Injured climber rescued from 14,159-foot El Diente Peak
- Details
- Created on Monday, 18 July 2011 14:49
- Written by Nathan
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TELLURIDE – A helicopter-borne search team rescued an injured Arizona climber from a Colorado mountain peak in poor weather on Sunday after he spent a night on the mountainside with a badly injured leg.
Joe Yearm, 28, of Mesa, Ariz., was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction with a lower leg fracture, said San Miguel County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Westcott. A supervisor at the hospital said she could not release any information.
Yearm was descending 14,159-foot El Diente Peak alone and in the dark late Saturday when he fell 20 feet onto a snowfield, Westcott said.
Photos of El Diente Peak and Mount Wilson from member Josh Friesema
In the morning Yearm crawled to a slope where two other climbers found him.
One of the climbers, Kenneth Nolan of Buena Vista, activated a personal locator beacon because the site had no cellphone service, Westcott said. The beacon sent a signal with a GPS locator to the International Emergency Response Coordination Center, and the center notified San Miguel County.
Westcott said he didn’t know the other climber’s name.
Deputies from San Miguel and Dolores counties organized the search. Heli-Dunn of Medford, Ore., which had a helicopter working on a construction contract in the area, agreed to fly the rescue team to the scene.
Rescuers spotted the climbers on a steep slope at 12,200-feet, and the pilot made a tricky “toe-in landing” with a helicopter skid touching the ground and the rotor still turning to keep the craft level, Westcott said.
Westcott said storm clouds were descending and some mountaintops were obscured, nearly scrubbing the rescue.
San Miguel Sheriff’s Cmdr. Eric Berg, a paramedic, got off the helicopter and fashioned a splint on Yearm’s leg with hiking poles and duct tape.
Berg and the two uninjured climbers then dug a short ledge for a safer landing site, and Yearm was taken aboard and flown to the Telluride airport. He was then transferred to an ambulance and taken to Grand Junction.
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