. That's Patreon.com slash the Climbing Majority podcast.

00:31:27:00 - 00:31:28:20
Dean Rosnau
Yeah.

00:31:28:20 - 00:31:45:15
Kyle
your mentioned about kind of like choosing to live rather than living in a place of, like, anger. It it reminds me of kind of like the changing the name of a

00:31:47:17 - 00:31:49:05
Dean Rosnau
Yeah.

00:31:49:05 - 00:31:54:07
Kyle
also it it makes me think of.

00:31:54:09 - 00:32:21:23
Kyle
When we're processing grief like that so deeply, it's almost as if you're dying to. Because you are not living your life anymore. You're going day to day living through the accident. Living through what was what could have happened. And it's almost like, preventing yourself from from living. And it seems like the solution that you had was choosing, choosing to live again

00:32:23:15 - 00:32:48:01
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. And to that point, there's a line in one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption. If you've seen the movie, at one point, the guy, you know, the character that breaks out of the prison, he hopefully, hopefully that wasn't a spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen it but is like 25 years old. Yeah.

00:32:48:04 - 00:33:12:09
Dean Rosnau
But at one point he says, and I'll never forget when he said the first time I've seen the movie, probably 20 times, but the first time I saw it in the theater and he said that line, I thought of Pete. And the line was, get busy living or get busy dying. And, you know, that's the one thing about grief that if you don't deal with it, it can eat you up.

00:33:12:12 - 00:33:38:29
Dean Rosnau
And, you know, earlier I made the comment, I said, you don't want these things to define you. And and it would have been real easy. You know, like those guys on the Lost Daryl, maybe they I don't know, but maybe they never climbed again. And that's their choice. And that was their way of dealing with it. And after Pete died, you know, I could have quit climbing or at least quit ice climbing.

00:33:39:01 - 00:33:58:27
Dean Rosnau
But that that wasn't the choice I made. The choice was thinking about Pete and what Pete would have done and what he did over and over again. I mean, so many recoveries that he did over the course of his SA career in medic, you know, paramedic career, the lives that he saved, countless lives. And, you know, I've saw a lot of grief and a lot of tragedy.

00:33:58:27 - 00:34:22:24
Dean Rosnau
But he chose to, you know, keep living and get busy living and and not just living but milking it, you know, sucking the marrow out of life. And, and so that's kind of my approach, whether it was Pete's death or all these other tragedies, is, you have to make a conscious decision on what's right for you.

00:34:22:27 - 00:34:51:21
Dean Rosnau
And, and, you know, there's there's nothing wrong with saying I'm done, you know, experienced a situation like that and and just say, I'm done. And the reality is, you know, I've been climbing out. It was 50 years this past January. If you stay in the game this long, you're going to likely lose some friends. And I have, and I've seen others die and watched it happen.

00:34:51:23 - 00:35:13:27
Dean Rosnau
And so you you can you can make a choice there and and hopefully no one and I, I would hate to think that anyone would think negatively about someone just saying, you know, I've seen enough. I'm done. I'm gonna, you know, I'm going to go do something less risky or, you know, however you want to look at it.

00:35:13:29 - 00:35:39:19
Dean Rosnau
That wasn't the right choice for me. It wasn't the right choice for Doug. And so together we we worked through that. And, you know, with sorrow, I mean, just. And I even shared it in the book, the very next chapter, you know, Pete was the third body recovery in a matter of weeks. And then just weeks after Pete died, I did one more.

00:35:39:22 - 00:36:19:27
Dean Rosnau
So I had four recoveries in a row. That was a that was a tough date. You know, that was a difficult season. The winner of death and, if you allow it to define you, I mean, think about it. You know, if if that would have made me quit SA, I mean, all of the, all of the successful rescues since then, you know, I would have not been a part of or maybe not been able to play a role and maybe that situation might have turned out different, you know, so you can choose to take yourself out of the game, or you can stay in the fight and, I just knew that's what

00:36:19:27 - 00:36:37:21
Dean Rosnau
Pete would have done. And so and it was a great way to recover, just go out and help continue helping, continue in the in the calling on your life, you know. But boy, did I do a lot of praying and a lot of soul searching and I just thank God for him being there for me.

00:36:38:21 - 00:36:43:05
Kyle
One of his quotes I think was do the job. Don't dwell on it. Just move on and be

00:36:43:05 - 00:36:46:17
Dean Rosnau
that was Pete 100%.

00:36:46:17 - 00:37:11:16
Kyle
I would imagine that might work for the first two or 3 or 4 but. 60. I don't think that shoving those emotional, responses and the, the, the heaviness and intensity of the situation, shoving that into a box with that mentality over time, I would imagine, would start to eat you from the inside.

00:37:11:19 - 00:37:20:21
Kyle
So did you experience that? Like, did you shove those kind of things into a box at first, and what were the symptoms of that, and how did you progress out of that kind of behavior?

00:37:21:01 - 00:37:49:11
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. Unfortunately, I did do that. And and frankly, that's a, that's a very guy thing. Very male dominated thing where, the gals tend to talk more, you know, talk about these things and seek help. And, and, you know, I had that opportunity the, the sheriff's office, you know, offered counseling service. And, you know, certainly through my church and, and, you know, I had that support system.

00:37:49:13 - 00:38:20:11
Dean Rosnau
But, you know, when you're when you're all about it, all about the job. And with that mentality that Pete had, you just do the job and, and move on to the next thing you know. And so I did that over the course of my career. And you do you stuff it down. You try not to personal, you know, personalize too much of it and, and just consider it a service that you're doing, but eventually it does take a toll.

00:38:20:11 - 00:38:54:04
Dean Rosnau
And and I didn't really see it manifest in my life a whole lot until until I was retired until I, you know, laid sa down and now, you know, in these years since, you know, you can call it PTSD. I mean, I, I believe I have a certain measure of that in that I'll, I'll, I'll start getting concerned about a date on the calendar as I see it approaching, because these dates are burned into my memory for forever.

00:38:54:06 - 00:39:19:02
Dean Rosnau
In fact, it was, you know, when I wrote the book, I wrote the book in seven weeks, working 16 hours a day, seven days a week. It just poured out of me. But each chapter took over two and a half weeks of that, because going back to that event was was traumatizing all over again. And having to relive it and then and write it out, and I wanted to do it.

00:39:19:04 - 00:39:58:28
Dean Rosnau
I just wanted to really honor Pete. I wanted to to do my absolute very best. But, but again, yeah, these dates come for me and and, you know, the way I deal with it now is, I typically just make a conscious decision to spend time, usually alone on those hard days, go out in the in the woods or, you know, go climb a peak or, you know, just just time alone and and spending time with God and praying through it and, and, trying to camp on the positives, you know, and that's something that I have to say about all the tragedy that I've seen.

00:39:59:07 - 00:40:24:12
Dean Rosnau
I can honestly say, Kyle, with every one of my I've seen, I've seen goodness and blessing come out of tragedy with everyone without fail, because there's there's always a learning experience for for everybody involved. And, that's not to say it's not hard, but good things can come out of tragedy. And, it always happens. So

00:40:24:12 - 00:40:30:18
Dean Rosnau
but I, I deal with it and I'll probably be dealing with it, you know, for the rest of my life.

00:40:30:21 - 00:40:48:23
Dean Rosnau
Again, like I said at the start, you, as a first responder, as a rescuer, your your intent when that call comes in is to save a life and do you know, I had a just like I had a what I call a burn the ships kind of mentality, like, I'm, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get to that person.

00:40:48:26 - 00:41:14:07
Dean Rosnau
And I'm in, I'm all in. I don't care how bad it's raining or snowline or lightning or avalanche, whatever it is, we're going to get them. Which with that mentality makes a loss all the harder. You know, I kind of talked about that in the book and then the chapter after Pete died, dealing with that next fatality and, you know, it's pretty cruel.

