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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2013 - 01:23pm PT
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OK. On the murder suicide off of Glacier Point, where the guy stabbed his GF and tossed her off, followed by himself, is known as the "Tissue Trough" rescue.
Werner and Bill Russell were hiking along the base after a report of a falling object. Billy tells the story great.
Werner stops and goes, "I can smell it..."
Billy gets on the radio, which everyone in the valley was listening to (other than tourists) and says, "We have a femur and thigh attached to an 8 inch flaccid penis."
They call back and say, "Roger, its a male."
They slid down a trough and were ground to bits, the parts that didn't explode and remain at the ledge below the vertical part. There was water running down it, and the guy who had to rap down the apron (or might have been lowered) picking up little pieces had a bad scene. The rope was soaked with water and gore. As the rope passed through the device, all of this sick stuff squeezes out of the rope an soaks his crotch. Hence the "Tissue Trough" name.
Supposedly there were some big pieces where they exploded on the high ledge. Fish would stab them with a stick and hold them up and holler out, "Spleen!". "Ribcage!" I think that is where he got in trouble for taking pictures. That one was supposedly a mess.
"Vernal Falls always takes the brain." Comes from the regular recoveries at the base, where a body could churn for weeks. Supposedly the head would come out like a limp empty sack. Vernal Falls always takes your brain.
This is very uncool, so I will delete it damn quick.
There are tons of stories, but I have them all on second hand. I hung in the site to hide from the rangers and jump. I called 911 that year that this girl gave Bill Russell a "bad olive." That was a pretty wild one. The rangers wouldn't set foot in the site. They would probably find weed on everyone and then they would be out of 10 buck an hour highly competent rescue slaves.
The helicopter plucks are the most impressive. The pro's did that part. I guarantee that they were living their finest life moments at the time. They were rabid to go, and so was anyone else who got nabbed to go out.
Werner has seen hundreds of these things now. I guess he is used to it, like a pathologist who does autopsies.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2013 - 01:29pm PT
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If you have ever seen that Mel Gibson movie or read the book, "We Were Soldiers Once and Young."
If you have, and from what I've read, the medevac guys had to fly into full on fire fights. A lot of them got shot down, and certainly many gave their lives to save the wounded.
That movie is pretty damn scary to watch. I think it was the first major use of helicopters in the Vietnam War.
Others can tell these stories better than me. I'm sure that there are people lurking who were in those Vietnam firefights.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2013 - 01:36pm PT
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Nor in Somalia and Eretria etc... trust me.
Yeah, I can't imagine doing an El Cap rescue with people firing their AK's and RPG's at you.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 30, 2013 - 02:16pm PT
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On The Wire
I was eighteen years old with almost no experience and had only been in Yosemite Valley for a week. By the oddest coincidence, my cousin, Roger Rudolph, was head backcountry ranger and allied with the budding Search and Rescue Team. Late one afternoon Roger rushed into camp and over to my site. There’d been a climbing accident on the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral, two pitches below the summit; a leader fall and a head injury. A helicopter was heading in to ferry the Valley czars Jim Bridwell and Mark Klemons to the top of Middle to conduct a rescue. In case that plan did not work, the Park Service needed another team to trudge to the top of Middle, schlepping an enormous green backpack at Roger’s feet. If the Bridwell/ Klemons team hadn’t set down by the time we gained the top, I’d rap to the victim and . . . well, we’d flesh out the plan from there.
“You handle that?” Roger asked. Roger was about 15 years older than me and a mentor who had skied 100 miles across Tioga Pass in winter, carted injured hikers out of the backcountry on his back, and ran a government department with 40 men. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing but if Roger thought I was worthy I’d go with it.
“I’m in,” I said.
“Meet me back here in five,” Roger said. I dashed for Camp 4’s rescue site, urgent to find someone who could handle the job. Luckily I found Englishman Ben Campbell-Kelly lounging around camp, recovering from an early ascent of the North American Wall with his countryman Bryan Wyvill. I explained the situation, and that I needed him along, and Ben said, “Let’s go, man.”
