The Wonder of It All by Yosemite Conservancy

Author:Yosemite Conservancy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781930238701
Publisher: Yosemite Conservancy
Published: 2016-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

A Good Old-Fashioned Mountain Rescue

Jane Marie Allen Farmer

In the 1980s, cell phones were nonexistent, which meant rescue could be a long way off. But I was a fresh seasonal “interp” with a new EMT certification and about to use my training.

High atop the Great Smoky Mountains at Peck’s Corner trail shelter, a hiker’s wilderness vacation had abruptly turned lethal. He had a spontaneous pneumothorax—a blown-out lung, and he could be dead by morning.

His friend, unfamiliar with the trails, headed the long way for help. Ten miles later, he hailed a visitor in a car, who drove to relay the critical information. It was sunset when rangers finally got the report.

Foggy weather and tall forest prohibited a helicopter; Peck’s Corner was accessible only by foot or horseback. A horseback rescue team was abysmal but the best alternative. A law-enforcement (LE) ranger quickly set off on foot to triage as the rest of us prepared for the rescue.

We trailered the horses and equipment three-and-a-half miles on a rugged dirt road. As we tacked up in the illumination of the pickup truck’s auxiliary lights, I noticed one saddle had no stirrups. A return to the barn would take another precious hour. It was my mistake, so I would ride the stirrupless saddle six miles up the mountain. The night was destined to be tough.

As we mounted, the triage LE ranger radioed that he had arrived at the trail shelter. He confirmed the injured hiker was in bad shape. With more than six hours since the rescue hiker had left his injured friend, the golden hour of rescue success was well behind us.

Horses like routine. We had surprised them with emergency night duty, so I worried they would be fractious and resentful. Saddle packs were loaded with bulky, heavy oxygen cylinders, and bulged with blankets and medical equipment. Our trail was rough and slinked narrowly up the steep and foggy mountain.

The lead EMT rode Charlie Brown, the most energetic horse. Charlie’s quirks included a strong fear of wild hogs. Unfortunately, wild European hogs were common on this trail. They are most active at night and can sometimes be quite aggressive. I hoped we would not see any that night.

Hauling up the mountain, I had plenty of time to review spontaneous pneumothorax in my head. I wondered how long a person could survive while their ruptured lung gradually filled their chest cavity with air. It seems ironic that the act of breathing could eventually crush the heart and kill a person.

The image of us throwing a corpse over a saddle and tying it to the horse cowboy-style kept floating in and out of my mind. I wondered if the other rangers knew how to secure a corpse to a horse. It was nothing I had learned in EMT training.

The horses delivered us to the shelter in a little under two hours. The man was still alive but in a lot of pain. Via radio, Medical Command ordered us to bring him down immediately—easy for them to say, sitting in their sterile, well-equipped hospital.

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