Trekking and climbing are my passions. I’ve been a volunteer mountaineering instructor for over 20 years now. I stay well trained and our Red Lantern Journeys trekking agencies in Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet have well-trained guides. It’s important to me that the safety of our clients is a number 1 priority. Training is important and it came to good use for me and a group of my friends last weekend. Read on…
On a mountaineering outing in the Olympic Mountains in Washington State, our climbing group (9 of us!) was eight miles from the trailhead when we encountered a climber (Jeff) running towards us down a snow slope. He managed to explain that his partner (Jake) was injured badly in a 500-foot fall down a gully and needed help. After getting the details about where the injured climber would be, Bill Harrison and I immediately took off to find him with our full-packs and a climbing rope. Len Kannapell went with Jeff to find the ranger that was stationed in the nearby basin or to hike out for help if they couldn’t find her. Luckily for everyone involved, they found her in less then 10 minutes–helping some researchers trap and tag marmots. She (21-year-old Bridgett Jamison) had a radio and was immediately able to call for a helicoptor. Len, Jeff, and Bridgett immediately followed us to look for the injured climber and eventually caught up with us in the bottom of the gully that the injured climber was in. The others in our group followed us and took charge of making camp and were there ready to provide backup if needed.
After mucking around the bottom of the gully on steep scree slopes, moats with waterfalls, and steep snow, we finally spotted Jake about 300 feet above us between some steep snow in the gully and the cliffs. Len and I climbed up some rocks and had to rappel down 60 feet to reach him. Bill came a few minutes later with extra gear and a heavy duty space blanket. He went back down to be with Jeff and in a position on a small knoll about 300 below us to provide support as neccessary. Bridgett then joined Len and I after using her radio to help guide the helicoptors to us. We stayed with him, monitoring his vital signs and trying to keep him warm until the helicoptors could do their thing. While we were with him, he was concious and moving his arms and legs but couldn’t speak. We had found him about three and a half hours after encountering Jeff, but by that time it was near 8 pm.
The first helicoptor showed up just before we found him, but it took a few minutes for them to locate us. They had to leave once to refuel, returned an hour and 15 minutes later but were too heavy to maneuver safely in the narrow confines of the gully, so left again to lighten their load. They came back right at dusk, but despite a good try, their tether was not long enough to reach us. Fortunately, the Emergency Operations Center had called in a Navy helicoptor from the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station as a backup…it was a Blackhawk. So it came in to try and reach us, found out they too were too heavy to maneuver, left to lighten their load, and returned 15 minutes later.
Each time a helicoptors hovered over us, it blasted us with cold winds and blowing dust and rocks from it’s downdraft. But each time it left, our hearts dropped–not knowing for sure if it would come back that evening, forcing us to spend a cold night in the gully with Jake.
Finally, the Blackhawk was able to lower a Search and Rescue guy with a litter down to us, bouncing off the cliff walls before he was able to scamper over to us. We got Jake on the litter, strapped him in and they were able to lift him off. By that time it was after 11 pm and quite dark. It took us another hour and a half to climb up out of the gully and hike over to the camp where the rest of our group was waiting for us with food and water.
Our group provided sleeping bags and tent room for Jeff and Bridgett. The next day after retrieving all of the gear from the rescue site, we all hiked out the 9 or 10 miles to our cars where we were finally able to nurse our sore legs and feet and deliver Jeff to his very worried parents.
Jake had fallen several hundred feet down that steep gully and his last impact knocked off his helmet. He was taken to Harborview Hospital with a serious brain injury, but amazingly no broken bones, except some cracked vertebrae. He was in a medically/drug induced coma for the first few days and on a respirator. They had to drill holes in his skull to help reduce the swelling. But the last report is that he is responding and they will be removing his medication and respirator.
We were all amazed that the rescue could be done by helicoptor from the steep narrow gully that we were in, and then at night to boot! We were told later that the first Coast Guard helicoptor had a pilot who was inexperienced and was uncertain about the close quarters and that was why they had to leave. The Navy Helicoptor pilot was really skilled, even using night vision goggles that have poor depth perception. At one point, his rotors were 5 feet from the cliffs as he was lowering the rescuer and litter to us.
Jeff is still only 17 years old, but he really is the hero in all of this. He kept his cool–helping his friend by putting him on a pad and covering him with sleeping bags to keep him warm and leaving some food and water within reach. He made the right decision to go out alone and get help right away. Somehow he managed to climb alone the rest of the way down that dangerous gully—he even fell once and slid 100 feet and banged up his knee a bit. But he continued and after encountering our group returned with us to the accident scene. As a result of his efforts, his friend was evacuated the same day from that very remote location. His Hurculean efforts may have very well saved Jake’s life.
KIRO TV News interviewed me, the helicoptor crew, Jeff, and Jake’s parents, and they have an article and video on their web site:
http://www.kirotv.com/news/16825702/detail.html
Here are some of my photos from that trip and the rescue.
http://www.redlanternjourneys.com/galleries/index.php?cat=8
The climbing club I’m affiliated with is the Boeing Employees’ Alpine Society (Boealps), which has yearly Basic and Intermediate mountaineering classes open to the general public. These classes are the best of their kind in the Pacific Northwest.
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