A hiker who plunged 500 feet down a mountain and was forced to spend the night in freezing conditions is on the mend after a dramatic rescue via helicopter.
The mountain climber was scaling Mount Baxter along the snowy Eastern Sierra crest in California with his brother when he lost his footing and fell down the steep and rugged slope earlier this month.
He landed on a granite ledge and broke several of his bones. His brother rushed down the mountainside, but the pair quickly realized they would not be able to get off the mountain due to the severity of his injuries — leaving them stranded on the mountainside at 12,400 feet.
Fortunately, the brothers – who have not been publicly identified – had brought along their Garmin InReach, which is a satellite texting device that can be used to call for help.
They notified local emergency rescue in the late afternoon of April 15, but the officials were not able to reach the men on foot for a few reasons: the height of their location, the risk of avalanches and the fact that it was getting dark outside all made a ground team response unlikely.
“The location of the victim made ground rescue impossible,” California Highway Patrol said in a recap of the incident.
Because the brothers were unable to go up or down in the steep terrain, they had to spend the night in a makeshift camp on the exposed ledge as overnight temperatures dropped into the teens.
The next morning, a CHP helicopter flew out to the ledge to attempt a hoist rescue, which uses a long steel cable with a hook to get wounded people out of rough terrain.
Inyo County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue team, a volunteer group, joined the two-person CHP crew to locate the brothers, who were waving bright-colored fabrics to help signal where they were.
In a 30-minute process, the rescuers dropped down one team member to triage the injured man, bring him back up and fly him to safety. They then returned to get the uninjured brother and the team member off the mountain.
“Both victims were packaged and safely hoisted from the scene,” CHP said. “They were flown to Lone Pine Airport and transported via ambulance to a local hospital for treatment.”
The helicopter pilot, Wesley Cline, told the San Francisco Chronicle about the rescue: “That’s the first time we’ve ever been to that mountain. The strong winds and high altitude necessitating we had to keep the helicopter pointed into the wind — we had to do things a little differently than we normally would. It was quite a challenge.”
