I was part of a team of people that helped rescue an injured climber from the top of the first pitch of Arrow at the Gunks. The climber's rescue was delayed by more than 1 hour due to the fact that fellow climbers called "911". Usually the "911" call will trigger a call to the preserve, but, because it was after hours, the call apparently did not take place.

The local fire department and EMTs arrived swiftly, but, could do nothing until a Mohonk ranger was dispatched to remove the victim from the ledge. The delay could have been avoidable by simply having the right phone numbers stored in your cell phone.

If you are involved in an accident at the Gunks and you need assistance call one of the following numbers.

During normal hours (9AM-5PM) 845-255-0919 (Mohonk Preserve. The operator has radio contact with the Mohonk Rangers)

Any other time: 845-255-1000 (Mohonk Mountain house, they are staffed 24x7 and have radio contact with the Mohonk Rangers)

After you have been assured that a Ranger has been dispatched, call "911" for the EMTs and Ambulance.

Thanks Gail!

Smart post. Thanks.

In addition to a possible delay due to communications error, in many climbing venues, climbing rangers and the technical rescue they might provide, could routinely be hours or even days away, so if you and your climbing buds don't get the job done.......

Some high angle rescue training can go a long way. I don't mean the normal self-rescue courses, though there is some overlap, but rather full on High Angle Rescue I and II. These courses are hard to come by but SOLO has them from time to time.

I took both I and II several years ago. When I was climbing often it seemed as though I was first on scene at a number of accidents where climbers decked on the GT ledge. I felt very fortunate to be able to facilitate rescues with a little WFR, a little incident command training, and some solid rescue rigging skills. I'm very rusty now but found the skills at the time, in both rock and ice rescues, to be immensely useful.

SOLO's schedule of courses is here but there appear to be no High Angle Rescue courses scheduled. If there was enough interest perhaps they'd put some together.

Edited to add, I put a call in to SOLO. Unfortunately, they have no plans at the moment for offering High Angle Rescue I and II in the near future due to insurance reasons.

AAI offers a course however.

Many years ago I had to improvise a rescue in the Gunks. The Stokes litter was kept at the Uberfall, but there was no official rescue crew of any sort. Two people ran down and brought back the litter, we loaded in the climber (lower-leg fracture), rigged the litter with separate belay ropes and separate belayers for the head and foot, used a third belayer for the person who descended with the litter, and got the guy down to the Carriage road in time to be met by the EMT's.

I showed up well into an ice climbing rescue a number of years ago. The patient had fallen to a ledge and was experiencing extreme pain which in the end turned out to be a dislocated hip. Organization of the rescue was well under way when my friends and I arrived so we simply supported others as asked, entirely on the ground. An ER nurse was up on the ledge leading the medical care so the patient was in good hands medically. Someone not well versed in vertical rescue was rigging the litter to lower the patient about 20' or so, to the steep ground below before a helicopter evacuation attempt.

They were using two ropes to lower him which is correct. Redundancy is required. Unfortunately they had one rope tied to the litter and the other tied in to the patient's harness. So as the patient reached the ground ( a steep fairly icy slope), rescuers below were grabbing the litter and attempting to guide it and pull it to where they needed to be for the helicopter pick. The unfortunate part of the rig was that as the people on the ground were pulling on the litter, the lowering line to the litter was slack, and the lowering line to the patients harness was tight and controlling the descent. In other words the people below and the people above were playing tug of war with the patient and one of the tugging points was his harness. It would be a grand understatement to say he was screaming. If the patient had turned out to have a fractured pelvis or femur, rather than a dislocated hip, instead of just being painful, this rigging mistake could have been fatal.

Vertical rescues can be very complicated. Back in the days that RG rescued that guy there was apprarently no organized rescue at the Gunks. Nowadays there is a great vertical rescue team at MP. If one doesn't have the training, I would suggest waiting for Rangers Frank, Bob, Hank, etc. before commencing any technical rescue.

There was no officially organized rescue team as late as 1995. In the early 80's once, after a particularly (and unnecessarily)complex and contentious rescue, the rangers and a group of us regulars informally decided that in any future rescue, the first order of business was to find and render unconscious a certain obnoxious AMC guide/instructor, as his presence guaranteed an escalation to a massive clusterfuck.

Kent, I can understand the desire to have the victim directly tied in though. What would have worked better? A slack backup of some sort?

In short, yes. The tension would normally be kept on the litter, not on the victim.

However, this is something best done in a class... And not explained through the net...

Although technical rigging is indeed important I found that one of the most important roles during a rescue (that is often overlooked) is played by a person not conducting any sort of technical work, their role is staying within eye sight (usually at the head) of the patient and constantly keeping them informed and abreast of the situation. This goes a long way towards providing a smoother and more comfortable experience for a person who can often be made more nervous or scared by having no clue as to what is going on especially when they are not in control of a single thing.

Having worked for a season w/ YOSAR when I interned as a climbing ranger in Yosemite, I will also add that high angle rescue and the technical rigging needed to carry it out are indeed very valuable skills however I feel that they are too gear and manpower intensive to be of any real use for the average climber. The amount of repetitive training and practice you need to be efficient at this type of thing are just not worth it for the average climber. YOSAR is the best technical rescue team on the planet (I'm biased), but they train a lot more than any normal person would have time to.

I'd say Joe Public's time and effort would be better served by dialing in the self rescue skills which are actually not all that different but easier to learn and actually use. I'd also recommend at least a WFR. I always had the most respect for people that called in to YOSAR that they were in distress but were attempting to either self extricate or who would come by the SAR cache after the fact just to give us a heads up about their accident/incident so that John Dill could take down the report for NPS records which are the usual source for the AAC Accidents in North American Mountaineering book every year.

Also assume there is no rescue coming. Modern cell phones, gps, distress beacons and all that stuff has opened the flood gates on who is now out there and who we as a community are responsible for.

A funny story comes to mind that I heard one of the SAR guys tell me. A few years back this guy had just started working in the park and a call comes in that someone broke their leg up on the Vernal Nevada trail so this guy rockets up the trail as a part of the blitz team excited for his first SAR. A few miles up the trail he gets to the point where the guy called from on his cell phone and doesn't see anyone that looks even remotely in pain or discomfort. So he starts asking around and finally this guys is like "oh yeah that's me I called". So my friend starts checking this guy out and there is obviosuly no break or anything like that, he basically just rolled his ankle. But as he is examining this guy with the ankle two climbers come stumbling down the trail from Half Dome looking fully worked and like a total mess. The one guy is limping really badly and relying heavily on a walking stick to support what is clearly an angulated fracture of his lower leg but moving steadily none the less. His partner looks like he is suffering a bit but not from an injury but from two fully loaded haul bags on his back. They stop and chat with my buddy and he asks if they need a carry out or a litter team or anything. They kindly decline and go on down the trail. That's the attitude I'm talking about. (Caveat: they were eastern European and might be exempt from all of these thoughts since by default we know they were born to suffer and operate on much more hard core plain than we can even imagine; see Crazy Russians thread).


-Cheers,
Arthur