Roger, Ben and I manhandled the pack into Roger’s squad car and a few minutes later he dropped us at the roadside below Middle Cathedral.
“You’ll have to bust ass, boys,” said Roger. “You got about three hours of daylight. You know where you’re going?”
“Exactly,” I said. I’d climbed the East Buttress but it took all day and we hacked down the descent gulley at night. I didn’t remember a thing about it.
I shouldered the pack and staggered up through the pines toward the gully left of Middle. I couldn’t have had a better man alongside me than Ben Campbell-Kelly, a proven veteran of these walls, solid as Solomon.
Shortly we entered a steep labyrinth of dead-end trails, teetering minarets and low-angled choss corridors. We hadn’t a clue about a proper path and never found one. For two hours we flailed and cursed our way up that gully, sometimes hand-carrying the pack and shoving it through a pinch when we couldn’t wiggle through with it on our backs. We could more easily have dragged a moped up that gulley than that pack. About halfway up we heard a copter circling above, and Ben and I wondered if we weren’t killing ourselves for nothing.
When we finally busted out onto the shoulder beneath Middle’s shapeless summit, Ben claimed he’d burned more gas and lost more hide grappling up that damned gully than he had climbing El Capitan. I shouldered the pig, and with Ben shoving from behind, we trudged up grainy slabs toward the top. Only the crown of El Capitan shimmered in light. We had maybe an hour before night fell like a curtain.
A few minutes later we met a team who’d just topped out on the East Buttress. In their late 20s, both wore colorful, long-sleeved rugby shirts and thin, white navy pants, the formal costume of the ’70s Yosemite climber. I wondered about these guys’ lives, and their jobs that allowed them to have just fixed two brand-new ropes above the injured climber, before dashing back to San Fran for work and family. They’d fetch their ropes later, or never.
The two men said that gusting winds kept the copter from landing on the summit, scrubbing the Bridwell/Klemons rescue effort. I confirmed as much with Roger, over the walkie-talkie. We thanked the two climbers and moved over to the fixed lines. I clipped in and started down, battling not to get pulled over backward by the pack.
Ben shouldered the pig for the last rap and we touched down on a lower-angled, terraced recess by a big pine tree growing straight out of the rock. The injured climber — I never learned his name — lay curled in a fetal knot on a sloping ledge scarcely bigger than his body.
His partner, Peter Barton, sitting dejectedly on a shelf 10 feet below, had tied the victim taut to a cluster of pitons. Ben and I rigged a line off the victim’s anchor and moved to a small, tapering ledge 10 feet lower. According to Peter, the victim had taken a tumbling fall and banged the back of his head. Though partially responsive at first, he hadn’t moved in two or three hours.
I asked Ben what he knew about first aid and he said, “Nothing.” Since I was the son of a doctor, Ben reckoned I’d absorbed essential medical know-how by association, and suggested I paddle up to the victim and play doctor.
The victim’s breathing seemed smooth, though hurried. He mumbled now and then but couldn’t answer any questions. On the back of his head the hair was raked off in one spot, but no shocking dent or gash. As to how this guy looked, or even his age, I can’t say. Had the victim looked at me, or said something instead of just lying inert, I might remember his eyes, or his face. But it’s all a blank.
I reported the victim’s condition to Roger, over the radio, and he said to pack the guy into a sleeping bag — there was one inside the giant pack — and to watch his airway. It took all three of us to wheedle the victim into the bag. I felt useless, knowing this guy needed assistance we couldn’t hope to provide. Roger said there wasn’t much more to do, and to just settle in for the night. Back at park headquarters, Bridwell and two rescue rangers were devising a strategy for tomorrow. Pray the victim somehow holds on. Over and out.
Ben and I rapped to the lower ledge and sat back. The slab dropped below for 20 or so feet, then the wall steepened and plunged out of sight. Peering off that perch, I hunkered down for my first bivouac on a rock wall.
We dug into the pack and found a headlamp, several gallons of water, a 12-pack of lemonade mix, a wall rack, a lead rope, a great mass of pulleys and bewildering rescue tackle, a frightening 12-inch knife, two balaclavas, a second radio, several packs of batteries, a first-aid kit that folded out like an accordion, a shovel, a compass, two ensolite pads, and 20 other items I can’t remember — but not so much as a breadstick to eat.
