Hiking accident

Before the Sunday hike this week, I will write about last Sunday’s because although this week’s is supposed to be harder, it will not be more eventful.  Last week there were only 16 of us going to Pinnacles Lake.  I was eager because it’s a hike I had wanted to go on last year but couldn’t.  I volunteered to be sweep because there were so few of us.  There’s a joke in the group, based on a truth as are so many jests, about my being numerically challenged.  So I was carrying the two-way radio when Dagmar fell.  She was heading up a wooded switchback with roots and rocks and fell backwards.  I was first aware of it when a vague dark shape appeared to bounce ahead of me.  I thought at first it was a rock and momentarily feared it was the beginning of a slide.  But the thud was soft and Curtis, the young man ahead of me, quickly moved forward and down into the brush.  He placed himself below Dagmar who was lying on her back, head downwards, body twisted and moaning in pain.  She was bleeding from the top of her head, there was blood under one eye and her face was the color of skim milk.  I did the only thing I know how to do, talk.  She was so afraid of falling farther.  I assured her that Curtis was firmly behind her and that another man was now on the other side of her.  Curtis, who has some St. John’s Ambulance training, slowly tried to assess if there was anything wrong with her back.  Gradually, more people gathered.  You always hear about how a community unites and its members behave admirably in an emergency.  This was the first time that I experienced it.  There were two retired doctors, a nurse and 2 ski patrols in our group and each went into action.  Dagmar was in shock, sweating, shivering and with a very weak pulse, but within 15 minutes it had been determined that she could be moved to a more comfortable position and that she would probably not be able to walk out.  Curtis and I began hiking out to call Vernon Search and Rescue.  It took us about an hour to get back to the cars.  I radioed up one last time to make sure that it was absolutely necessary to make the call and was assured that although she was feeling better after a Tylenol 3, she would never be able to walk out.  So we jumped into Curtis’ truck and began the slow 22km. drive down the decommissioned logging road to the nearest phone at the Gold Panner Restaurant; there’s no cell phone service in the area and the club does not have a satellite phone.  As I had suspected, that call started a chain of events that was irreversible.  First to arrive was a young RCMP officer in an official white truck.  It was a beautiful day, and he leaned his bare and heavily tattooed arm out the window to talk with us.  He never turned that vehicle off for the entire 51/2 hours of what followed.  Nor did he leave it much.  He was just there to supervise, which involved very little.  He had a phone he used to communicate with headquarters and a computer he could swing out of the dash to consult maps, none of which showed the South Fork Road, which is where the trailhead is.  He was followed by the ambulance, which roared past us, lights blazing, and then back, past us again, before being reined in and brought to us by dispatch.  We led them up the South Fork to the parking lot, where the driver of the ambulance jumped out of his vehicle, surveyed the damage sustained by it as he had bounced it over the fairly deep depressions left when the logging company removed the culverts as they left the area, and proceeded to ready the gear for the assent.  He put the tank of laughing gas in Curtis’ backpack, he took a big hard plastic case of equipment himself, and his partner carried another.  They left me in the parking lot awaiting Vernon Search and Rescue.  I radioed up to the gang that they were coming although I doubted they would get there let alone be of much help if they did.  Soon the Search and Rescue people began arriving in ATVs and two impressively equipped vans.  Sure enough Curtis and the ambulance guys came back about 20 minutes after leaving.  The blow-hard driver was so furious he threw the equipment into the ambulance, yelled at his buddy to get in and sped away to rip a few more strips off his poor abused ambulance. They had been called off by their dispatch because that’s the procedure once Search and Rescue takes on the task.  He’d missed another chance to be the hero that he always seems to be in his own mind.  Curtis said that he would never have made it to the site because he was breathing hard by the time they turned around and they were only beginning the real trail by then.  Some Search and Rescue people headed up in ATVs, one pulling a big sled, but it became quickly clear that Dagmar would have to be taken out by helicopter.  I was radioing all this information to the people up there with her.  The Vernon copter couldn’t find a place to land near her, so they called in the Penticton one because it could bring in a swinging basket with a trained rescuer to help her.  The last I saw of her, she was swinging overhead on her way to the hospital.  Fortunately none of her injuries was serious.  She’s black and blue all over and has a broken tailbone. The man leading the hike is an ex army officer.  This week, I, and all the others involved in the affair, have been receiving e-mails of his reports.  I have been mentioned favorably in dispatches for my part in the operation.

I’m looking forward to nothing more than a vigorous walk in a scenic spot tomorrow.

Dagmar dangling in the basket from the helicopter