A wrong turn on the way down Mount Shasta left a climber with a severely injured leg, stranded more than 12,000 feet up over the weekend. For nearly three days, rescuers battled high winds, treacherous terrain and dangerous weather to get him off the mountain.
Three Marin County Search and Rescue volunteers say they were racing against time, climbing through rockfall and high winds to reach a man who was badly hurt. They say getting him off the mountain would prove to be just as dangerous.
“This was certainly a challenge, a challenging rescue, one of the most challenging I’ve been on,” rescuer Nick Slaneck said.
The 39-year-old Florida man had summited Mount Shasta Sunday, but on the way down, he followed the wrong GPS route.
Then, a snow bridge gave way.
He fell through, severely hurting his leg, about 12,000 feet up the mountain. He had running shoes, a sweatshirt and no easy way down, so he called 911.
U.S. Forest Service rangers reached him on Monday, but dangerous weather kept rescuers from getting him out.
By Tuesday, the push to bring him down was on.
“It took us a number of hours to get up there because of the difficulty of terrain,” rescuer Jayne Wolk said.
When rescuers finally reached him, the man was still talking, but the cold was taking its toll.
“He was coherent and talking to us, but he was certainly cold,” Slaneck said.
Then, a break in the weather. A CHP helicopter got the opening it needed, but reaching the climber was only half the battle.
Rescuers still had to get him into the aircraft on a mountain where one wrong move could make a bad situation even worse.
“There was a moment where we were just like, ‘Alright one, two, three,’ lifted his head up and just got it over, the folded up backseat of the helicopter, fit it and just took out hands off and stepped away and at that moment where we’re like ‘He’s in, we’re done’,” rescuer Nathan Fisher said.
After hours of climbing, fighting the elements, and working to get the man to safety, he was finally on board.
“That moment, when we all got him on the helicopter and we knew the mission was accomplished, at least on our end, there was a huge verbal sigh of relief that everybody gave and everybody was hugging each other and everybody took a knee and got really centered in that moment,” Slaneck said.
For the rescuers, that was the moment the tension finally broke.
The climber was airlifted to a hospital Tuesday night, bringing a nearly three-day rescue to an end.
And while the helicopter got him off the mountain, rescuers say it took a number of agencies working together to get him there.
“It was just really a group effort and every member of the team and everyone there had something to contribute,” Wolk said.
A rescue that demanded hours of grit, a narrow window of opportunity, and a team that kept going until the climber was safe.
