GETTING UNSTUCK IN THE DESERT

Interview with Southern Nevada Off-Road Recovery (SNORR)

Gold Beam editors Kim Garrison Means and Steve Radosevich sat down with the executive board of SNORR to talk about their incredible organization. SNORR is a group of around 80 off-road enthusiasts who rescue stranded off-road travelers and their vehicles, bringing them safely home. Since their founding in 2018, SNORR volunteers have received close to 15,000 calls. 

Illustration by Kyle Larson.

How did SNORR come about?

Jacob: Six years ago, I had a crazy idea to start this non-profit to help out people who were stuck on off-highway excursions. I had been part of a Facebook group that would go out on trails, and people were getting stuck all of the time, and were posting to the group asking for assistance.  People in the comments section were responding by wanting to charge them money or asking for something in trade for their help. That triggered something in my head to say, “Why are we charging our brothers and sisters like this? We should just go out, have fun with them and bring them home.” So that is what started the whole thing.

Daniel: A lot of people get out there and don’t know what to do when a mishap or an emergency situation happens. They sometimes end up in a worse spot than they were in originally. The biggest goal of travel on back roads is to make sure everyone is safe.

What kinds of situations happen to make people call you?

Daniel: We receive calls from people who have run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, people who have flipped their trucks over on the side of a mountain, people who had their vehicles end up in the lake – you name it. Everything from getting stuck in the sand to injury accidents and everything in between. We even get calls for heat distress, and we try to get those to the 911 operator to get them evacuated by helicopter or other means to get them to a hospital.

What is the geographic range you are working in with these rescues?

Jacob: We go anywhere to 4 hours outside of Las Vegas, mainly in Southern Nevada but sometimes we make exceptions. We had a call recently that was in California, an elderly couple who were in a truck with a camper on it. They went up a steep incline to a mine, and somehow the vehicle slipped backwards on the terrain, started going sideways and backwards, hit something, fell onto the driver’s side and slid into a tree, which stopped their fall. Luckily it was there, otherwise they would have kept going for another couple thousand feet or more.

Your volunteers have off-highway equipped vehicles that can go some places that the emergency vehicles can’t go. How do you get the calls from folks who need help?

Jacob: When someone calls 911 and needs help from a remote area, they are directed to us through the 911 operator or through the Lake Mead Communications Center. Those services will text or call us to ask for our assistance. Sometimes people also find us directly through Facebook or another social media platform.

What happens after you get that call?

Anthony: First we try to figure out exactly where the person is. We have an app on our phones called Active 911, which is used by many volunteer services that assist with emergency services, and this helps coordinate people. We send out an alert on this app with the information that we are given, and we communicate on Facebook Messenger for photos and non-critical information related to the call.

What made you want to volunteer with this organization, Daniel?

Daniel: I grew up in a household of search and rescue. My dad was the founder of the Cochise County Search and Rescue in Arizona in 1984. That got me started in wanting to be out helping people.  I’ve also been working with radio communications since I was 8 years old, and I get to do that with SNORR. I’ve brought our system up to date from us using HAM radios in the early days, where everyone could overhear or interject in the conversation, to using repeaters and privacy codes to keep outside chatter to a minimum. I do most of the programming, and our process of communication is very organized. It’s rewarding to use my skillset to be able to get people out of a situation, especially one they may think that they'll never get out of.

Tim, how did you start up with SNORR?

Tim: My son started me with this. One of his friends rolled an ATV out in the NW area of Las Vegas, and SNORR came and helped them out. No questions. They asked nothing. They came and got the vehicle, put the quad in the bed of their truck, and I thought it was the coolest thing when I heard about it. I work as a mechanic, so I can bring my skills to the team to fix things on the trail, and it’s always rewarding to go out and help somebody that needs it.

You brought up the “no questions asked” policy of SNORR. How does that work for the people who need help? 

Carlos: We aren’t here to judge, just help people out. We work with other emergency services, and they may have to make decisions about the law, but that’s not our job. The only thing I will say is that we won’t put anybody that’s under the influence back on the road.

Tim: We did a recovery recently on a Saturday night, where a guy had too much to drink, and backed his truck into the lake far enough to get water in the engine and fuel tank. He wasn’t going to be able to drive home, because his truck wasn’t running, but also at that point, we weren’t going to let him drive that vehicle on the street. It wasn’t safe for anybody.

Anthony, how did you get involved in volunteering with this organization?

Anthony: I’ve always enjoyed volunteering. Prior to this, I was doing search and rescue, and some friends of mine were involved with SNORR early on, so I heard their tales and saw how much fun they were having. I’ve been off-roading since before I could legally drive on the street, and I enjoy being out in nature and helping people out. The more I got to know Jacob and the rest of the team, the more it fueled a passion of something that I really enjoy doing. These gentlemen are just fantastic – they’ll give you the shirts off their backs in the drop of a hat. A lot of us have gained our rescue skills because we’ve been in these situations ourselves, or friends of ours have gotten into those situations. So, we have empathy for folks. We aren’t there to judge them, but we want to be out there to help them and pass on the knowledge we have.

Daniel: One of the things that happens in those situations is that people’s stress levels are way up, so it’s important that we make them feel comfortable and convince them that we know what it’s like, and bring their stress levels down.