00:41:14:08 - 00:41:26:15
Dean Rosnau
And you have all this days and days of trying to find the subject. And then you get to them and they're deceased. And boy, it's it's a bitter pill to swallow.

00:41:26:17 - 00:41:44:13
Dean Rosnau
Well, it's not really so much all the lost effort. It's just your intention. You know, you you want to not only save that life, but for them, but for the family who's waiting back at SA base or wherever they're at. You know, you hate to be the bearer of bad news. And that's a boy. I've been in a.

00:41:44:13 - 00:42:05:19
Kyle
talk about that actually that's one of the things on this topic I'm interested in diving into is you've had to be the bearer of terrible news to many families and people. I would imagine that is a really hard thing to do. Is it a skill set? Is it does it ever get easier? How are you able to kind of compartmentalize that when you have

00:42:08:01 - 00:42:34:18
Dean Rosnau
Well, just personally, it never got easier for me. You know, probably the hardest was with. With Pete having to tell his mom, you know, because she. We were over at Doug's at night, you know, planning the recovery and, well, and late into the night. And Doug's mom called. The phone was ringing off the hook at Doug's house, and so I kind of.

00:42:34:20 - 00:42:54:03
Dean Rosnau
Doug was in no shape to take phone calls, and so I signed my cell phone duty. And the phone, I'd set it down, and then it would ring again. This was back in the day when it was actual phones that you had to hang up. We didn't have cell phone, you know, in the Stone age. But, anyway, I answered the phone and it was like, hey, Dean, this is Kathy.

00:42:54:03 - 00:43:10:17
Dean Rosnau
You know, I knew his mom, you know, and and this is Kathy. I heard there was a accident and Pete got hurt. Is he all right? And,

00:43:10:20 - 00:43:33:16
Dean Rosnau
Yeah, I, I mean, I had at that point, I had two little kids, and. Yeah. How do you tell mom that her son is gone? Especially one like Pete who has, you know, everyone just loved that guy. And I said, the only thing I could say is. I'm sorry, Kathy. He's gone.

00:43:33:18 - 00:44:00:05
Dean Rosnau
You know, and she's just. He's just on the phone, like, trying to catch your breath. And she just said to me, he's dead. And I just said, yeah, but it he he didn't suffer. It was very quick. And and then I made the mistake of saying, we're going back up there tomorrow to get him. And, I will never forget the shriek over that phone.

00:44:00:07 - 00:44:17:19
Dean Rosnau
You know, she just shrieked out, he's still up there! I said, yeah, we we couldn't get him down today, but we're going up in the morning. We're planning right now. We're going to get him down.

00:44:17:21 - 00:44:48:23
Dean Rosnau
Well, you know, that's something I've learned too, over the years. You just you don't want to give people false hope. You know, I, I tried to, you know, when we're searching for a missing subject or what have you, and they always ask you, you know, what do you think the odds are? That's a man. That's a tough one, you know, and so I, I made a commitment to just be as honest as I could, you know, but with some tact.

00:44:48:27 - 00:45:11:08
Dean Rosnau
Right. And just say, look, we're, we're, we're we're doing everything. We're throwing everything at this that we can. And, and I will promise you that we were going to we're going to give 110% for your loved one. And, you know, we'll keep you informed as things go and progress and we'll do our best to do that.

00:45:11:08 - 00:45:44:21
Dean Rosnau
And, and we're not going to stop until, you know, we have the outcome that we're we're life worth. So it's a hard deal. You know, it's I had a lot of people in my presentations, people that have read the book and they say, you know, when you write your next book, can you can you make it a little bit more of a happy ending and, you know, I didn't, not that the ending of the Short Straw was unhappy, but,

00:45:44:21 - 00:45:58:00
Dean Rosnau
you know, my my intent was to let people know that the decisions we make when we are users of the back country or, you know, vertical country, whatever we're doing.

00:45:58:02 - 00:46:29:20
Dean Rosnau
The impacts of our decisions have a profound effect on a lot of people. And so make good decisions and, you know, do your best to make good decisions. You know, I just, I yeah, as I described, Pete stuff, it it was literally like a tidal wave of grief that washed over countless thousands of people. You know, it just it's just that way,

00:46:44:01 - 00:46:47:13
Kyle
you kind of missing the larger picture.

00:46:47:13 - 00:46:57:17
Dean Rosnau
Yeah, there's there's something that I have a real problem with. I was talking with a friend about this the other night. You know, people,

00:46:57:17 - 00:47:28:22
Dean Rosnau
people often say, oh, well, you know, he at least he died. What he loved doing what he loved. I have a real hard time with that. Because coming coming at this death, from my perspective, having just done the recovery, and as I said a few minutes ago, the the typical injuries in the back country, whether it's a lightning strike or a fall or drowning or avalanche, whatever it is, it's not pretty.

00:47:28:22 - 00:48:01:24
Dean Rosnau
It's battlefield type stuff. And, the, the real problem I have with it and it's again, shaped by so much trauma is I think people most often say that line, oh, at least he died doing what he loved. I think they say that to comfort themselves. And and they're not considering the loved ones, the family of that lost person.

00:48:01:27 - 00:48:31:23
Dean Rosnau
In that if you say that to someone's loved one, to me, it would make them think no, because I know in Pete's case, no. Pete would have rather been alive and with his kids. Right. With his family. He didn't. He didn't. I mean, and it almost implies that that person loved climbing more than their family, right. Or whatever took their life.

00:48:31:26 - 00:49:20:15
Dean Rosnau
And and the other thing for me is having recovered those. Really horrifically damaged bodies. There are none of us that would say that they would choose that kind of death, of that kind of suffering and that kind of trauma. I mean, I'm talking about trauma that, you know, a open casket isn't possible kind of trauma. So, you know, I just I push back on that, that saying when people say that, it just I again, I think they say it to comfort themselves, but I don't think it's really the best thing to say to a, a grieving family member or friend or anyone.

00:49:20:17 - 00:49:48:09
Dean Rosnau
It is it's a, it's a comfort for yourself. And, I think, you know, dealing with grief and how people deal with grief in their own way. It's really wise to be to step lightly and, and and let, let the talking. I think the best thing to do is just be present, just sit with them, let anything that said come from them.

00:49:48:12 - 00:50:21:17
Dean Rosnau
That would be my advice. Don't try and wax poetic. Not the time. Just let them process their grief the way that's best for them. And, and just be just be present, you know, sit by them. Just be there. Yeah. It's not easy stuff.

00:50:21:20 - 00:50:42:07
Dean Rosnau
Yes.

00:50:42:09 - 00:50:52:15
Dean Rosnau
Thank you. Yeah.

00:50:52:18 - 00:51:11:22
Dean Rosnau
Oh. Yeah.

00:51:11:25 - 00:51:37:17
Dean Rosnau
Three skiers. Yeah. Yeah.

00:51:37:20 - 00:52:02:09
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. It was. That was, It's a great read. And it's a classic story of really how it really shows how SAR is a team effort and how you use every, every advantage, every asset that is available to you. So that that incident happened up on Mount Dana on the north face of Dana three, three young guys hit by an avalanche.

00:52:02:09 - 00:52:23:22
Dean Rosnau
And this was in June. So they were skiing, you know, late season snow after a big winter. And it was a big cornice release that came down on them and, and hit them all and threw them down slope and busted them all up pretty good. One of the members of that team, a guy named Chris, he he had a broken ankle.

