Darrel Kirk, Brother of missing hiker in from Seattle to search

Today my outing was not focused on the prep for the trek. It was far more important than my quest for personal accomplishment. Today I went out with Red Rock Search and Rescue to try to help find Ron Kirk. I don’t know him personally. But when you hike the Red Rocks and hear of someone who does not come out, you cannot help but want to do your part to help find him. Bring him to his family. So at 6 AM this morning, Jim Smyth picked me up and off we went to the command center outside Calico Hills to help.

One time, when I was 8, I helped look for two missing children at my grandfathers resort at Baker Lake, Washington. They sent us kids out on all our trails through the woods to see if we could find where they might have gone. Maybe they fell. Maybe they are just lost. Sadly, it was later the two youngsters were found in the lake. It was devastating to my grandfather to think that his rustic fishing resort had been the source of such pain for this family.  It was my first encounter with observing, and to a limited extent, being a part of the real time events surrounding such a loss.

It was a cold and breezy sunrise as Jim and I arrived. We were greeted by a motor home that had prepared a spread of food and hot beverages for all the volunteers. We were broken up into groups and I was in the day hiker group. There were Class 3 and Class 4 climbers that would be assigned more difficult terrain. So off we went to the flats between the road to Calico Hills and the model airplane strip. We were to scour the underbrush, look for any sign of Ron…in any condition.

The land I covered was flat with washes meandering circuitously through the extent of our section. We were led by an ol’ army guy named Pigeon. He had us fan out and just beat the brush. I was worried that I might miss something. What if I was looking to the left, and there was something on the right. What if I got distracted. I had not done this sort of grid thing ever before, though I had seen it a few times in rescue news reels.

It struck me how beautiful  Red Rock is. How quiet. How the sound of the voice of a bike rider out on the road carries in to where I was and sounded just as if that rider were talking directly to me. I also thought of Darrell Kirk, Ron’s brother. Darrell was in the position just next to me for most of the day. He had traveled here from Seattle. And though unspoken between us, the fear and pain and anxiety of not knowing where his brother is was palpable. My heart cried out for him and I so wanted that miracle to happen today.

These bikes were none the wiser as to the reason for our presence.

Red Rock Search and Rescue is new. It is all volunteer, and it was the result of Ron going missing. We need to have an organized group of volunteers who are ready, willing, and able to assist in these kinds of events. We owe it to each other to try to do what we can. We cannot leave it up to the limited resources of law enforcement. But we can assemble, train and dedicate ourselves to being there to assist law enforcement so that when something as tragic as this happens, families of missing people will know they can get help to find their loved one.  I was glad to be there and to give time to the Kirk family today. I will try to do this as often as I can until he is found.

If you have any idea what happened to Ron, please contact his Brother Darrell at the number listed in the second photograph in this post. If you can help look, find Red Rock Search and Rescue on Facebook.

Searchers in our grid.

Darrell Kirk was thanking a man who was leaving the search. He told the man how much his taking his time to be there and to help search made this whole ordeal more bearable. I cannot imagine being Darrell or any of the rest of his family right now.

The Red Rock Canyon