*** Helicopter Rescue from Grand Canyon ***

Wed May 17 11:19:20 1995
Message : #26196951    From: Steven Ruggiero [TEMP]
Address : srugger@Sun.COM
Subject : Re: Helicopter out of Grand Canyon
Org.  : Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA

Michelle Clark (mpeterso@unlinfo.unl.edu) wrote:
: Hello there. I recently completed a 5 day backpacking trip to the
: Grand Canyon. The trip was sponsored by the office of Outdoor
: Adventures at my university. We had an interesting experience I
: thought people might be interested to hear about.

: One member of our trip was a man who clearly had no business going on
: a physically intense trip like this (middle-aged, 50-60 lbs
: overweight, high blood pressure, totally out of shape). He struggled
: from the very beginning and became severely dehydrated and experienced
: heat exhaustion. On the third day it became clear that he could not
: safetly continue the trip. One of our trip leaders hiked out of the
: Canyon for help, and surprisingly quickly we heard the "whack, whack,
: whack" of a helicopter. The two NPS rangers that came were extreemely
: professional and helpful. After being examined at the Grand Canyon
: clinic, the trip member was taken to Phoenix to the hospital.

: The helicopter trip out of the Grand Canyon cost $950 (I guess thats
: covered by insurance). I was really really impressed with the
: response of the NPS, though I'm really sorry that they had to respond
: to what was so clearly an avoidable situation.

: The moral of this story is, if you are not physically prepared for
: backpacking, don't risk it. AND, if you are organizing a trip,
: require some type of phyiscal fitness test for your participants!


: --

: Michelle Clark
: mpeterso@unlinfo.unl.edu

I have to agree. My wife broke her ankle in the GC. I hiked out and the NP
service had a chopper in the air inside of 10 min. Since I was at the far
east end of the park they wouldn't wait for me to get there - I wanted to
take the ride and show them where she was. They were professional, quick, and
thank god for them. It cost us $1500 and our insurance covered it under our ambulance clause.

-- steve
(Steven Ruggiero [TEMP])

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