When Simon Moorby, a Bellingham mountain biker in his 50s, crashed while riding Galbraith Mountain on June 8, emergency medical technicians from South Whatcom Fire Authority quickly responded and got him down the hill and to a hospital for treatment.
But what Moorby didn’t know was that the EMTs were responding outside of their official jurisdiction, in a historically overlooked area where more injuries are occurring as outdoor recreation becomes increasingly popular. And the responding agency says it is not being compensated for the manpower-intensive calls to some of these areas.
After misjudging the landing on a large drop, Moorby fractured his sternum and three vertebrae, sustained a concussion and broke his pinky for good measure.
Crashes are a common occurrence in mountain biking, and like many riders, Moorby can usually get himself home after an injury, but on that day, he recognized that he was too hurt to soft-pedal back to the trailhead. He said it felt like a matter of minutes from when a bystander placed a 911 call to when he was loaded onto a stretcher by efficient, friendly EMTs and taken down the mountain.
“Those poor guys must be scraping people off the mountain left and right,” Moorby said about the first responders.
It’s true that members of the South Whatcom Fire Authority who cover much of the southeastern part of the county are frequently called to attend to hurt mountain bikers, rock climbers, hikers and other recreationists in the Chuckanuts, on Galbraith, and on Lookout Mountain.
SWFA Fire Chief Mitch Nolze describes the recreation areas as “no man’s land.” According to the county’s fire district map, they fall outside of any local district’s purview, as do Stewart Mountain, Anderson Mountain, the Van Zandt Dike, Sumas Mountain and Black Mountain, to name a few areas that have grown in popularity.
These areas are generally a patchwork of public parcels and private timberland where, historically, nearby fire districts will answer a call when necessary but receive minimal or no taxing revenue to support substantive coverage.
The explosion in recreation in the past decade has changed the status quo, especially on Galbraith, where usage was legitimized in 2018 when the City of Bellingham and Whatcom Land Trust secured a recreational and conservation easement on the working tree farm. The city doesn’t collect daily visitor numbers, but the new 184-stall trailhead parking lot installed on Samish Way in 2022 is full most weekends in the summer with local riders and hikers, as well as visitors from around the region and even farther afield.
“Galbraith has turned into its own thing,” Nolze said. “We started responding there back when mountain biking was just starting there.”
Fortuitously, in 2011 SWFA helped implement the checkpoint system on the sometimes-confusing Galbraith trail network, which has grown to encompass around 65 miles. Local firefighter and mountain biker Drew Trimakas pitched the idea for a series of on-mountain checkpoints to help emergency responders locate injured parties.
The checkpoints, installed near high-consequence features, road junctions and popular trail entrances, are marked alphabetically, starting with Checkpoint A or Alpha at the bottom of the mountain and marching uphill through Bravo, Charlie and Delta. At this point, nearly half the alphabet is accounted for, and the system is so successful that it has been adopted by other land managers around the state.
Those checkpoints have been useful as the call volume on Galbraith has increased. In 2023, SWFA responded to 39 incidents in recreation areas outside of its jurisdiction, spending more than 60 hours total on those incidents. As of July 16, SWFA had spent almost 20 hours responding to 13 incidents in 2024. Over the busy Northwest Tune-Up festival weekend July 12–14, only one incident on Galbraith necessitated emergency responders.
EMS and rescue incidents account for around 5% of the SWFA’s call volume but recreation responses often require more time than house calls. SWFA crew members train at a high level for the more complex calls in recreation areas, Nolze said. That includes water rescue for incidents that happen in Lake Whatcom, Lake Samish and on the coastline, and technical rope rescue, which can come into play in areas like Larrabee State Park.
With the uptick in calls, the fire authority’s board of commissioners is concerned about diverting resources away from the residents and businesses within the SWFA jurisdiction — which includes communities like Sudden Valley, Geneva and Lake Samish — that pay taxes to receive services. That’s why Nolze has met with the City of Bellingham and Whatcom County, as well as the Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition, to start a conversation on how to ensure emergency response continues on Galbraith and in other extra-jurisdictional areas.
“We can’t continue to provide that service for free,” Nolze said.
The Galbraith Mountain Management Plan states the City of Bellingham would meet with SWFA to review emergency procedures annually or as needed, but Nolze said the fire authority was not aware it was mentioned in the plan and has not had annual meetings with the city.
Since the recreation areas are technically in Whatcom County’s jurisdiction, emergency response could be the responsibility of the county’s various search and rescue organizations like Summit to Sound. But local SAR teams are fully operated by volunteers and supported by private donations and don’t have the same 24-hour resources as a professional EMS and firefighting crew.
“It’s a complex problem that we’re trying to solve,” Nolze said. “We’re not going to just not help someone, especially in a critical situation, but we want to make sure we’re fairly negotiating with the city and county.”
Julia Tellman writes about civic issues and anything else that happens to cross her desk; contact her at juliatellman@cascadiadaily.com.
