Third Flatiron Rescue

[speth]

Just saw this on the Daily Camera.

Link: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_16961395" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seems like everyone is okay... Warm weather is Boulder yesterday?

[Winter8000m]

I wonder how he injured his back on the rappels. There is only two to three of them. And there all vertical to free hanging. Seems like the news is missing something.

None the less, glad there okay!

[rickinco123]

I am going to guess the guy had a preexisting back problem, maybe a herniated disk, one wrong move and..... ouch... If you have ever known someone with severe back problems you could totally see how this could happen.

[winglady]

The climber from the story has now posted detailed comments on that article describing things in detail. He acknowledges and analyzes mistakes that he made that led to his back injury, so it's a useful story to read.

My husband and I have each been helped by an SAR team during 2 separate incidents (his was far more serious than mine) in 2009 and 1997 respectively. SAR volunteers are wonderful, and we can't thank them enough for the help they gave each of us and for the help they provide to others.

[timstich]

This is Kevin's report from his incident:

"I am Kevin, the 53 yr old climber who was rescued. I had no idea so many comments would be posted. I should have posted the more detailed story early on to clear up some confusion. Well, if anybody checks back here they will be a bit better informed.

First of all, my son and I wish to offer a tremendous amount of thanks to every rescuer involved. They all worked extremely hard and were well-trained and worked together as a team like nothing I've ever seen before. The medical team was prepared to deal with virtually any medical situation which was very impressive. If I was wealthy, I'd gladly offer hundreds or even thousands of thank you dollars to each and every responder.

We roped up and started climbing at about 10:45 and the 8:30 time reported is not accurate. I had climbed the Third 4 times before, the last time in 1998. My 16 yr old son had limited climbing experience but was willing to try the Third since the weather forecast was high 40s, zero chance of precipitation and mild winds. We were thinking about swapping leads, but my son decided after the first pitch that he'd rather second the whole thing. We knew we would be slow and should have started much earlier. Anyway we made slow and steady progress and reached the top of our climb (the area at the top of the Gash near Kiddie Car Ledge) by about 4:45. It was getting dark and we had been dealing with very strong cold winds that picked up in the late afternoon. The 6 hours of climbing was very slow, and my goal was more like about 4 hours so we were about 2 hours behind schedule.

We decided to skip the last summit pitch (to the right of the top of the Gash) and try to maneuver our way through the boulders up to the bottom of the first standard rappel and the location of the standard second rappel. We encountered one tricky obstacle which was a giant smooth 12 foot boulder. We got my son up by using my back and shoulders for his footholds. He then belayed me up which would have been easy had we not been a bit exhausted and dealing with intense cold wind.

Anyway we were at the belay station and with headlamps in the dark. The prospect of rappelling in the dark was a bit frightening (especially for my son) but the cold wind may have been worse than the dark. On the 50 ft rappel to Fridays Folly Ledge, I was going too fast and was a bit out of control, but made it OK. My son followed with perfect rappel form. We then spent quite some time deciding between the 75 ft rappel around the corner or the 140 ft rappel from where we were. We were a bit nervous, but I tried to show confidence to my son that we would get down safely. We decided on the long rappel.

For the second rappel, I switched from a standard ATC thing to a Guide ATC which has a high friction mode. During my rappel, I was concentrating on the friction and trying to descend at a slow safe speed. Suddenly in a fraction of a second my feet went out of control and I flipped upside down with feet facing up and head down. This action was probably the first instance of injury to my back. I tried to maneuver to a normal position and was unable to get things right. I thought I was really in a bad situation, but nobody in the world could help me right then, Ultimately I kept my brake hand on the ropes and continued the rappel another 100 feet bouncing around upside down/sideways and landing on the ground flat on my back. I could feel the pain in my lower back (2 previous back surgeries in the late 90s). I was happy to be alive, and was conscious, but had a minor problem there on the ground. I was not paralyzed, but was sort of "frozen" and couldn't move for about 10 minutes. I kept calling up to my son to wait a few minutes. He was still scared at the ledge up there and could hardly wait to get down and get the thing over with. Eventually I forced myself to roll over and get up and undo the rope so my son could rappel. I protected him by holding the ropes and he executed a perfect 140 ft rappel. The time was about 8:30 or so.

My lower back hurt a lot, but I was able to get up and walk around a little on flat terrain. To get to hiking territory we had to go up a 30 foot low angle wall. Normally this wouldn't be a huge problem, but with my back injury I tried twice from 2 different sides and only made it halfway. I could feel my heart race to hyperspeed and knew something wasn't quite right. We rested for a while and went in a cave to get out of the cold wind. We called my wife in Lafayette and my 21 yr old son in Montana (professional mountain guide) to seek advice.

We wanted to self-rescue and hike out but decided to call 9-1-1 a little after 10. We thought a small search and rescue team could reach us and help us get to the trail to hike down. With the injuries I had, they thought it was best to carry me down even though this would mean heroic effort by the numerous search & rescue people.

Here's some things we should have done differently:
Should have done a much shorter climb like Third Flatironette, or Freeway on Second Flatiron or Front Porch approached from NCAR trail or something like that.
Should have started earlier since we knew we were slow - should have been on rock by about 9 am.
Should have pushed harder to not take so long.
Should have done some practice rappelling in advance.
Should have sought professional advice about using a safety prusik setup on the rappel.

Finally, we are extremely thankful to the best search and rescue people in the universe.
They got quite a workout Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

If any of the posters come back to read the full story, you will obviously understand the event better.
Feel free to throw out all kinds of criticisms since we know we made some mistakes."


So no doubt given this information RMR treated this like a spinal injury and the long time it took to get him out of there was due to transporting Kevin via rescue litter down the rather loose descent trail.

[speth]

So he was bracing his feet on the wall during the rap and his feet slipped and turned him upside down? Ugh...

I'm always really leery/scared when I hear about back injuries. Sounds like this is more of him messing up a previous injury/problem with his back; from his description, he went upside down and pulled something or smacked the wall with his back and the tweaked back prevented him from righting himself.

Sounds like he has a good attitude about the thing and I think his self-analysis is pretty sound.

[mtn114]

Are you on the taller side? I'm 6'4 and originally misfit a harness and could have ended up doing the same thing. The length of webbing from the belay loop to my leg loop was too short.