A rock climber who fell hundreds of feet descending a steep gully in Washington’s North Cascades mountains survived the fall that killed his three companions, hiked to his car in the dark and then drove to a pay phone to call for help, authorities said Tuesday.
The surviving climber, Anton Tselykh, 38, extricated himself from a tangle of ropes, helmets and other equipment after the fall Saturday evening. Despite suffering internal bleeding and head trauma, Tselykh eventually, over at least a dozen hours, made the trek to the pay phone, Okanogan County Undersheriff Dave Yarnell said.
The climbers who were killed were Vishnu Irigireddy, 48, Tim Nguyen, 63, Oleksander Martynenko, 36, Okanogan County Coroner Dave Rodriguez said.
Oh my god people. If you’re going that remote, get yourself a Garmin InReach. It has an SOS button and satellite service.
I was a search and rescue mountaineer EMT for a decade in a very busy county.
This is good advice, but most people don’t do things risky enough to need one. The most important thing people who are less extreme can do is tell someone you trust where you’re going (including your planned route) and when they should worry that you haven’t returned (when to call for rescue). Do it for every hike. Stories like this one make headlines, but most rescues are for things like busted ankles.
There is a chance they had one but it was damaged in the fall. I mean 4 guys in full climbing gear falling hundreds of feet = not much survived intact.
Things like that are built to sustain much higher damage
After 400ft of falling, there’s not much guarantee that any gear is near you when you stop moving.
And yeah, they built most of the PLBs tough, but there aren’t exactly black box material either
You could probbaly hit some stones once or twice, but generally, dead or alive, you would “arrive” more or less in one piece, you are not falling from a plane. That Garmin thing would probably be on a belt or backpack strap
I used to be one of the people that came to rescue, or recover, people who fell down cliffs. (I was a search and rescue mountaineer/EMT for a decade)
I was speaking from experience.
Your conjecture is not accurate.
Packs break, clothes rip, some stuff stops falling on a ledge that other stuff bounces off of and keeps falling, etc. rarely, but not unheard of, a body part will get caught up on something while the body is falling fast enough to rip that part off and keep falling…
Oh, ok, I just wrongly assumed.
Being inside a pocket or secured to your person
I’m guessing you haven’t seen a lot of people who feel hundreds of get down a mountain. I’ve seen about a dozen (I used to be a search and rescue mountaineer/EMT). I stand by my statement.
I feel like they make pockets with zippers for just this reason
That would probably increase the probability of it staying with you, but clothes can easily get shredded by a big fall, and something causing a protrusion in the clothes would be a likely place for a rock to catch and tear…