Trading Steel for Stone: Tales of a Rustbelt Refugee Turned Rocky Mountain Rescuer - Softcover

In addition to his present duties as the Field Director of the Alpine Rescue Team in Evergreen, CO (one of the busiest volunteer mountain rescue teams in the country), Tom writes curriculum and teaches industrial rope rescue and safety to cell tower climbers, wind turbine workers and just about anyone else who wears a harness and works at height, for Vertical Rescue Solutions by PMI.

A regular speaker and presenter for the Mountain Rescue Association, the National Association for Search and Rescue and the International Technical Rescue Symposium, Tom is also the United States alternate delegate for Terrestrial Rescue to the International Commission for Alpine Rescue (ICAR). Wood presently serves as the chair of the Safety Reporting Committee for both the Mountain Rescue Association and the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians (SPRAT).

A 1990 graduate of Kent State University's photojournalism program, Wood also served as a Combat Photographer for the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

An accomplished writer, Wood has contributed essays and articles to many books, magazines, blogs, columns and industrial rescue newsletters. He's also participated in filmed re-creations of rescues for reality TV shows.

An avid ice climber, caver and semi-reformed redneck, Wood is married to a home birth midwife who not only tolerates but supports his addiction to rescue. His three teenage children keep him on his toes and give him extra incentive to come back home alive off the mountain. He lives at an elevation of 8,500 feet in the foothills west of Denver in a house that is much too small for a family of five humans, two cats and two turtles.

The bravery in this memoir isn't just in the tales of mountain rescues and recoveries at 12,000 feet; it's in the honesty of the memoirist, who portrays in vivid, often humorous anecdotes how his youthful recklessness, questionable decision-making, and search for a meaningful life led him to the mountains in the first place. His Rust Belt restlessness is achingly familiar to those of us who are still where Tom Wood started geographically. The heights he has reached with his storytelling enlightens and engages. --Jacqueline Marino, Associate Professor; School of Journalism and Mass Media, Kent State University

What a great book! Even though I have been involved in SAR for over seven years, Tom has brought to light a few things that will help me in my endeavor to guide a SAR team, and to reinforce that others out there feel just as I do is . . . well it is heartwarming. His stories about his personal life were entertaining and took me back to a simpler time. Definitely worth the read. I enjoyed [the book] so much that I looked forward to picking it up each and every time to see what the next page was going to reveal. --Suzi Hopper, President, Alamosa Volunteer Search & Rescue, Alamosa, CO