Looking for info on accident in Mazama

[Alisse]

Hey all,

 

I heard that there was an accident in Mazama over the weekend in which someone fell quite a distance but they are in stable condition. Any other info out there? Thanks in advance!

 

Alisse

[climbinfool]

I live right next to fun rock where this incident happened and went over to assist, but ended up not being needed. Several of my friends did assist and this is the second hand information I received from them.

 

A 25 year old female climber from Seattle fell from the anchors on a climb at the A-wall area. She stated that she had clipped into the anchors with a PAS and gone off belay so that she could untie the rope and clean the toprope anchor when she made a mistake and unclipped her PAS from the anchor. Since she was no longer on belay she fell with no resistance from the rope approximately 70 ft. hitting the rock several times on the way down and landed at the base of the climb. She was wearing a helmet at the time of the incident and sustained several open lower extremity fractures and presumably some level of internal and head trauma. Several first responders were on the scene initially and Aero Methow rescue services were able to respond pretty rapidly.They stabilized her injuries and pushed IV fluids since she had lost a significant amount of blood. She was taken from the scene via helicopter to a trauma center.

 

That is the basics of it. Please keep in mind that this info is all second hand. If someone has better details, please feel free to clarify or correct anything I wrote.

Edited May 5, 2015 by climbinfool

[kgk]

I met the injured climber that week-end and she was part of our group. She was on her last route and all our parties were at the parking lot.

 

One of our party members ran down to the parking lot looking for the ambulance telling us what happened. I went up there to help with the EMT's once they arrived very shortly, we luckily bumped into one of our friend anesthesiologist, a great help.

 

To add to that, the helicopter found us very quickly and landed very close to the scene, that helped a lot. Another thing, there was many climbers that helped out, thanks a lot.

 

The injured climber was moved in a Seattle hospital, from the last news I've got she's out of out of harm's way.

 

Edited May 6, 2015 by kgk

[genepires]

fortunate that the heli was able to get close to the site.

 

unfortunate that most pilots get practice at these sites so often. They prolly have good spots laid out for all the usual suspects like climbing areas, mtn bike parks, and skate parks.