“We’re buggered,” said Ben. Thankfully we had a couple packs of smokes between us and we lit up, gazing into the gloom. Far below, the earth seemed to open up, then night crawled out and swallowed the wall and the world.
Ben, 30, had a rowdy head of red hair and an elegant sideburn-goatee constellation befitting the British academic he was in the private world. His calm, rational manner was a balm to my willies which, after an hour in pitch darkness, were once more rearing up and stampeding over my resolve. To divert myself I pried Ben about his many adventures on big walls in Norway, the Alps and of course most recently the great El Capitan. His comments were so understated I came to believe that sitting there on that tiny ledge in my flimsy white navy pants and a T-shirt was no big deal after all. I admired myself for throwing in with the Yosemite hardmen and, around midnight, figured I was nearly one myself. Then it got very cold, and the victim started wailing in tongues. Peter asked what the hell we were going to do, and things went south from there.
Ben and I took turns making sure the man didn’t swallow his tongue or do something worse. The guy bit our fingers down to the wood, and sometimes his arms flailed and his legs churned inside the bag. We couldn’t have been less helpful.
Around dawn, the victim quieted, and might have died for all we knew. The notion frightened me so I hand-walked up the slab and found him still alive, but apparently in a coma. We couldn’t do a thing. I returned to the ledge and shimmied my legs into the big pack for warmth. I never knew a person could feel so wasted. Then Roger cut in over the radio. A copter was blading in from Livermore Air Force base to attempt an “extraction.” This was long before cliff rescue techniques had been standardized and neither Ben nor I knew what they were talking about. Roger explained. Bridwell had reckoned that at our present location, the wall was sufficiently low-angled to allow a copter to hover some hundreds of feet above, and lower a litter down on a cable winch.
“That should be pretty good theater!” said Ben. And we’d be seeing it momentarily, as the percussive thumping of copter blades started echoing up the Valley.
“Will you look at that bugger!” Ben yelled. Whatever copter I had envisioned, it wasn’t the monstrosity hoving to several hundred feet above. Big as a Greyhound bus, it looked like something out of Star Wars. Two enormous blades produced a pulsing thunder that rattled our bones and shot down a shaft of prop wash that swirled every pine needle and bit of turf into a choking tornado. I thrust my head into the big pack and when I pulled it back out, the surroundings looked as if it had been scrubbed with a wire brush. A soldier stepped from the open cargo bay door of the copter and lowered down on a cable, like a dummy on a string. He sat on a “chaparral Leveler,” a bullet-shaped cylinder the size of a fire hydrant with two fold-down metal flaps on the bottom. Later someone said they used to swoop the Leveler through “hot zones” during the Viet Nam campaign, and would pluck out of the fire anyone who could mount the Leveler at speed. The giant Sikorsky “Hercules” stayed glued in the sky and the soldier slowly descended perhaps 175 feet until finally touching down on the slab about 10 feet below our ledge. Whoever piloted the ship was a dead-eye who basically delivered the soldier in our laps. With his huge helmet and smoky visor, plus the dashing Air Force jumpsuit, the soldier looked like Flash Gordon. The moment Flash stepped off the chaparral Leveler he was unroped, 1,600 feet off the deck. His mountaineering boots skedaddled on the slab as his hands pawed for a hold, and we knew right off Flash Gordon was no climber.
Ben quickly anchored off a loop of rope, handwalked down and clipped in Flash, who pulled up his smoky visor, exposing the face of a 15-year-old boy, which he compensated for by screaming out his orders. The plan sounded basic and, surprisingly, went off without a hitch. The copter lowered down a litter and we loaded up and lashed down the victim, who was winched straight into the hovering ship.
“OK,” said Flash, staring at the ship still hanging directly overhead. “Who’s going with me?”
“How’s that?” Ben asked. We’d figured Flash would jug out on the fixed lines with Ben, Peter and me.
“I’m going out on the Leveler,” said Flash. “And it gets squirrelly with one man. I need another guy to balance the load.”
