First Responders

High Winds and Brave Hearts: Black Hawk Rescue in the Deadly Huachuca Mountains

March 23, 2022Noelle Wiehe
US Customs and Border Protection Aviation Enforcement Agent Scott Bowles secures the line as a hiker is hoisted up to his rescue team’s UH-60L Black Hawk, March 16, 2022, in the Huachuca Mountains in Arizona. Screenshot from US Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations video.

US Customs and Border Protection Aviation Enforcement Agent Scott Bowles secures the line as a hiker is hoisted up to his rescue team’s UH-60L Black Hawk, March 16, 2022, in the Huachuca Mountains in Arizona. Screenshot from US Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations video.

Days into a hike through Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains, her Garmin inReach’s emergency beacon pinged off a satellite and then down to emergency dispatchers. 


It was 11:32 a.m. on March 16, and Dominic Epps, a volunteer with Cochise County Search and Rescue, could figure a few things from the alert, all of them very bad: The unidentified hiker’s water was running dry; she was miles deep in the high and narrow Lutz Canyon, probably at high altitude; and she was injured.


In the Grand Canyon State, rescue organizations save hikers without charging them for the service. They do that because they’d rather a hiker make the smartest lifesaving decision instead of trying to tough out an injury. By state law, each county must have a search and rescue team.


Huachuca Mountains
Rising up to 9,466 feet, Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains are marked by deep canyons, sheer cliffs above the desert, and howling winds. US Forest Service photo.

Epps’ organization sent volunteers to the hiker’s trailhead, and that ground team scrabbled up the steep, rutted path to her. She told them she could hobble a little on her ankle, but not far.


At first, Cochise County Search and Rescue considered asking a helicopter to insert a team atop Miller Peak, at 9,466 feet high the tallest mountain in the range. They realized that a chopper ride to emergency medical care would be the best option for the hurt hiker.


But it was spring in the Huachuca Range, when freezing winds race like greyhounds through the canyons and over the peaks, spitting grit and howling dust. So they formed a second team that grew to six rescuers. They volunteered to tug the Stokes basket wheels and the rest of the medical equipment up the cliff, an arduous journey over brutally rugged terrain, the wind whistling through their ranks as they rose up the mountains. 


Huachuca Mountains
David Miles, a volunteer with Cochise County Search and Rescue, makes the trek up the trail to find an injured hiker on March 16, 2022, in Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains. Photo courtesy of Cochise County Search and Rescue.

At around 2 p.m., the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office reached for what Epps joked is the “Batphone.” They rang US Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations Tucson Air Branch at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Officials there could scramble their wind-defying workhorse, a UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter, and fly 90 miles north.


The winds in Tucson already were holding steady at 30 knots and the agents on board the chopper worried it would get worse when they reached the range. Aviation Enforcement Agent Cory Bishop recalled the crew bouncing in the back of the Black Hawk as it took off, “just with the wind moving us around.”


They put Aviation Enforcement Agent Josh Sims on the hoist. He’d run a rescue on the same crag in early 2021. That hiker had suffered a broken leg, exposure, and hypothermia, Bishop told Coffee or Die Magazine, “so he had an idea in his head what we were getting into.”


But even with the crew’s decades of experience saving lives in the unforgiving borderlands, Bishop said this rescue was about to become one of the most difficult missions they’d ever run. They neared Lutz Canyon around 4:30 p.m. After two orbits around her last known position, the crew spotted her at roughly 8,300 feet. The four-bladed Black Hawk hovered 15 stories over her, and down the rope went Bishop.


“Man, they’re high,” he remembered thinking after he hit dirt and stared up at his chopper.


Huachuca Mountains
US Customs and Border Protection Aviation Enforcement Agent Cory Bishop dangles from a UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter on March 16, 2022, in Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains in Arizona. Screenshot from US Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations video.

Next went Aviation Enforcement Agent Scott Bowles. Once on the ground, he and Bishop began the trek to the hiker. On the radio, the Black Hawk pilot told the agents he didn’t like the look of their planned extraction point.


“You could see him flying around, looking for alternate places to try and get us out just because it was that rough,” Bishop said. “It was probably one of the harder rescues I’ve been involved in because of the wind and the terrain.” 


