A mountain climber is lucky to be alive after a terrifying 500-foot fall in California’s Sierra Nevada — and an even more grueling night stranded on the side of a mountain.
According to California Highway Patrol’s Inland Division Air Operations, the climber was hiking with his brother near Kings Canyon National Park‘s Mount Baxter when disaster struck. While traversing a steep, snow-covered slope, the man lost his footing when a patch of snow gave way beneath him, sending him plunging roughly 500 feet down the mountainside.
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He somehow survived the fall, but not without serious injuries, including multiple broken bones.
“A climber had fallen, and came to rest on a steep ledge, sustaining major injuries,” CHP officials said.
The situation quickly went from bad to worse.
The injured climber’s brother scrambled down to reach him, but the pair soon realized they were completely stuck. At roughly 12,400 feet elevation, surrounded by steep terrain, loose rock and snow, there was no safe way up or down.
So they did the only thing they could: hunker down and wait.
Using a Garmin inReach satellite device, the brothers were able to alert rescuers, but help wasn’t coming quickly. The terrain made a ground rescue impossible, and darkness was setting in.
That meant an overnight stay on the mountain in freezing conditions.
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The brothers were forced to spend the night on a narrow ledge as temperatures dropped into the teens.
Finally, the next morning, a CHP helicopter was able to reach them. But even that was far from routine.
Rescuers had to perform a high-risk hoist operation in gusting winds and at extreme altitude. A single search-and-rescue team member was lowered onto the narrow ledge because there wasn’t room for more.
From there, it became a delicate, time-sensitive operation to get both men off the mountain safely, but they made it happen. And even seasoned rescuers admitted this one pushed the limits.
“It’s probably the most challenging hoist I’ve had to do,” flight officer paramedic Gustavo Aguirre said, per the San Francisco Chronicle. “We had to take extreme caution … Time is of the essence. We’re trying to get them out of there as soon as possible.”
Both men were eventually flown to safety and transported to a local hospital. Their identities have not been released, but the injured climber is reportedly on the mend.
And frankly, it’s a miracle he survived at all.