00:52:23:25 - 00:52:47:26
Dean Rosnau
He was the least injured. He dragged his two partners, Adam and Greg, to, an island, a small island of rock out in the middle of the slope. And, you know, relative safety, because there was still more cornice above. And when I say a cornice release, the section that came down was about the size of two railroad cars of, of blue eyes.

00:52:47:28 - 00:52:57:04
Dean Rosnau
So you can imagine, you know, it's like, let's like rock, right?

00:52:57:06 - 00:53:01:14
Dean Rosnau
Yeah.

00:53:01:17 - 00:53:25:26
Dean Rosnau
Well, I saw it on the flight in, I saw it, it was there. But then when I got to the position where they were at, where Adam and Greg were, I and I looked up and saw that looming above us. I got really concerned about having a helicopter hold hover, especially the Navy Hilo, which, you know, was I was a Huey on that day.

00:53:25:29 - 00:53:37:10
Dean Rosnau
But the percussions that the downdraft emits could have easily released the rest of that cornice, and it would have been coming right at us. So I was concerned.

00:53:37:12 - 00:54:01:07
Dean Rosnau
100%. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, the thing was so big that, initially it didn't hit them. What blew them off their feet was the air blast. Just the air. The displacement of air when that whole cornice hit the slope and displaced so much air in that air blast, blew them off their skis. And then, you know, then they were struck by blocks that were the size of cars.

00:54:01:07 - 00:54:26:18
Dean Rosnau
I mean, it was just amazing that any of them survived. So Chris was the least injured and, broken ankle and he crawled all the way to the entrance station at Tioga Pass, which is like six miles. So, you know, the accident happened first thing in the morning, and I didn't get the call till I was at the mammoth motocross with my son and my two brothers in law.

00:54:26:18 - 00:54:59:20
Dean Rosnau
And I got the call, I think it was about 130 in the afternoon, you know? So the accident happened, and then Chris spent hours crawling out. So I immediately, raced, broke a few laws, probably doing about 93, 95 and then up Tioga Pass. And, so I ended up being first on scene. Chris was in the ambulance and, one of our deputies was there and had already debriefed Chris.

00:54:59:20 - 00:55:31:12
Dean Rosnau
So I, I didn't have to talk to Chris. And then we had, called in the Park Service Hilo from Crane Flat in in Yosemite. So they flew up and, I, the deputy just basically briefed me as I was, you know, changing from shorts and t shirt into my clothes, getting ready to get flown up to over 12,000 and then just loaded my pack with like, 90 pounds, all kinds of I had ice gear, rock gear, just I wasn't sure what I was going to find up there.

00:55:31:12 - 00:55:53:11
Dean Rosnau
And it was just described to me that they were in the middle of a snow slope on rock. And I'm already thinking about lowering systems, and you know, how to get these guys off the face of the peak. So I set up my pack, and while the deputy briefed me and inhaled as much food as I could, stuff in my gullet and the helicopter came in, the Hilo had already flown in.

00:55:53:13 - 00:56:13:21
Dean Rosnau
Keith Lubber, who was a great SAR guy from, the park, and, I got to do a lot of missions with Keith over the years, but he was already up there on scene with Greg and Adam and then, I was the next to go up, and I got flown up, and they they were able to set me down.

00:56:13:21 - 00:56:44:11
Dean Rosnau
Right where they dropped Keith off is about, maybe a half mile. Idaho fit across the snow slope. Go going past these giant blocks of blue eyes, you know, part of the the debris field. And, Adam was at Adam had a serious, compound tib fib fracture. And, to his credit. Well, Chris had splinted him very well and well enough that I didn't have to replace the splint.

00:56:44:11 - 00:57:04:01
Dean Rosnau
And, you know, Adam was in a lot of pain, but to his credit, he just sucked it up because Greg was really in a bad way. Had some very serious injuries, including a, some ribs that had gone through one of his lungs and collapsed it. So he was really fighting for breath. And, you know, he's out pushing 13,000.

00:57:04:01 - 00:57:21:19
Dean Rosnau
So it was a bad situation. And so over the course of the next few hours, as you know, our team members are arriving at at our base, you know, we're flying different people up. And all of a sudden I get this radio call and meantime I'm radio and down, you know, to our base, you know, send this up with the next team.

00:57:21:19 - 00:57:45:05
Dean Rosnau
We need oh two. We need more rope. We need a sled, a bullet, or, you know, all these items. And there was a doctor. He was actually a, he was a anesthesiologist at the hospital in Bishop, and he just happened to be up at the pass, you know, farting around and and, I remember this. He he was volunteering to come in, and I said, oh, man.

00:57:45:05 - 00:58:00:19
Dean Rosnau
We. Yeah, we could use a doctor up here for sure, you know? And he was then the radio call came in. He's concerned about his footwear. And I said, well, what does he got? And he said, well, he's got a pair of golf shoes with golf spikes. You know, I said, great. They haven't put those on you know.

00:58:00:19 - 00:58:18:29
Dean Rosnau
So they actually flew him up. He was willing to come up and he was a great asset. And then, you know, we a couple of our paramedics got flown up and, we just had a, we just had a great it was a great team effort, you know, and then, you know, we had no way to lower.

00:58:18:29 - 00:58:44:17
Dean Rosnau
There was no, no way to put any rock anchors in and that, you know, the Hilo we were waiting on, Fallon, the Naval Air Station to come in with their Hilo and, and but they weren't going to be able to hover over us because of the, the cornice that was looming above us. So the plan was to lower these guys about 800ft down the face to where the Hilo could land down in the surf below on the snow.

00:58:44:19 - 00:59:11:08
Dean Rosnau
But we didn't have any anchor for for the lowering system. So, we created a dead man using I scrambled back up into the debris field and grabbed some of their busted up skis, you know, and brought them down. And we we dug a a dead man trench and and, you know, tied, tied a long sling around the, the skis, buried them down about three feet, packed snow on top of them and, you know, brought the sling up to the surface.

00:59:11:08 - 00:59:19:26
Dean Rosnau
And that was our anchor.

00:59:19:29 - 00:59:46:28
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. That's correct. Yeah. That's how it got the name. So you just you're you're burying that. We buried those skis perpendicular to the fall line or the lowering line, and then, you know, just a single sling. And we were able to attach or our big, pulley to that and not passing pulley and, you know, a bunch of rope tied together and send them and it would.

00:59:47:00 - 01:00:05:23
Dean Rosnau
Well, it was. Yeah, it was one guy at a time with a, with a medic or, you know, someone attending the letter and both of them writing that letter down and flying them out that way. We needed the you know, we had the Park Service Hilo, but it's a small Hilo and they couldn't take a patient laying down, and Greg needed to be laid down.

01:00:05:26 - 01:00:30:02
Dean Rosnau
So we flew Adam out on the Park Service Hilo because he was able to sit up in spite of the tib fib injury. But, Greg had to go out in the litter, you know, he was fighting for his life, so he was prone and, you know, had a shattered knee and lots of other injuries. So we needed Fallon on the ground and then ultimately we we use them for all of our egress, you know, back out just before dark.

01:00:30:03 - 01:00:45:11
Dean Rosnau
We were all able to get out. So it was a great team effort. And I hope that really comes across in that chapter. Yeah.

01:00:45:14 - 01:00:51:05
Dean Rosnau
Very much so. Yeah.

01:00:51:07 - 01:01:15:12
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. You know everyone everyone just firing on all cylinders like and not wasting any time. Like if the helos coming up, bring in a team. Let's load that thing with as much weight as we can get on it. Right. Because weight's always an issue, especially in the summertime. And then at altitude, make sure the ship has power enough to, to, hover or, you know, get in and out of, ground effect.