Sometimes there are no good choices, only less bad ones. The agents helped the hiker navigate the loose dirt under her gimpy ankle to where the pilot thought he’d found a stable spot, about 120 feet up the mountain. 


She was an experienced trekker, with expensive equipment. Before blousing her in the air rescue vest, Bishop asked her, “How important is this bag to you?”


She started crying. The crew decided to try to get her gear out, too. But they worried that packing it on Bowles and Bishop would make them “wider” on the wind-whipped line. That could cause them to spin as they dangled on the rope.


Huachuca Mountains
An injured hiker is hoisted to the US Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations UH-60L Black Hawk, March 16, 2022, in the Huachuca Mountains in Arizona. Photo courtesy of Cochise County Search and Rescue.

On the hoist, Sims decided to lower a hook for her equipment. It would run below the hiker as she was being heaved up into the chopper, but would go up before the agents, cutting the risk of spinning them like tops. 


“I know she was grateful for that,” Bishop said. 


The Black Hawk delivered her to Sierra Vista Fire & Medical Services to rush her to the nearest hospital.


Before she left, the hiker leaned into Bishop and told him how grateful she was for the pilots and crew for saving her. Bishop told Coffee or Die that was “really nice” because “a lot of people forget it’s not just the guys going down on the hook and running the hoist” who save lives.


Volunteers with Cochise County Search and Rescue make the tough trek trek up the trail to an injured hiker on March 16, 2022, in Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains. Photo courtesy Cochise County Search and Rescue.

“We had another crew member in the back that no one knows about, our left-side scanner,” Bishop said. “And he allowed us to get lower. They don’t think about that when they’re, you know, getting out of a bad situation or reading a story. It took all of us.” 


And that includes the Cochise County Search and Rescue volunteers. Their team, who stayed with the hiker until she was safely away, didn’t start down the sheer Lutz Canyon cliff until 7:30 p.m. It was a rescue mission that pushed all of them to their limits.


But they made it. Together.




Editor’s note: This story was changed to add more details about Cochise County Search and Rescue’s efforts during the mission.


Read Next: Texas Wildfire, Car Crash, 2 Shootouts Kill 5 Cops Nationwide



Noelle Wiehe
Noelle Wiehe

Noelle is a former staff writer for Coffee or Die through a fellowship from Military Veterans in Journalism. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and interned with the US Army Cadet Command. Noelle also worked as a civilian journalist covering several units, including the 75th Ranger Regiment on Fort Benning, before she joined the military as a public affairs specialist.

More from Coffee or Die Magazine
navy seal training
Navy SEALS Training Plagued by Massive Problems, According To Investigation

Medical oversight and care were “poorly organized, poorly integrated and poorly led and put candidat...

memorial day arlington
Memorial Day Is a Day of Remembrance, Not Celebration

Memorial Day was created as a remembrance to honor the fallen by decorating graves — a holiday meant...

air force joint chiefs
Air Force Fighter Pilot Tapped As Next Joint Chiefs Chairman Has History of Firsts

The Air Force fighter pilot about to be nominated as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ...

sowf special operations warrior foundation
BRCC Donates $500K to Special Operations Warrior Foundation

In an effort to continue Black Rifle Coffee Company’s mission of supporting the veteran community, B...

Coca Cola 600
BRCC to Honor Fallen Marine During NASCAR’s Legendary Coca-Cola 600

Black Rifle Coffee Company will honor Marine Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Menusa during NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 this Memorial Day. Menusa was killed in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq.

uss gerald r. ford oslo
US Aircraft Carrier Arrives In NATO Member Norway, To Take Part In Drills

The nuclear-powered ship USS Gerald R. Ford entered the Oslo fjord escorted by a rapid dinghy-type boat with armed personnel on board.

adam driver indy 500
Marine Vet, Actor Adam Driver Named Honorary Starter for Indianapolis 500

Two-time Academy Award nominee Adam Driver, who will soon be starring as Enzo Ferrari in a biopic of...

  • About Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Careers
Contact Us
  • Request a Correction
  • Write for Us
  • General Inquiries
© 2023 Coffee or Die Magazine. All Rights Reserved