“I’ll go,” I said without thinking.
“Good man,” Ben replied. He’d climb El Cap in a snowstorm but he wasn’t daft enough to volunteer to get winched off a Yosemite wall on a guitar string. I wasn’t courageous, I’d just opened up my trap and blurted.
The next 15 minutes passed in a blur. I remember just before sitting onto the Leveler that Flash said not to worry and to simply hold on tight. We sat, face-to-face, on two metal flaps barely larger than my hand. This set us up like two guys bear-hugging with a flagpole between them. There were no straps or tie-ins at all.
Suddenly the cable came taut and my stomach fell into my boots as we were pulled off the wall and into mid-air. After 10 feet we started yawing side to side and the copter motored out away from the wall, initiating a harrowing pendulum. Lest we smacked the face, the pilot swept even farther out into open space, away from the wall, which set us swinging in wild horizontal arcs. Only vaguely could I feel the winch pulling us up as we sliced through the air like trapeze artists hitched to the moon. I remember flashing on a saucy French tourist girl I’d met in the cafeteria, and how she’d probably have to spend the rest of her life without me now. With nothing more to lose, I enjoyed the indescribable view as best I could.
About 15 feet from the cargo door, right when we stopped swinging, we began spinning, faster and faster. In 30 seconds I felt so dizzy I thought I might pass out and pitch off. Then they shut off the winch and we dropped a few horrible feet and wrenched to a stop. I glanced up and saw a flurry of airmen fiddling around the winch, which started back up with a lurch and then stopped again, with Flash and me dangling about waist-level with the open cargo bay door. Flash was nearest the ship, and one of the airman reached down and yanked him on board. This instantly rocked the Leveler out of balance and I nearly fell off. For a moment the airmen, with curious blank looks on their faces, stared down at me dangling in space. Then Bridwell appeared from somewhere, grabbed a strut on the door and reached down his hand — and his was the Hand of God if ever I saw it. We locked arms; the Bird yanked and I shot off the flap and belly flopped into the bay. The Bird, who’d been spotting for the pilot, gave a thumbs up and the big ship banked and headed for El Cap Meadow.
Several medics huddled over the victim. His vital signs checked out and they figured his chances were good (I later learned he did survive, following several operations to relieve pressure on his brainpan), which amazed and relieved me. Several minutes later the big ship touched down. In a 50-yard radius the tall grass in Yosemite Meadow was pummeled flush as the pitch on a putting green. Bridwell and I jumped out and the ship thumped off for the trauma unit in Fresno.
Roger rushed up and started laughing and smacking me. I’d expected an official reception, or at any rate a swelling tourist mob. But it was barely seven in the morning and the three of us found ourselves alone in the middle of the meadow. In a few short minutes, everything went still and quiet. It seemed as if nothing had ever happened. But something had. In the midst of a firestorm of personal doubts, circumstances had conspired to knit me into the very fabric of Yosemite life — with the Park Service, the rescue team, the climbers of the day and the great walls that remained our hope and our passion. From that moment on I accepted doubt and fear as the lot of every Yosemite climber, and never again did I question where I should play out my youth.
A few summers later I fell in with Peter Barton, the partner of the victim on the Middle Cathedral rescue. We teamed up for several significant climbs, including the first ascent of Stoner’s Highway, also on Middle. A year later, while ferrying loads up to the West Face of El Capitan, Peter lost his footing on a steep bit and suffered a tumbling fall that proved fatal. A helicopter flew in from Livermore to recover Peter’s body. Over the steep moraine below the West Face, the copter experienced mechanical problems and ditched in the boulders, the crew barely escaping when the ship burst into flames. His mother released Peter’s ashes over Washington Column.
I haven’t seen Ben since the rescue on Middle. I trust he’s doing well.
Several years later, Roger went to the Grand Tetons.
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Double D
climber
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Oct 30, 2013 - 04:37pm PT
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Largo... that was pure gold! Made my day man...
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anita514
Gym climber
Great White North
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Oct 30, 2013 - 04:57pm PT
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BASE: pretty gnarly story up there... yikes.
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