01:01:15:14 - 01:01:40:05
Dean Rosnau
So, you know, pack as much gear on that thing as possible. I mean, you know, and every team that came up was dragging, you know, gobs of whatever we needed. And that was awesome. And, you know, everyone was just all in and so it was, you know, it was not only personnel but, you know, of our team, but it was Park Service, multiple Park Service employees.

01:01:40:07 - 01:02:06:18
Dean Rosnau
And then of course, the Navy. And they always seem to save the day for us. And and that doctor, you know, who obviously put his life at risk. I mean, any time you fly on a Hilo in the mountains, you're at risk. And, And he was great. So, and I, I the three guys, we ended up rescue and they, they submitted my name to the, California State Assembly and to the United States Congress.

01:02:06:18 - 01:02:33:26
Dean Rosnau
And I received commendations from both of those entities for that. Rescue is the only only time I've ever been honored that way. And it was it was a huge honor, and it was a total surprise. And they threw this big party, and we we thought we were going to a party for something else. And then next thing I know, they're bringing me on stage, but, anyway, it was it was really a team effort, you know, everyone just just hit it out of the park.

01:02:33:28 - 01:02:59:26
Dean Rosnau
Yeah, but the big hero in that to me was Chris. You know, he called. He called for six miles to save his friends. And, Yeah, it's a great, great chapter.

01:02:59:28 - 01:03:29:24
Dean Rosnau
100%. Yeah.

01:03:29:26 - 01:03:41:22
Dean Rosnau
Yeah.

01:03:41:25 - 01:04:02:26
Dean Rosnau
Well, what's your follow up question? I'm not sure that's the case. Although when people find that out, you know, I've often had this happen in my in my presentations when, you know, people automatically assume when you're doing this kind of stuff that you're being paid to do it. I mean, not only the risk that you're taking, but the time and all of that and the skill sets that you need to have.

01:04:02:28 - 01:04:25:07
Dean Rosnau
So when they find out that I did it as a volunteer, it kind of blows their mind. I mean, usually all of a sudden there's this big round of applause because they just can't even believe it. The why of why most are. And there are some paid SAR team, you know, not teams, but entities within the team that might be paid by a sheriff's office or what have you.

01:04:25:10 - 01:05:01:19
Dean Rosnau
So backing up a little bit within the United States, every every sheriff of every county, United States is responsible, is legally mandated by national, federal law to provide SAR service within their county of jurisdiction. So they either do that with volunteers or, you know, some counties maybe don't have the personnel, so they rely on, agencies or personnel from other outside agencies, you know, mutual aid, we call that from adjoining counties, or, or governmental teams within the military.

01:05:01:21 - 01:05:31:28
Dean Rosnau
So most SAR teams, though around the nation are volunteers. And, and a lot of that's especially in the county that I worked in, our county is plural, the Mono County where I spent most of my career, our tax base was so small that there was simply not the funds to, you know, to cover, like, just to give you an example, you know, I started out in San Bernardino, which had paid deputies as as part of the SAR team.

01:05:31:28 - 01:06:02:08
Dean Rosnau
They also had their own helicopters. You know, this was a San Bernardino County is actually the largest county in United States. Their annual SAR budget back then was, I think, $3.5 million. When I got to Mono County, our annual SAR budget was $7,000. Yeah. So you can imagine how fast you could burn through that money. Oh, it's just yeah, it's it's just so counties small counties are relying are reliant on volunteers.

01:06:02:08 - 01:06:42:01
Dean Rosnau
Right. And so you have to do good recruiting and good training and and that's another part of it is to answer your question, why, you know, deputies or peace officers or fire department. I mean, they have their areas of expertise and it's not to say that we didn't utilize some of those personnel sometimes for manpower, mainly, but in a in a mountain environment or whether you're a SAR, you know, team in a desert environment, whatever it is, you're dealing with things, you know, environmental issues and topography that is specialized, you know, and then, you know, it's all seasonal.

01:06:42:01 - 01:07:14:21
Dean Rosnau
So obviously in winter you're going to deal with different things, and in summer and, you know, within within the team that I worked in and for years, I was the training officer, we had 21 different skill sets that you needed to go through trainings on to become a member. And that typically took, most people about a year to a year and a half to get through all of those trainings, maybe one training a month to get through all those trainings, to become a full member.

01:07:14:24 - 01:07:42:02
Dean Rosnau
Correct. Yeah. And that basically what that meant was you were at that point, you were allowed to lead a field team as opposed to being an, you know, an assistant, you know, or maybe not even in the field, but, you know, doing some job back at base, work in the radio or the radio log or being the guy that's going for food at three in the morning to feed 40 people, whatever it is, there's always something to do.

01:07:42:05 - 01:08:15:15
Dean Rosnau
But anyway, that's there's a lot of specialized trainings. And so, to just throw, you know, cops out there not to, not to, you know, impugn them for their skills because they certainly have their area of expertise. But, you know, in the middle of an avalanche, in the middle of a whiteout, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I skid off the backside of Mammoth Mountain or June Mountain in a whiteout, you know, after midnight and avalanche conditions, navigating by GPS or compass because of a whiteout, looking for a missing skier snowboarder.

01:08:15:17 - 01:08:41:17
Dean Rosnau
And you're going to have a cop do that. Who? You know, you got to have the training and and not to mention the. The cajones, you know, the the background, the the willingness to put yourself and feel comfortable really in that amount of risk in that element. You know, it's just like you wouldn't ask anyone to go in and get an armed object out of a building.

01:08:41:17 - 01:08:45:03
Dean Rosnau
You know, that's firing rounds. You want the cops to do that. So.

01:08:45:03 - 01:09:01:05
Kyle
crazy that it's such a specialized set of skills in just a single person. And it requires a team of people like that. And it's all unpaid. It's just like it, it's I mean like you said the audience is just dumbfounded by it. And I think that that's like I think that's fair. I think that's a

01:09:02:18 - 01:09:21:18
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. And you get, you know, the great thing about the volunteer thing, I think, too, is, is you you get these people coming out of the community who aren't necessarily, you know, with a background like mine with, you know, climbing and rock and ice and all the things that I've done over the years. They're just people that want to help give back to their community.

01:09:21:21 - 01:09:50:19
Dean Rosnau
And they might not ever be a field person. They might go through all the trainings. But whether it's, you know, work or family things or maybe they're physical, you don't have the physical body to be able to go out and do some of the field work, but they're of equal value at base, you know, running the radio or like I said, you know, being the one that finds food for 40 people at three in the morning or, you know, there's always something to do, there's always something to do back at base.

01:09:50:21 - 01:10:09:12
Dean Rosnau
And, so you just get this, you get a, you get a real cream of the crop of community of people that just have a heart for, for others, you know, and, and want to give back. And in such an extraordinary way.

01:10:09:12 - 01:10:22:10
Kyle
meant by, like, the volunteer aspect. Making it the magic that it is. Is that what you just said? It attracts the people that are there because it isn't paid in a way. You know, there's something that I think there's

01:10:23:14 - 01:10:51:26
Dean Rosnau
Well, yeah, there is it's, you know, it reminds reminds me of the Bible verse that says, you know, how blessed it is of the man that is willing to lay down his life for his friend. And, you know, you're you're you you volunteer for soccer, to go help out perfect strangers. And that's an extraordinary thing to see people do.

01:10:51:29 - 01:11:35:18
Dean Rosnau
And, you know, over the course of my career, I've, I've had the the blessing of building mansions for millionaires and billionaires. You know, throughout my career. But I can honestly say the best things I've ever done are as a volunteer. And the reward is by far better. And to me, the, the pay, the pay that I've gotten is the knowledge that not only are there people, the people we rescued walking this earth today, but those people went on to get married and have children.

