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Carryout of Injured Climber On Mt. AdamsYakima, WA Mission Report by Ken Davies At 8:55 p.m.on Saturday, June 23, 2007, Gus Bush received a call-out for rescuers to assist in the rescue of an injured climber at the Lunch Counter on Mt. Adams. Ken Davies agreed to be OL, and Mark Cooksley, Berndt Bittlingmeier, Chad Johnson, Lindsey Warren and Dwayne Purham made up the team. The team met at the cache at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, and drove to the base, at the Cold Creek Campground, at 5600 feet. They arrived at the campground approximately 7:15. At 8:15 the team was on the trail with Mark as team leader and Berndt in charge of medical. Ken assumed Incident Command at the base, since TMRU was the first team on scene. There were no other personnel there when they arrived. The designated Incident Commander, and the seven person Central Mountain Rescue team, did not arrive until approximately 11:00 a.m. (CMR was training on Mt. Rainier at the time of the call-out, and had trouble with closed roads before arriving on scene.) Klickitat Search and Rescue also arrived with seven people around 11:00. The injured climber, a thirty-eight year old male, was located at Lunch Counter and had sustained a possible fracture to his left tib/fib. He had been climbing solo at 11,000 feet and descending the South Spur Route the day before, when he tried to glissade with his crampons still on. Two other climbers, from a separate party, assisted him from 11,000 feet to Lunch Counter, at approximately 9,000 feet. He stayed in a tent with the two climbers. Keith Wagenwalker, from Portland Mountain Rescue, who was on the mountain for another climb with a Mazama group, was able to leave that climb and stay with the patient throughout the night, and assisted with the rescue the following day. The TMRU team identified several technical lowers while en route to the subject. Below the Lunch Counter, Mark and Dwayne split off to build anchors, while the other members continued to the injured climber. Berndt, Chad and Lindsey performed medical on the injured climber, packaged him, and had the litter moving down hill at around 2:00 p.m. They reported that the climber was in good spirits, warm and comfortable. They proceeded down to the other Tacoma team, and began the first of several technical lowers. Seven Klickitat Search and Rescue members left Cold Creek around noon. They had with them additional rigging equipment and a wheel for the litter, which was going to be staged around 6,700 feet, at the bottom of the last lower. Two more Klickitat SAR members followed later to help with the carry-out. Seven members from Central Mountain Rescue left base around 1:15 p.m. to set up anchors for the last expected technical lower. At 5:50, Tacoma completed their last technical lower and handed off the litter to Central. At 6,700 feet the wheel was installed, around 6:30 p.m. At approximately 7:15 p.m. the litter arrived at base and the patient was unpackaged. The two "good Samaritan" climbers transported the injured climber to Seattle where he could receive further medical treatment. After a debrief, all personnel were released. The TMRU members performed extremely well on a strenuous mission, with inclement weather, and going light on equipment. This mission provided a good opportunity to work with team members from Central Mountain Rescue and Klickitat Search and Rescue. Thanks guys! Submitted by Ken Davies, Operations Leader |
