Subjects

AUSTRIA

Alois Stöckl is a second-generation woodcarver and runs a small studio for secular and religious sculptures in his native village of Hippach. He is a volunteer for his local mountain rescue service in the Ziller valley of Tirol, and he works part-time as a helicopter medic. Before becoming a woodcarver, he was trained as a baker.

AUSTRIA

Born in 1968, Christian Eder is the director and training manager of the Tyrolean Mountain Rescue Academy. A state-certified mountain and ski guide, he is responsible for the management of the Jamtal training center, for course content and administration, and for the development of Alpine rescue techniques. He has also been the leader of the mountain rescue unit in Ginzling.

WASHINGTON, USA

Early in his career, Greg Prothman served as a police officer for the University of Washington and the City of Renton. A native of Seattle, he is the founder of GMP Consultants, a public sector consulting firm. He received a B.A. from Western Washington University; was awarded a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Washington; and completed the Senior Executives in State and Local Government program at Harvard University. After receiving his masters degree, he accepted an administrative position for the City of Des Moines, Washington, where in time he became City Manager. Since his youth, Greg has volunteered for various first responder organizations, including the ski patrol, the volunteer fire department, and Seattle Mountain Rescue.

WASHINGTON, USA

Helga Byhre grew up in Germany in World War II and immigrated to Canada soon thereafter. There she fulfilled one of her youthful dreams by spending a year in the Arctic in a home-made cabin. After settling in the Puget Sound region, she raised two boys with her husband, Bob Byhre, a member of Seattle Mountain Rescue, and together they enjoyed their magnificent environment hiking, climbing, skiing and kayaking. Currently in her 90s, Helga still enjoys mountain sports, both summer and winter, in the neighboring Cascade Range. She tells her story in her autobiography Views from the Hill.

AUSTRIA

Hermann Spiegl is regional leader of the Tyrolean mountain rescue service. Born in Brixlegg, he joined the service in 1978. After founding his own successful plant and mechanical engineering firm in 1995, he retired in 2015 to devote his time more fully to the rescue service.

TYROL, AUSTRIA

Born in Innsbruck in 1972, Markus Isser is an intensive care nurse and nurse anesthetist known in Austria as “the MacGyver of mountain rescue.” He has been the medical training director of the mountain rescue service of Tyrol since 2014. In that capacity, he has championed the Tactical Alpine Medicine program, which brings lessons drawn from the U.S. military and its Tactical Combat Casualty Care protocols to civilian backwoods prehospital care in the Alps. As medical training director, he also oversees and conducts scientific research in the field. He and his wife, a veterinarian, have two children and a beloved dog.

WASHINGTON, USA

Nicholas Campbell Corff, a retired architect, holds a Bachelor and a Master degree from Stanford University. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer and was a decorated U.S. Army officer. He moved to Seattle to take up duties as a consultant to school systems and municipalities, specializing in population forecasting as it relates to facilities and the environment. There he also became active in skiing, climbing, hiking, sailing and camping in the Pacific Northwest. As the husband of Roxanne Trott Corff, he has spent decades carefully preserving the archives of her father and telling his story, including in his biography The Making of a Rescuer: The Inspiring Life of Otto T. Trott, MD, Rescuer and Mountaineer.

WASHINGTON, USA

Seattle Mountain Rescue member Nick Constantine has volunteered with search and rescue teams since 2008. Nick’s early career years were in the aviation industry, first as a flight test engineer and later in business development and sales. Prior to that, he served as a combat engineer sapper Captain in the United States Army, attending both Ranger and Airborne schools. Nick joined Microsoft in 2013, and currently leads a team as a business programs director. He holds an engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Washington. Within Seattle Mountain Rescue, Nick has served as a trustee and led the unit as the Board Chair. He is also its archivist, and recently completed digitizing its historical records. He is active on the unit’s Resilience Team and its Snow and Avalanche Committee, and is currently a fully qualified operations and field team leader. His outdoor pursuits are paragliding, biking, running, skiing, or ice climbing, depending on the season.

WASHINGTON, USA

Sarah Stephan is a painter and a Senior Industrial Engineer for Boeing. A graduate of Arizona State University, she supports the 767, 777, and 787 programs through the design and improvement of the processes needed to manufacture large airplanes from the point parts are received at the warehouse through to the finished airplanes leaving the factory on their way to flight test. Outside of work, Sarah skis when it snows, climbs when the rocks are warm and dry, and paints when it rains. She has volunteered for Seattle Mountain Rescue since 2016 and she was a joint project manager for the construction of its new rescue center in North Bend. Sarah has also worked on a glacier as a sled dog handler for Alaska Icefield Expeditions; but now shares her home with a cat.

AUSTRIA

Regina Poberschnigg, of Ehrwald, Austria, is one of the first women to have joined the mountain rescue service of Tyrol, in 2001, having previously served as an emergency paramedic. From 2003-18, she was also a member of the emergency helicopter service. In 2017, she became the unit leader of the mountain rescue service in Ehrwald, which lies at the base of Zugspitze. She is the descendant of generations of carpenter-craftsmen in the region. After returning from time spent in the United States twenty-five years ago, she and a friend founded Bergsport Total, an outdoor gear and training center, which remains a vital center of her community.

WASHINGTON, USA

Roxanne Trott Corff (B.S., Nursing, University of Washington, 1978) is a retired registered nurse with long experience at Harborview’s level-1 trauma center in Seattle, Washington. There she worked for eighteen years as a staff nurse and fifteen years in interventional radiology as a staff nurse and charge nurse. A classical pianist, she is one of the five daughters of Dr. Otto T. Trott, one of the founders of the Mountain Rescue Council, the organizational precursor to Seattle Mountain Rescue. Her sisters are Marlies, Kristine, Kaaren, and Renate. She lives on Bainbridge Island, where she tends her garden and participates in local emergency planning.

AUSTRIA

Born in Graz, Dr. Walter Phleps has been an active member of the mountain rescue service since 1964. He achieved national fame as a pioneer in the field of air rescue. In 1974 he carried out Austria’s first helicopter rescue operation on the Wilder Kaiser. Around the same time, he carried out significant development work in the flight operations center in Innsbruck and, together with Prof. Dr. Gerhard Flora, developed the Christophorus emergency medical helicopter system in Austria. Between 1969 and 1994, he completed over 1,000 helicopter rescue missions as an air rescuer and, beginning in 1976, as an air rescue physician. In June 1979, as the attending mountain rescue doctor, he was able to make a significant contribution to the survival of those climbers who were rescued from the wintry Laliderer north face after three days using 800 m of steel cable. It was one of the most spectacular rescue operations in Austrian history. He is the recipient of the distinguished Green Cross of the Austrian Alpine Association.