YACOLT — With its plans to string a new high-voltage transmission line through Clark County, the Bonneville Power Administration hasn’t exactly been a popular entity over the past couple of months.
“BPA, find a better way,” read yard signs sprinkled around the landscape.
Last week, a BPA flatbed trailer found its way to Yacolt with a peace offering: a track-driven snowcat. Volunteers with the Volcano Rescue Team will use the donation of surplus equipment to reach injured or lost fun-seekers in the rugged backcountry around Mount St. Helens.
“There’s plenty of work for us out there,” rescue team volunteer Sid Millman said.
The snowcat will carry as many as five rescue team volunteers into the wilderness, and the volunteers figure it will be able to carry out injured climbers or snowmobilers in relative comfort. Tom McDowell, the longtime director of North Country EMS and the Volcano Rescue Team, said the team currently uses snowmobiles to access high-elevation areas.
“Obviously, they can only carry one person at a time,” McDowell said. “And in difficult weather, they’re hard to use.”
Millman said a snowcat has been on the group’s wish list for years. The Volcano Rescue Team formed in 1986, after the U.S. Forest Service first allowed climbers to return to Mount St. Helens after the catastrophic eruption of May 18, 1980. Today, the rescue team’s two dozen volunteers keep busy providing aid to climbers and snowmobilers recreating around Mount St. Helens.
Bonneville used the 30-year-old snowcat to access remote areas along a transmission grid spanning 15,000 miles in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The Bombardier Skidozer 252 became surplus property when BPA decided to update and standardize its snowcat fleet.
Federal officials calculated the value of the donated machine at $15,000.
BPA, which literally wrapped the snowcat in a large red bow, typically sells surplus equipment or transfers it to other federal agencies. The donation to the Volcano Rescue Team was one of Bonneville’s biggest donations in terms of dollar value and the largest in several years.
“For a search and rescue agency that’s covering the area around Mount St. Helens, it’s a huge piece of equipment that would be very expensive to acquire on their own,” Ulrik Larsen, BPA’s property disposal officer, said in a BPA press release. “Our responsibility is to get the best value for ratepayers. In this instance, if even one life is saved, that’s a very large payoff.”
McDowell figured the cost of a new snowcat to be $50,000.
BPA, based in Portland, markets the energy produced at 31 federal dams and one nuclear plant. In Clark County, the agency has taken plenty of heat recently as it explores potential routes for a new 500-kilovolt transmission line between new substations planned for Castle Rock and Troutdale, Ore. It ruled out a path through an old Pacific Power easement running from Chelatchie Prairie through Hockinson to Camas last week, but many other possible paths remain.
The power line controversy faded briefly Saturday as Millman fired up the newest addition to the Volcano Rescue Team.
Millman and three other volunteers initially will be trained to operate the snowcat during rescue operations. Millman, a semi-retired electrician, knows firsthand the value of quick response. He began volunteering with the Volcano Rescue Team after suffering serious head injuries while climbing in the Wind River area years ago.
“It changes your perspective,” he said.
Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551 or erik.robinson@columbian.com.30
