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Climber fell, injured foot
By Glenn
Henderson
Vacation -
what a lovely word. But after two weeks of being
away from home with my family plus my sister and
her family, we were ready to go home. Since we
were in Montana we decided to leave a day early
so as to have an extra day to rest up from the
long drive and to separate all our camping gear.
We drove down to Cedar City, Utah, spent the
night and left at 9:00 AM Friday morning. We
finally got home at 6:00 PM Friday evening. Ah
home sweet home. What a grand sight after all day
on the road with four adults plus four kids
stuffed in the back of my sister's suburban
truck.
It's 7:30 now,
we are all beginning to unwind and in the middle
of a taco dinner when the phone rang. You guessed it; John Dew calling
with a mission on Tahquitz Rock - a climber had
fallen and had a broken foot - could I go?? My
first reaction was no, I'm just too beat, but
instead I said yes, I'll be on the road in 10
minutes. I asked my brother-in-law if he wanted
to go along and watch? Larry realizing his escape
from two women and four very busy kids, said
"sure." (Big mistake, Larry.)
We got to the
trail head at Humber Park and met up with John
Dew, who ran base camp, Joe Erickson, Dave Ezell,
Rob Gardner, Bud White and Mel Krug. You must be
kidding? Is this all? Yup, John answered.
Everyone else was on "vacation" or out
of town. Well then lets get to it.
Our
information was that they were about 100 feet
from the top and that they were climbing on one
of the Lark routes. We could hear them yelling
for help once in a while which added a sense of
urgency to the mission. Since they were only a
100 feet from the top we decided to take plenty
of rope anyway "just in case." We took
four 300' PMI's, plus two 165 footers, breakdown
litter, litter rigging, free runners, extra
carabiners, large first aid kit, plus our own
personal gear - extra clothes, etc. We needed
more sherpas so Larry was asked to go along plus
two climbers who happened to be at Humber Park
and volunteered their services.
We finally got going and hiked
around the south side of the rock and up to the
top arriving at about midnight. Anchors were
quickly set up and I was lowered over the side on
a 300' PMI. We had some trouble locating them as
their shouts to us seemed to come back from every
direction, so we took a guess and aimed at one
point. We planned on pulling me back up once I
got on the face and pinpointed their location,
but as luck would have it I dropped almost in
their laps. The only problem was I was down 295
feet on a 300 foot rope and I still had over 100
feet to go. I was left hanging for hours (?);
well it seemed like a long time while more rope
was added. I was finally lowered down to Steve
Cauley and Brian Stipak. It was now about 2:30 AM
and they were quite happy to see someone to help
them. Steve was the injured one and upon
examination of his foot it did seem very broken
as his entire foot and part of his ankle was
swollen to twice normal size. He was following a
traverse behind Brian who had led the pitch.
Steve popped out of the traverse and went into a
pendulum situation. He immediately picked up speed and
was heading for a big wall so to slow down he
kicked a small ledge. Even with the broken foot
result he probably made the right decisions as
the other option was a body crash at full speed.
Anyway after checking him over for any other
injuries, I gave them water and extra clothing,
put an air splint on his foot and we all began
the long wait for daybreak. They were sitting on
about a 15 inch down-sloping ledge that had a
pine tree growing out of it so we all tied into
the tree for safety. It was a long wait.
Since we were
down 400 feet plus from the top and up 450 to 500
feet from the bottom the crew on top realized
that more rope would be needed. To send someone
down for more rope, edge rollers, etc. needed to
do a raise for the litter would have taken too
long plus whoever went would have been totally
spent and they needed everyone alert and able to
work.
Dave Ezell
radioed out to John to call two good friends of
his that knew the area. Maybe they could hike in
to help plus bring in the extra gear? They both
got middle of the night phone calls and upon
hearing that Dave needed help were at base camp
within minutes as they both live in Idyllwild.
Those guys really saved the day.
Dawn finally
arrived and with the rising sun our spirits rose
with it as the nights cold chill was quickly
dispelled. The topside crew had been at work
before daybreak and soon had the litter ready to
go over the side. Dave Ezell was to be the litter
attendant. An extra rope was sent down with Dave
for Brian and myself to Jumar up, so I sent Brian
up right away to help topside. Dave and I then
got Steve into the litter and the raise began. It
was slow hard work as we had to go over about six
large overhangs and through two bushes growing
out of the rocks. Steve was quite a guy as he
never complained once when the litter would catch
on an overhang or in the bushes and pop free
jarring his foot, but you could see the sweat
break out on his face.
All in all the raise went quite
smoothly, even having to pass knots in the
system. Bud, Mel, Joe, Rob and Larry did a great
job setting the system up. We finally got over
the top, the helicopter was there waiting so into
the bird, down to Idyllwild to a waiting
ambulance and off to the hospital went Steve.
To land on top
of Tahquitz rock takes a special kind of pilot
and our pilot today was Steve De Jesus of
Landells helicopter service. Steve had never
landed on Tahquitz before but he made it look
like ho-hum - no big deal, guys. It took seven
trips to fly everyone plus the gear out. During
the third trip a thunderstorm moved in, it
started raining and hailing on us with very gusty
wind conditions. Steve still wouldn't quit,
picked up the third load, landed in Idyllwild,
waited about 15 minutes until the storm blew over
and then flew the rest of us out. All our hats
are tipped to you, Steve, for a great job.
Well after a
long, cold, sleepless night we ate lunch at the
Alpine Pantry, sorted gear between the two rescue
vans and put to rest another successful RMRU
mission.
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