Northern Rescue

Bass player David Williamson has been making annual trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area with different combinations of MinnOrch friends since the late 1980s. Their most recent expedition—in September, right before the Orchestra season started—is one they won’t forget.

Soon after putting into the BWCA on Sawbill Lake near Tofte, the five musicians—Williamson, fellow bass player Kyle Sanborn, violinist James Garlick, violist Dave Auerbach and cellist Silver Ainomäe (plus his dog, Crosby)—encountered an emergency situation.

Paddlers Pete Heaslett and Byron Froelich, life-long friends who grew up together in Green Bay, Wisconsin, were six hours into what was supposed to be a dream three-night BWCA trip when Heaslett ran into trouble on a portage. “I stepped on a sloping rock and my foot got wedged,” he said. “My leg went in one direction and my foot in the other.” In an instant, he had dislocated his ankle and broken his leg in four places.

“We knew right away that we had to get out,” recalled Heaslett, and Froelich began the arduous process of ferrying their gear back to home base. “Byron came back at one point and said that he had met five guys who were going to help,” recounts Heaslett.

Enter the MinnOrch crew. Dave Auerbach and James Garlick were the first on the scene, and they helped extricate Heaslett, carrying him across a portage point back to his canoe. From there, Froelich and Heaslett paddled out, with Heaslett’s foot propped up in the canoe, while Auerbach and Kyle Sanborn followed in a separate canoe. At the second portage, Auerbach and Sanborn carried Heaslett about a quarter of a mile back to Sawbill Lake.  

Meanwhile, Silver Ainomäe defied the odds to find cell service in the remote region and successfully texted for help. (Relates Froelich: “We were all checking our phones, and no one had any signal. Then Silver stepped out on two rocks into Ada Creek and lifted his phone up above his head, and exclaimed, ‘I have a bar!’ He looked like a Greek statue with his right hand up in the air, one leg on a rock in the water and his other leg on another rock as he communicated with rescue personnel.”)

Thus summoned, Cook County Emergency sent a powerboat—helmed by a U.S. Forest Service worker, a Border Protection agent and an EMT from Grand Marais—which brought Heaslett out of the BWCA and into the emergency room in Grand Marais. Rather than spending a long weekend in the wilds of the North, Heaslett ultimately headed to Madison where he underwent surgery.

Recuperating now back in Wisconsin, he’s grateful he is expected to make a full recovery— and also grateful for the serendipity of intersecting with his Minnesota Orchestra rescuers. “They are wonderful people,” Heaslett said.