01:11:35:20 - 01:11:53:27
Dean Rosnau
And so there are people on this earth today that are there because of what my teammates, you know, because my teammates. And I said yes when the sheriff called. And, there there isn't a paycheck worth that, you know.

01:11:53:27 - 01:12:11:10
Kyle
those people. Do you have a particular individual or maybe two individuals that have have stood out to you? Where have you are able to at least track, some sort of extraordinary life that you've saved and that has been able to flourish because of your actions

01:12:12:13 - 01:12:36:24
Dean Rosnau
Oh, gosh. There's so many. You know, I mean, every life is of so much value. And when you think about one life and how that life is going to create generations of lives, you know, that's the way we need to think. I love the story of that, the avalanche that we just talked about, you know, had we not said yes to the sheriff and had we not had such a team effort?

01:12:36:24 - 01:13:06:22
Dean Rosnau
I mean, there was so many ways, so many things that if they didn't happen, could have could have led to Greg's death. And so the, you know, the morning after we got him out, he had had surgery and I went over to the hospital to see how he was doing. And which was standard for me for once, we got victims out because I typically would either hike out, you know, hours later or fly out hours later.

01:13:06:22 - 01:13:31:06
Dean Rosnau
But anyway, I went to the hospital the next day and I met his Greg's, fiancé was there in the room with him. And so he was through his surgery and on to and, you know, able to speak a little bit re inflating his lung and all these things and, and so I got to meet her and then a year, you know, we stayed in touch and then a year later, they got married together on a beach down in her native Philippines.

01:13:31:06 - 01:13:58:25
Dean Rosnau
And, and they have subsequently had had three kids over the course of their marriage. In fact, their, their firstborn, was their son. And and they named him Joseph Dean, which I thought was pretty cool. I mean, you talk about pay. I mean, what a reward, you know? So, Yeah. And I get pictures from them, you know, and in fact, Joseph just graduated from UCLA.

01:13:58:28 - 01:14:30:06
Dean Rosnau
So when you think about it in those terms, you know, in like there's another story in the book of Eric Schultz, which was an amazing, another amazing team effort. But, you know, Eric's injuries rendered rendered him a paraplegic. And, you know, he could have easily, you know, just checked out of of life. But he didn't. And, to this day, he's he's running his father's, foundation, doing good for people all over the world.

01:14:30:08 - 01:14:52:17
Dean Rosnau
And he's doing that from a wheelchair, and he's doing it for other, you know, wheelchair bound people around the world. It's extraordinary. So when you think about your service, you know, and the lives that you're going to impact, it's it's not just that person you're rescuing. You know, we we need to look at the bigger picture here.

01:14:52:20 - 01:15:11:21
Dean Rosnau
So you're you're affecting generations. And, you know, in a case like Eric and really in all of them, I mean, everyone goes back out in the world and you do your job, whatever it is, and you're making the world a better place. And in Eric's case, I mean, I'm just so proud of that guy, you know?

01:15:11:24 - 01:15:32:06
Dean Rosnau
Well, it just makes it so much easier to say yes when the sheriff calls, even though it's two in the morning. And I've just worked a 12 hour day and it's 13 degrees below zero, and it's snowing and blowing, but and I'm sore and but I'm going to go because you, you have that mindset that you're, you're doing something.

01:15:32:08 - 01:15:37:06
Dean Rosnau
You're doing something that's more important than anything else going on in your life.

01:15:38:05 - 01:15:43:12
Kyle
It's awesome. I'm glad you found that. And I'm sure everybody else that you've run into is glad you found that as well.

01:15:43:24 - 01:16:13:22
Dean Rosnau
Well, like I said it for me, I really felt it was a calling. I've. I felt like, you know, God gifted me with certain skill sets and and it kind of it always say to, you know, I it it always sated my, desire to be in the backcountry and, You know, if you could do that and, you know, you know, do something for somebody and have a lot of fun doing it and be out in the most extraordinary environment.

01:16:13:24 - 01:16:19:02
Dean Rosnau
Doesn't get any better than that. The deaths are a little hard, but you work through it.

01:16:19:02 - 01:16:46:24
Kyle
Let's be real for a second. The current blueprint for a successful climbing podcast is simple. Interview the best climbers in the world. Big names mean big followings. Lots of SEO power and a built in audience that helps boost every episode. But this show, this show has never been about that. From the beginning, I have made it my mission to bring you stories from the climbing majority, the climbers who don't live in the limelight, the ones who avoid interviews, quietly put up roots and give back in ways that are rarely recognized.

01:16:46:28 - 01:17:03:17
Kyle
And while that's what makes this show special, it also means we have an uphill battle when it comes to growth. And that is where you come in. If you're psyched about the show, if you've been inspired, entertained, or fired up about an episode. Word of mouth is the single most important way you can help the show. Share an episode with a friend.

01:17:03:21 - 01:17:21:05
Kyle
Play one on a group road trip. Post about the show on social media. Jump onto Reddit threads and Mountain Project forums and share with people what you've been listening to. Be sure to tag the show, tag your favorite guests, and spread the word. And if you want to help even more, I'm currently sending posters to climbing gyms around the country.

01:17:21:09 - 01:17:34:21
Kyle
If you'd like to support one in your climbing gym, be sure to reach out. Email me at the Climbing Majority podcast at gmail.com and I will be sure to send you one. Let's band together and show the climbing community that the climbing majority has a voice.

01:17:35:14 - 01:18:07:15
Kyle
I think, a special case here that kind of is in this very interesting. I don't even know how to say this gray matter. You know, if we have black bean death. White bean, you've saved somebody. We have this middle area, where you can't find somebody, and there are answers. You know, the. You had mentioned his name already.

01:18:07:15 - 01:18:12:09
Kyle
Matthew. He's been missing for 13

01:18:13:17 - 01:18:15:14
Dean Rosnau
Almost 13 years.

01:18:15:14 - 01:18:26:14
Kyle
You've spent 227 days searching for Matthew and covered over 3500 miles. Searching for someone you don't know that you've never met.

01:18:27:23 - 01:18:28:25
Dean Rosnau
Yeah.

01:18:28:25 - 01:18:31:06
Kyle
talk to me about your relationship with, Matthew

01:18:33:18 - 01:19:10:22
Dean Rosnau
Well, Matthew was a, 39 year old high school math teacher from, Pennsylvania. And he had discovered climbing, back in about 2003. And, Every every summer during summer break, he would take a climbing trip somewhere in the United States with friends and, you know, sate his desire for climbing. And so in 2013, he, he came out to, Mono County and, you know, specifically to climb in the range with a, with a buddy.

01:19:10:22 - 01:19:29:28
Dean Rosnau
And the buddy was only going to be there for about a week, and then Matthew was going to move on to Colorado to climb with friends. There. And so he and his buddy, well, when Matthew arrived in mammoth, his car had blown a head gasket. So he he dropped. He took it into a, a shop in mammoth.

01:19:29:28 - 01:19:50:09
Dean Rosnau
And, he and John, his buddy John used John's car to, you know, get around and get to trailheads and stuff and go do their objectives and, and then John had his family with him, his wife and son. And so after a week they went and they moved on to Southern California to do the Disneyland thing and all that with the sun.

01:19:50:09 - 01:20:07:06
Dean Rosnau
And and so Matthew was left in mammoth, you know, less until the car was going to be fixed. And he wasn't sure how long that was going to take, but in the meantime, he was going to make the best of it. So he just was hitchhiking to trailheads or walking or taking the shuttle bus there and mammoth, whatever he could do.

01:20:07:06 - 01:20:33:13
Dean Rosnau
And and he was keeping in touch with family, his parents, mainly by a cell phone and kind of checking in with them and with John and just, you know, letting them know what he was doing. And so he had arrived in Mammoth on July 17th of 2013. And, like I said, after a week, John left, and then he got a phone call from the shop, and he had set up a little camp in one of the campgrounds there in town.