Anthony: One thing I think a lot of people don't realize is, if they are in a situation where they have to call search and rescue, and Metro or the park service comes out, they're going to pick up the people and get them to safety, but they're going leave their backpacks, their cars, their dogs and their vehicles behind. That’s where we can help with rescuing. But, it’s important that people understand this and always prepare for the worst-case scenario when they are packing for a drive.

Getting stuck out there is a life-changing situation for some people. It’s pretty dramatic when you are far away from everything, don’t have resources, and start to feel powerless in the great big desert.

Anthony: You are absolutely right. And part of the problem is bad information. People get a lot of information off Youtube – some good – but there is also a lot of wrong information out there, and people have the wrong gear with them, or not enough gas or water, or are otherwise not prepared for their situation. Also, people move from all over the country to Las Vegas, and what prepared them for their environment elsewhere doesn’t always work here. 

A great example is when the water in Lake Mead went down so much last year, it exposed a lot of mud, and people were getting stuck. Some of them had plenty of experience driving in Alabama mud or mud from wherever – but it’s a completely different type of mud in a completely different type of environment here, and they just overestimate their ability.

Our environment is constantly changing here too. People are sometimes not used to the idea that a road that was in good shape a month ago when they went down it, is going to be completely different after a spring rain or a monsoon flash flood. That’s hard to plan for, unless you’ve experienced it before.

Anthony: Exactly. You don’t think that road is going to look different from the last time you were there. 

Ean: Our biggest goal as an organization is not just to help rescue those in need, but more importantly, to be proactive in teaching others how to off-road safely, and how to utilize safe recovery techniques, so people know what to do when they get stuck, and how to assist themselves, and look out to assist others. When people go out adventuring in a group, we want there to be at least one person who is properly trained on what to do. Then they can self-recover and get home on their own.

Carlos, what brought you to SNORR, and what kind of satisfaction do you get from this work?

Carlos: I like to off-road, and I was looking for groups to go out with. I stumbled upon SNORR, and it is an off-road organization, but they also do all they can to help people, so it’s killing two birds with one stone. I am going out with Mother Nature and sightseeing, and I've been to places where I would never probably go, where people get stuck and we go help them, and it makes me feel good.

Ean, what do you for SNORR?

Ean: I do most of the administrative work for the organization. My day job is managing a pretty big business, and so I have some of those skill sets to be able to do the same with SNORR. We've come a long way from when I started in in January of 2020. Back then, there was only a Facebook page, and when people needed help they would post a picture and a location. Anybody that was on the page would head out and help that person. But with that system came a lot of problems, like whether the person rescuing was properly trained, so we've evolved into a certified non-profit that has a dispatch system and works with state and local agencies, and we have built a training program to make sure everybody's certified, not only on recovery safety, but in basic CPR and life support. We've never turned down or had to abandon a recovery. We've recovered every single vehicle, and we've done it safely. 

How do you get funding for this great work?

Jacob: We are a non-profit organization, and we're able to receive donations from the people that we assist and from anyone who believes in our cause. We think it is important that the people we help have a chance to give back what they can afford, to help the next person who needs rescuing. It’s a Karma thing. We've also received grants, so we've been able to bring in some income from that. Our volunteers also put a lot of time, effort and money into their own vehicles, fuel, equipment and training to do this, so when people who are rescued give back in some way, it really helps boost everyone’s moral. 

Daniel: These rescues take a lot of time -- some of them can take two of us all day or all night to get out to where people are, do what we need to do, and get people and their vehicles back. 

A lot of people in this area love off-roading. How can people become part of SNORR and help with rescues?

Anthony: We’re always looking for new rescue team volunteers and people who want to come help us out in any way, full-time or part-time. We’d love to see more folks from the Searchlight, Nelson and Cottonwood Cove areas sign up, as we get quite a few calls from around those areas but don’t yet have a lot of volunteers who know those places well and are close to them. We’d also love to see more women in the off-road community get involved. 

Ean: For rescue team volunteers, we start by training them. They take a class on basic off-road safety, get a CPR certification, and have to attend at least 3 recoveries with another SNORR team. Then they take an online test that we've set up. 

Anthony: Volunteering with SNORR Is a good fit for people with a sense of adventure. That's why most of us have jeeps and trucks and vehicles that go off the highway. Like Carlos said, you can go places you might not have thought to go to on your own, and you get to do it with your teammates and have a bit of an adventure for a good cause. There are plenty of ways to volunteer with us that don’t put you in charge of the technical rescues. You can also help by bringing people who are stranded extra water or food, or help dig someone out of the mud, for example. And you don’t always need a fancy rig to help out, we have volunteers with a bunch of different types of vehicles. We are always looking for anybody and everybody who has the willingness and the heart to go out and help others.

You can find out more about SNORR, email about classes or volunteer opportunities, or make a donation through their website.

OFF-ROAD ADVICE FROM SNORR:

• Don’t push your vehicle to its capability. 

• Take the right vehicle, otherwise, don’t go there.

• Tell people where you're going and when you plan on being back.

• Assess your situation, and be willing to abandon your original plan at any time if necessary.

• Lower the air in your tires. Most mishaps happen due to a lack of traction.

• Take extra water. Then more water.

• The desert air makes alcohol effects stronger than you think.

• Get out and walk an area first if you feel hesitant in driving it.

• 4 wheel drive doesn’t mean you can go anywhere. It just means getting stuck in a harder spot to reach. 

• Bring a spare tire, medicines, food, a flashlight, a lighter, and a tarp for cover in case you get stuck.

• Bring your car phone charger and keep it charged.