This story was submitted by MHCC Health/Sports/Wildness Skills Lecturer Josh Stratman.

Rescue skills Helens tested on Mount ST

This day started at 3 in the morning. As my climbing partner and old friend, I drove to Mount St Helens. We plan to climb the 8,365-foot snow mountain peak on New Year's Day. At the beginning of the trail, we organized and packed our equipment. Since this will be a non-technical climb, we chose to bring only basic climbing equipment. We tied ice axes and crampons to the backpack and chose to leave climbing ropes and safety belts because they are not needed in this type of climbing. We threw some food and water to prepare for the long day.

We expect that the climb will take us about 10 hours, but we don’t know that our day will be longer.

We hiked through the darkness along a snow-covered path illuminated by the headlights. We walked along the trail for 2 miles, then came out of the tree and saw the mountain illuminated by the moon. Our summit goal is 2.5 miles and 4,300 feet higher than ours. We started a long journey up the mountain and immediately greeted Chocolate Falls, a 40-foot-high frozen and snow-covered waterfall along Swift Creek. We easily bypassed the waterfall and continued to hike up the mountain.

The conditions are excellent; however, due to the low amount of snow that winter, there are more rocks protruding from the snow, and freezing points occasionally appear near the rocks. Near the seismic station at 6,200 feet above sea level, the climb started to become more and more icy, so we put on crampons and pulled out the ice axe. The top of the mountain was about 2,000 feet above us and we had a great time.

A few hours later, we stood on the top of the mountain and looked at the horseshoe-shaped crater caused by the volcanic eruption in 1980. From our vantage point, we can see Mount Rainier in the north and Mount Hood in the south; this is a great way to start the new year!

We began to trek back to the car. A quick look at the watch shows that we have completed the climb as planned and should have completed the climb in the remaining sufficient daylight. We noticed that there were several groups of teams below us on the mountain walking towards the top of the mountain. A large group of 10 people approached the top of the mountain, and a small group of two people were at the bottom of the mountain. We carefully climbed down the icy mountainside back to the seismic station, stopped to rest, and took out the crampons.

As we sat there, a small group of two people (a girl and a man) met with us. We greeted each other, chatted about climbing and the weather, and then we parted ways. They keep going up, we keep going down. But a few minutes later, we heard a call for help!

This is where our day changed.

The two people we just passed by are yelling at us for help. We turned around and went back to the mountain to see what happened. When we reached them, the girl was sitting on the ground with her legs in her arms, looking painful. The two hadn't put on crampons. During her ascent, she stepped on an icy place, sprained her left leg, and fell.

I have been teaching Wilderness First Aid (WFR) courses for six years. The WFR course is an intense 90-hour wilderness medicine course. These courses teach you how to deal with emergency medical problems in remote areas where help is difficult, and how to evacuate. This is exactly the training we need in this situation.

I quickly evaluated the climber to make sure she did not have any life-threatening injuries, and then moved to her lap. After examination, I determined that her left leg was unstable and could not be used. Worse, any exercise would cause extreme pain. (Later we learned that her shin had two fractures-one below the knee and the other above the ankle.) We need to clamp her leg and minimize exercise to reduce pain.

I counted the materials and resources we had on hand. We have a pair of trekking poles, ice axe, a small first aid kit, an emergency tarp and some tape. I decided to clamp her leg with a sandwich splint, which is a temporary splint, which is held in place with trekking poles and rope or webbing. This is a splint that I have taught many times, but now I am putting the splint into practice and testing it directly. We made a splint with a pair of trekking poles and some straps taken from the backpack.

Once the splint is in place, it relieves some of the pain; however, we are more than 3 miles from the starting point, and it is more difficult, we still need to take the injured climber above 3,500 feet of ice and snow. Even with a splint, any sudden movement of her leg will increase the pain, so we need to move slowly and smoothly.

We called 911 for search and rescue, but the news was not good. It will take at least six hours for the search and rescue team to reach the mountain. We are faced with a decision: either sit on the cold and desolate mountainside and wait for the rescue team, or try to evacuate the girl by ourselves.

We decided to evacuate and meet with the rescue team during the descent. Once again, we investigated our resources: we have used our pair of trekking poles, so our resources are dwindling. Around this time, a large group of 10 climbers had reached the summit and were on their way down the mountain. My climbing partner called them over and asked them to help evacuate, and they eagerly agreed. We now have more rescuers and more resources, and things look good.

We made a temporary trash/stretcher using emergency tarps and some trekking poles we borrowed from the larger group-again, this is a skill I have taught many times in the WFR course, but it is now being put into practice. The type of garbage we created allows 6 to 8 people to carry it at the same time, which makes it easier to move under the icy mountainside. When someone is tired or needs a rest, they will take turns out.

The garbage and splints are working as expected. The evacuation is progressing smoothly-slowly, but well. Due to icy, uneven terrain and the need to rest, we spent about five hours descending 2,500 feet and driving a mile.

We are now standing at the top of the Chocolate Falls, watching the sunset, and the last rays of light will also fall. On the way up, the waterfall is easy to climb up and down, but now is a daunting challenge that we must complete in the dark. At a short distance below the waterfall, the trail widens and becomes relatively flat. The rest of the evacuation is easy; we only need to take the injured climber from the waterfall to the trail.

Once again, I went back to my training and we used a method of trash handling that allowed rescuers to lift the stretcher/trash up or down the steep terrain. I explained the method to everyone. We carefully dropped the garbage and the injured girl from the waterfall. Then we lifted her down the last bit of rugged terrain to the wide and flat path.

It took us six hours to get to this point. We have less than 2 miles to take an easier path. The team is very tired because most of us have been awake and crawled for more than 16 hours, but are in good spirits. We rounded a corner of the trail and ran into search and rescue teams and mountain paramedics. They were so impressed with the task we just completed and transferred the girl to their wheeled stretcher and pushed her back to the waiting ambulance.

After a long and challenging day, I am very happy that I have received the training and knowledge to deal with this situation. I encourage everyone who ventures outdoors to take a wilderness medicine course. Hope you never have to use training, but if you do, you will appreciate these skills. Mount Hood Community College offers a wilderness first aid course (HE289) during the winter semester beginning on January 3rd.

Contact Josh Stratman 503-491-7201 or josh.stratman@mhcc.edu for more information

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