01:20:33:13 - 01:21:07:14
Dean Rosnau
And, he got a phone call on, on the 16th of July, and they told him his car was going to be ready in two days on the 18th. So he called his parents that night and he said, hey, I just got this call, so I've got two more days. So tomorrow I'm going to go out for one more long day in the mountains, and then the next day I'm going to get my car and I'm going to head to Colorado.

01:21:07:16 - 01:21:39:01
Dean Rosnau
And that was the last thing anyone heard of meth? Green. And unfortunately. The last thing Matthew said to his parents were, I'm going to go out for one more long day in the mountains tomorrow. But he didn't say where. And so he went out. And unfortunately, and I won't go through all the circumstances, because there the story appears in the last chapter of my book in detail.

01:21:39:01 - 01:21:49:00
Dean Rosnau
And unfortunately, he through circumstance, he wasn't reported missing for 13 days after he went into the backcountry.

01:21:49:02 - 01:22:21:18
Dean Rosnau
July 30th was when he was officially reported missing. So unfortunately, with the minimal information, the sheriff wasn't able to call an official, rescue a search because there wasn't enough information. I mean, again, sending people out into the backcountry, it's always dangerous thing to do, right? And we always need a starting point. You remember I mentioned a while back that the best thing any soccer team has is information.

01:22:21:21 - 01:22:49:20
Dean Rosnau
But when you say, I'm going out for one more long day in the mountains, well, the Sierra, the eastern Sierra escarpment, some awfully big range. We're talking about thousands of square miles. He could have gone anywhere and and, you know, he had already reported in, in days prior that, you know, he had hitchhiked, gotten right up and climbed up the tailgate pass and did the DNA, QR, you know, he had gone out into the Ritter range and climbed some of the minarets, you know, so he was who knows where he started.

01:22:49:27 - 01:23:17:02
Dean Rosnau
We had no car to find at a trailhead unless someone could testify that they drove him to a trailhead. Or one of the shuttle operators that we interviewed could say, oh, yeah, definitively. I saw this guy and he got off. We didn't have any of that, so there was no search. So the sheriff had to tell his parents back in Pennsylvania that there was nothing we could do.

01:23:17:04 - 01:23:46:25
Dean Rosnau
And. That was that was a tough date for me. When I heard that, it took me right back to to Laura's case. My first case when, It looks so hopeless, you know? And here's this family now in Pennsylvania being told that. Yeah, your son's missing, but we can't do anything about it. And and I felt like I could do something about it.

01:23:46:28 - 01:24:15:17
Dean Rosnau
And I certainly couldn't live with myself if I didn't know his try. So I decided to take on the case myself. And so just through, you know, the first thing I did was I didn't know Matthew, but I needed to know. And because we didn't have any information. So the only information I could get on him was through family members, colleagues that he worked with at the school.

01:24:15:20 - 01:24:51:02
Dean Rosnau
I even talked to students that knew him. You know, anyone that I could talk to on the phone? That could tell me anything about Matthew, his personality. You know, I talked to his climbing partners at the gym, and, you know, again, teachers that he worked with and just anyone that could share any insight. And certainly, John, you know, the guy he had been climbing with prior to, his disappearance, just to try and get in his head, you know, to try and understand maybe how he would make decisions, find out about the level of risk he was willing to take.

01:24:51:05 - 01:25:16:15
Dean Rosnau
Right. Climbing alone, the stuff that he would solo. And so through all of this investigation and also the things that I found, or I should say, more importantly, the things that I didn't find that were at his campsite that he'd established, you know, the things that were missing, his known gear that was missing, and he and John had talked about getting on some good alpine ice while they were there.

01:25:16:15 - 01:25:38:18
Dean Rosnau
And they, you know, Matthew clearly did. And getting on the Dana cooler, but, you know, his his crampons and his ice ax were missing. And and one of the pieces of information that I got was his friends said that Matthew was a minimalist. When he'd go into the backcountry, he would only take things that he was going to use, and his all of his ice gear was missing.

01:25:38:18 - 01:26:03:15
Dean Rosnau
So clearly that told me that he was heading for some ice. His friends said he wouldn't take anything, that he wasn't going to use. The other thing that they mentioned, and this was a really a critical piece of information that lit the fire under me, was they said that Matthew, because of being a minimalist, he wouldn't take the whole guidebook, you know, even carrying the weight of a guidebook was too much.

01:26:03:15 - 01:26:28:08
Dean Rosnau
So he would tear out. He had the habit of tearing out the page or pages of his destination, his goal, and then afterwards he would paste those pages back into his guidebook. And so I found his guidebook there at his base camp. And, there were two pages missing, and those pages were for the Ritter Range and the Ansel Adams Wilderness, the minarets.

01:26:28:11 - 01:26:42:24
Dean Rosnau
And that's what led me to start searching in the minarets. And that's where I've been for now, for 13 years.

01:26:42:26 - 01:27:08:03
Dean Rosnau
It's a long time. I've. I've found a lot of stuff. I, I have a box, of stuff that I've hauled out of the back country. Other people's stuff. Unfortunately, it weighs about 16 pounds. Just all kinds of, you know, gear and things that people have dropped. And I, I would just clean it out of the backcountry, but, you know, so far, I haven't found anything of Matthew.

01:27:08:06 - 01:27:45:00
Dean Rosnau
And it's I knew from the start, you know, I mean, I knew from the start that it was going to be the ultimate needle in the haystack. And he wasn't reported missing for 13 days, so clearly, Matthew was deceased. In fact, I, I helped his parents get him declared, deceased just months after his disappearance. Based on survivability, you know, the things I'd learned about survivability and the range and without food and water and, you know, even with or without injury.

01:27:45:03 - 01:28:11:10
Dean Rosnau
So Matthew was clearly gone by the time I got involved on the 30th of, you know, 13 days after he went missing. So, again, right from the start, it was going to be one of those things where with a search area of 360mi², and again, I was focused on initially on just the ice, and we were in the third year of drought that year, in 2013.

01:28:11:12 - 01:28:37:17
Dean Rosnau
So there was there had been minimal snowfall now for three years. So the, the, the ice, the good ice was, was minimal. And which was kind of a good thing because that shrank the search area even more to these, you know, otherwise there would have been tons of snow if we had had a big winners. So there was very specific snow fields out in the Ritter range that were the target of my my initial searches.

01:28:37:20 - 01:29:06:26
Dean Rosnau
And frankly, continue to be the target. But the reality is that, Matthew could have easily suffered an injury or a fatal injury. On the approach, you know, through the Tallis, you know, you're you're 12, 14 miles out, you're at 13,000, 12, 13,000ft. You snap an ankle, you blow out a knee. He didn't have any baby gear with him, you know.

01:29:06:26 - 01:29:24:26
Dean Rosnau
And, he was he went minimalist, you know, he was he was. He didn't even carry water. He was drinking out of, you know, seeps and streams and like, anytime he came across water, he'd take a drink. But he didn't carry water with him. He was just moving fast. I mean, this was a guy that ran the Boston Marathon like three times.

01:29:24:28 - 01:29:41:28
Dean Rosnau
So he was fit, you know, and he was just going full of juice, probably. And so the reality is the search area could be it could be on the glacier. It could be in the, in the Berkshire. And it could be, you know, in the Talis. It could be on the trail on the approach, I mean, who knows.

01:29:42:00 - 01:30:15:08
Dean Rosnau
So it's very vast. And daunting to say the least. And I describe it in the book as, from the start, like it was like trying to find one of your eyelashes in Disneyland. You know, the odds are just, I knew I was going to have to step on what I was looking for, you know? And at this juncture, I mean, even from the start, I'd been looking for his gear because the, you know, the remains tend to get scattered, you know, by the elements and animals and and all that.

