*** Salt Lake County Search and Rescue: Recent Calls *** Subject: Recent Salt Lake calls Date: 24 Sep 1996 18:13:50 -0700 From: "Tom Moyer" To: sar-l-d@islandnet.com Recent Salt Lake calls 9/24/96 Hi - please let me know (either to the list or to me - tmoyer@sarcos.com) if this type of report is interesting to you. If so I will continue to post reports to this list. Personally I find it very interesting to hear what other groups are doing, especially if it involves interesting climbing errors to avoid or interesting rescue techniques to learn from. - Tom Moyer Salt Lake County Search and Rescue 9/21 ~19:30 Stuck Hikers, Pete's Rock/Mt. Olympus Area This was our second cellphone rescue in two weeks. The stuck hikers called it in themselves. The initial description was "somewhere near Pete's rock" stuck in a box canyon. A 50 y.o. and three girls (<12 y.o.) had started from the parking lot at Pete's rock, taken a wrong turn on the Mt. O. trail and become lost and stuck. They were in voice contact with another group of hikers, who told them to stay put while they hiked out to show us the location. We sent one group in on the trail, based on the description by the hikers and another up a more direct line on the South side of Tolcats Canyon. Meanwhile the Sheriff's helicopter flew a couple of passes and picked them up on the fleur (sp?), an infrared spotting device. This told us that the group heading up the trail had no chance of reaching the victims any time soon, so they turned around. The Tolcats Canyon group continued in - gave food, water and clothing, and hiked out slowly with the victims (who weren't really all that stuck). 9/20 15:10 Overdue Hiker, Parley's Canyon Ordinarily I'd give a call like this a little time before heading out, but work was kinda slow, so I seized the opportunity to skedaddle for the day. Unfortunately, this turned out to be more than the average "overdue hiker" call. This one, a 21 y.o. recently returned from his Mormon mission, had been missing since Wednesday. He'd been on a solo day hike. It was called in Thursday night, after his roommate hadn't seen him for a day, and paged to us on Friday, when his car was located at a construction turnout on I-80 (not a common trailhead). We searched for about three hours with dogs, people, and a helicopter up Pharoah's Glen and all the surrounding drainages towards Grandeur Peak. The helicopter spotted his body at the base of the cliff bands on the East side of Pharoah's Glen and directed us in. He had an open femur and massive head injuries - he probably did not survive his initial impact. I climbed up to the area he must have fallen from (~100 ft), but could not find anything notable there. Terry did find evidence of an earlier impact partway up the cliff band. The body was evac'd by helicopter short haul. The necessity of the helicopter is debatable here. It did save us a particularly nasty multi-hour scree evac, but the main reason was the opportunity for the S.O. pilot to gain experience before considering using it for live victims. This was our first short haul evac. 9/15 Fallen Hiker - Big Water Trail I wasn't on this one, so I don't have too many details, but he was apparently climbing a tree near the trail (does that make him a fallen climber?). Trail carry/scree evac to the road. 9/8 Fallen Climber - West Slabs, Mt Olympus A 50 y.o. male with friend and daughter climbed the west slabs of Mt. Olympus on Saturday (5.4 with a long approach and a longer descent). They camped on the ridge Saturday night and rapped the route on Sunday. On the second to last rappel they found an old sling on a tree. They inspected it and decided that it was Ok to use. The victim set up the rappel and gave the anchor a few bounces to test it (might be a good idea to tie in for this operation in the future). The sling failed after two or three bounces and he took a tumbling 50 foot fall, receiving broken ankle, broken ribs, and head injury. Friend called us from a cell phone After a loooong bushwacky approach, we got there, did f/a, and lowered him two pitches to a saddle in the ridge. There, faced with an 8 hour evac, and just having received a page for a second call (see next) - also a long evac fallen climber - we decided to fly out our victim. We hover loaded him from the saddle with a whole 10 feet of clearance on either side of the rotors. (ack) The victim and his friends all claim that the knot failed on the sling. They claimed to know what a water knot is and "thought" that's what it was. "Did it look like this?" They also claim the tails were each about 1 1/2 inches long. I climbed back up after the heli-load to look for the sling but unfortunately couldn't find it, so I can't verify the knot failure. 9/8 Fallen Rope Soloist - Aqueduct Area, Big Cottonwood Canyon I wasn't on this call (because I was occupied on the earlier one), but here are as many details as I know. The victim was rope soloing. He apparently reached the top of his climb, set up his anchor, and fell from there. He was seen falling by bystanders across the canyon. When rescuers arrived, the rope was still on the climb and both anchors (top and bottom) were in place. I suspect that he unclipped at the top and fell while setting up his rappel. He was unconscious when found and in respiratory arrest soon afterwards. He recovered consciousness during the evac and joked with rescuers. When asked if he felt short of breath, he said "no problem", reached up and started bagging himself with a grin. Rescuers almost collapsed laughing. He is currently recovering at the hospital, but has no memory of the climb or the fall. --------------------