01:30:15:10 - 01:30:40:03
Dean Rosnau
So, I'm just looking mainly for his gear. If I can find one piece of gear and that'll shrink the search area down tremendously.

01:30:40:05 - 01:31:17:08
Dean Rosnau
Yeah.

01:31:17:10 - 01:31:47:27
Dean Rosnau
Well, I've been asked this question a lot, and, Having having done this, having searched for missing people, and then having to having to hand the remains of a deceased subject back to their family. The value is in the closure, and and that often gets overlooked. I mean, you know, to this day, it's been coming up now 13 years.

01:31:47:27 - 01:32:20:27
Dean Rosnau
And, you know, Matthew's parents are. They're, they're in their early 80s now, and they still every night, they light a candle in the window in their house in Pennsylvania on the west side of their house facing west. And, you know, I think as a parent, you never you never want to let go. I mean, you you can imagine, because you don't have the answers that you want.

01:32:20:29 - 01:32:48:14
Dean Rosnau
Is he going to what? Is he going to walk in the door some day? You know, I mean, I can only imagine the things that are that are going around in your head. So, so my, my motivation is, is to try and get them that closure because I know as a parent I would want that. And, you know, the with what I put my parents through, I'm sure they would have God rest their souls.

01:32:48:14 - 01:33:22:25
Dean Rosnau
They would have wanted that had I gone missing. So. You know, for me personally, again, because I, I've, I've always considered SAR a calling on my life. I, I feel I feel the need to honor that. And, there's, there's a quote. I, I put it in the book. It really resonated with me. I think it was some English politician, former, you know, prime minister or something.

01:33:22:25 - 01:33:48:27
Dean Rosnau
But he said something to the effect of, there's nothing so fatal to character as unfinished tasks. And that that really resonates with me. You know, I like to be. I want to be someone who's who finishes what they start. And, you know, when I, when I got involved in SAR, I made the commitment to never say no to the sheriff.

01:33:49:00 - 01:34:14:01
Dean Rosnau
It's kind of like, I don't know, I was never, I was never an athlete, like a football player or anything like that on a team. But it's like, say you're the place kicker. You're the guy, you know, to kick that field goal and you've committed to that position, and then your time comes to win the game. There's three seconds left, and the only way to win it is to kick that field goal.

01:34:14:01 - 01:34:40:16
Dean Rosnau
And you just go, I'm not up for it or, you know, I'm not going to do it. It's an unfinished task. It was. It was your calling. It was your your what you committed to. And so that motivates me. There's also this, this thing that happens. And this is why I've had a hard time over the years of searching for Matthew.

01:34:40:19 - 01:35:14:11
Dean Rosnau
I've had a hard time getting friends to help. I mean, I've only had I've only had three searches where I had people with me. So. So of those 227 days, only like 200 to only like seven of them, I had people with me, you know, the rest has been alone. And the reason it's hard to motivate people is when you've done this, when you've been involved in searches that go on for days or weeks or months, and then you you make that find right?

01:35:14:13 - 01:35:36:09
Dean Rosnau
The feeling is I can't even describe it. It just it sucks the breath out of you. It's it's it's even if it's a, you know, obviously a fatality. We had one that we found seven years after the fact up in the park. And, you know, that was when I searched. I had like 90 something days in on that search on my own.

01:35:36:12 - 01:35:59:01
Dean Rosnau
And that found remains too, after seven years. So once you have that mindset of what it's like to find, that's one of those things that just drives you. It's like, man, I'm exhausted, but I'm just going to go up this one more crease and there's one more draw and I'm going to get up to that ridge. I'm going to search for two more hours.

01:35:59:01 - 01:36:22:04
Dean Rosnau
Even though I'm spent, because maybe it's just right around that and over that ridge or, you know, and the next thing you know, you're wandering back to my base cabin by headlamp, you know, and I've been out for 12 hours from base.

01:36:22:06 - 01:36:30:15
Dean Rosnau
Yeah.

01:36:30:17 - 01:36:42:28
Dean Rosnau
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

01:36:43:01 - 01:37:15:26
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. No, that's there's a lot of different motivations there. And, you know, I think the thing about unfinished House that really resonates with me, you know, and being a builder, I mean, by nature, I'm a problem solver. And to me, from the start, this was a problem that needed to be solved, you know? And, I don't know if you would have told me right at the start that it was going to be 13 plus years, you know, and, and lots of miles and lots of commitment.

01:37:15:29 - 01:37:34:04
Dean Rosnau
You know, it's it's a struggle because I have to, you know, mammoth gets a lot of really big winners and, especially in this particular area dumps a lot of snow. And so I have to wait. I can't just go out, you know, as soon as summer hits like this time of year, because the snow is still there, hasn't melted out yet.

01:37:34:04 - 01:37:59:11
Dean Rosnau
So everything I'm looking for is under the snow. So I've got to wait. You know, I usually wait till September 1st and then, you know, I just search until the snow flies. And that's usually about the first week in November. I'm getting chased out of there. Had a little mini epic coming out in about 13in of snow one year, but, yeah, it's,

01:37:59:14 - 01:38:29:20
Dean Rosnau
It's a sad story, but, you know, I, I was about, I guess I was about four years into the search and, I called Matthew's parents up, and I, you know, I told them I was thinking about writing my book. Right? And I hadn't started the book yet, but I was I was close to starting to write it, and, I was trying to figure out how to how I would end the book and I couldn't really come up with a good ending.

01:38:29:20 - 01:38:50:23
Dean Rosnau
And then all of a sudden it hit me, I up, man. Matthew's case. There's so many lessons to be learned in this case. And that's why I was really talking heavy earlier about that itinerary, because in my eyes, that's the only mistake Matthew made. You know, going alone. I mean, we can talk for hours about that subject and what I think about it, what you think about it.

01:38:50:26 - 01:39:08:28
Dean Rosnau
But the only mistake, in my opinion, that he made was not telling anyone where he was going to go. And that would have solved a lot of obviously, a lot of grief and a lot of time and risk and all kinds of stuff. So,

01:39:09:00 - 01:39:38:19
Dean Rosnau
I called him up and I said, hey, I'm, I'm going to write this book, and would you mind if I use your son's story as the last chapter of my book? Because and I explained all the values of Matthew's death. And I said, you know, if even if we never find Matthew, maybe you'll have some consolation in that, the lessons that are out there for us from the mistakes that he made might save someone else's life.

01:39:38:23 - 01:40:01:20
Dean Rosnau
And then they went, yes, yes, that's that's what we want, you know, so that his death isn't in vain, that someone might even if it's one person's life saved from the information that they gather through Matthew's case. Yeah.

01:40:01:22 - 01:40:08:29
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. I didn't nothing else to do in the fall anyway,

01:40:11:28 - 01:40:14:26
Dean Rosnau
Oh, yeah.

01:40:14:26 - 01:40:27:05
Kyle
He said, in our future travels and endeavors, no matter where they take us, we must not lose our youthful imaginations. We must not be too scared to take risks.

01:40:27:07 - 01:40:42:26
Kyle
And most of all, we must live life to the fullest. Matthew Green. I don't even know where you know. Obviously you've never met him, so I'm curious as to where that came from. I kind of forget. Was it written down somewhere or was it something his family said? He

01:40:44:10 - 01:41:10:01
Dean Rosnau
No. Matthew gave that in his valedictorian speech when he graduated from high school. Yeah, that was the kind of guy Matthew was. I mean, he was, he was an all star, you know, he was, Just amazing student. And, he he ended up joining the Peace Corps, after a stint at college, his first, you know, getting his first degree.

01:41:10:04 - 01:41:38:15
Dean Rosnau
He spent three years in Papua New Guinea teaching English and, and some math. Math was his thing. And then, you know, came back and got his master's, and, he was just an extraordinary guy, but he he lived he lived life to the full, you know, and, and he pursued things, like I said, he ran the Boston Marathon three times, and, you know, he got into lots of other sports.

01:41:38:15 - 01:42:04:05
Dean Rosnau
But then when he discovered climbing, that became like, it was just kind of like me at 13, you know, just war like that became his real focus. And he just pursued it to the fall. And, you know, unfortunately, ice climbing was was probably the, the thing he was least experienced at, which is, you know, kind of a red flag in regards to what equipment that I know he took with him based on what was missing.

01:42:04:05 - 01:42:26:23
Dean Rosnau
And so, you know, that was more information that led me to believe that maybe his accident happened on On the ice fields. So that I think that quote, though, that's a great quote. And, and, that describes Matthew to a tee, you know, just who he was. And just what an extraordinary young man he was.

01:42:26:23 - 01:42:55:27
Kyle
think the two portions of it that I really love is not losing our youthful imaginations. I think that there's multiple ways to kind of unpack that. But to me in the way I kind of like represents that my own life is just like your the, the don't lose the inner child, right? It's like there's so much life and joy and passion that we have when we're children that we kind of get beat out of us as we get older, and we have jobs we don't like, and we go through tough times like.

01:42:55:29 - 01:43:12:17
Kyle
Yeah, the youthful energy, imagination, curiosity, like these things are something that are so paramount to a a full life. And I think that is in tandem with risk. I think that we are meant to, to take calculated risks

01:43:14:18 - 01:43:43:26
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. And you know what? It. That was really that kind of came full circle for me to, after my book came out, and, right when I started my book tour, his high school that he taught at in in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, they extend an invitation to me to come speak at the high school. And so, I kind of incorporated it in part of my book tour and did a bunch of other speaking engagements back there.

01:43:43:27 - 01:44:13:16
Dean Rosnau
And, yeah, what an extraordinary, time, you know, to be with not only Matthew's colleagues, but, a lot of the students, you know, that he had taught that had moved on and by this time were, you know, through through their college years, even, and they all they all seemed to I mean. The things that they said about Matthew, resonated exactly with that quote.

01:44:13:19 - 01:44:38:09
Dean Rosnau
That was the Matthew that they knew and that quote of his. He said at 18 years old, at his high school graduation, and he died at 39. And so he was he was continuing, it was very clear to me that in his professional life, years after he had said that quote, that's the same person that he was to his students as a mentor to his students.

01:44:38:09 - 01:45:00:29
Dean Rosnau
So he he truly lived that he not only just spoke that to his his fellow students at graduation, but that's the way that man lived his life. And what what, what a cool thing, you know? Yeah, yeah.

01:45:05:01 - 01:45:08:23
Dean Rosnau
It doesn't have any cuss words in it.

01:45:15:02 - 01:45:43:19
Dean Rosnau
Yeah. You know, That one. That one I learned right away, on my very first case with. With Laura going missing. You know, I spent those 162 days spread out over two and a half years searching for her remains. Didn't find a thing, and never interacted again with her, her parents over the course of that time.

01:45:43:19 - 01:45:50:08
Dean Rosnau
And that, you know, not that that needed to happen, but,

01:45:50:10 - 01:46:24:05
Dean Rosnau
Whether it's that case or now Matthew's case, and not finding anything. If we. I learned that if we if I were to qualify myself as doing this work to be and hoping to be successful, it was like likely that I wasn't going to last very long, because if you if you qualify yourself that way, and then you start dealing with fatalities, how you have to start asking yourself, how was that a success?

01:46:24:07 - 01:47:15:18
Dean Rosnau
Right. We went to save a life and brought back a body in a bag. And so I really had to adjust my thought process. And I decided that true success was going to be, in the, in the level of, of effort put out no matter what the outcome. And so I chose rather than to be successful, to just pursue being significant so that whatever the end game was for that particular mission, whether it was a life saved, a body recovered, a lost person found, that we we just give our best, you know, and it a part of that was kind of a protection for my own self, you know, because I think

01:47:15:18 - 01:47:38:06
Dean Rosnau
if you again, if you qualify yourself on as being successful and then have a fatality, you can start to wear that and it can hurt. And, you know, all of a sudden you're you're qualifying your life that way. It's like, man, that was a hard, bitter pill to swallow. But if if you say, man, we we gave it our best.

01:47:38:09 - 01:48:18:21
Dean Rosnau
We did our very best. And at the very least we've, we've given closure to a family and that's a significant thing. So that was kind of the mindset, you know, that would be my mindset every time I go out, obviously I want to save a life, but being significant to me just means giving 110% and being able to being willing to accept the results, you know, and a lot of times the results were out of our hands, you know, whether played a lot, you know, time lapse between the incident and the report of the incident and then us getting to the victim, all those things play a role.

01:48:18:21 - 01:48:36:16
Dean Rosnau
Right. So you just leave it every every time you get the call, you head out the door, I'm going to give it my best. And, I'm going to live. I'm going to live with the result.

01:48:39:16 - 01:49:18:05
Dean Rosnau
You know, the the the very best thing. And I always have to go back to that itinerary. Any users of the outdoors, you have got to do your due diligence. You know, your life is so precious in the, you know, in the lives of your your loved ones, your significance in your life, your friends. And to God. You know, you've been given a gift of a precious life and so value it and do the right things and and it's just so easy to, to to leave where, you know, leave that leave that itinerary and be detailed in that.

01:49:18:07 - 01:49:58:04
Dean Rosnau
And I really touch on this in the new book because I don't I felt like I didn't hit it hard enough in the first book, but, I just can't drive that point home enough. But, you know, I think another way to be significant goes back to, taking some first aid classes, you know, and, and being a willing helper, you know, you look at, you look at, like, the accident that happened on Everest years ago when so many people died and the the effort that everyone just joins in to try and lend a hand, you know, be an asset, you know, being willing, be willing to give up your summit in order

01:49:58:04 - 01:50:22:01
Dean Rosnau
to, you know, render help and aid to somebody else. You know, I like to I like to say it this way, love. I like to love God, and I like to love people. And and to me, those two things go hand in hand. And, man, there is nothing better, I think, than than doing an act of kindness for a perfect stranger.

01:50:22:04 - 01:50:39:19
Dean Rosnau
And it doesn't even have to be backcountry stuff. We can do that every day, you know, go to the market, you pull into the market parking lot and you see some lady that's loading or, you know, unloading your basket and putting your groceries in the car, grab her basket so she doesn't have to walk the thing all the way over to the cart corral.

01:50:39:19 - 01:50:52:12
Dean Rosnau
You know, I mean, just be significant in people's lives, right? It's a great way to live. So let that kind of mentality carry over into the outdoor world. Save a life. Who knows?

01:50:55:18 - 01:50:56:09
Kyle
pleasure chatting

01:50:57:00 - 01:51:00:09
Dean Rosnau
Thank you brother. Good hanging out with you.

01:51:00:09 - 01:51:21:02
Dean Rosnau
Thanks. You. And I really appreciate your stoked for, our sport. And, see your videos about you climbing hard and, makes me jealous. Yeah, well, we'll have to, hopefully we'll get a chance to rope it up together one of these days. Give me. Give me back out to red rocks.

01:51:21:07 - 01:51:26:14
Dean Rosnau
I love that place.

01:51:26:17 - 01:51:32:07
Dean Rosnau
That sounds good. Although I might let you do all the weeding. Now we'll swing it.