Nichols Peak - and more of the story
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:48 pm
Sunday February 17, 2008
On Saturday Rachel and I had hiked in Death Valley - hiking Pyramid Peak - with lots of newly blooming wildlflowers - trip report and photos will come at a later time.
Alice, Kathy and Nathan had hiked the group hike up on the Whiskey Flats Trail and Bull Run Falls.
We decided to get together and do a hike on Sunday that we failed to summit from last week. The idea was to again head up the south ridge leading between Heald and Nichols and bag one or both of these peaks.
What we did not realize was - the upper portion of this route sucks. It is a combination of heavy bush whacking and large block boulder scrambling up and down bumps and saddles trying to get to the ridge between the two peaks. Progress was slow and Nathan again had to turn back around noon. The four of us continued on and finally reached the skyline ridge around 1:30pm. We decided Nichols was a better choice than Heald. Heald would have been a northern slope and added slippery snow into an already long day. The route from the saddle to Nichols had a good use trail and was nicely ducked. We made the summit a short time after 3pm and spent about a half an hour celbrating and enjoying the peak.
We had a better route planned down that actually is truer to form of the description described in Ruby's book. It was a fast pace down and within an hour we were neary to the old mine road at about 4300ft elevation. We were still in a drainage but with good route and minimum hardships. I was leading and suddenly from behind me I heard Kathy state:
"Oh no - I have broken my leg"
I had not heard her fall or slide so I was not sure I had heard correctly; but it quickly became obvious that something was wrong. Alice and Rachel were right behind and we all handled the new developments as a team making a lot of good decisions(IMHO)
After splinting and stabilizing her we then discussed our options. There was now about 45 minutes or so of good salvageable light left. Since Rachel is the fastest of our group, she was the obvious choice to run the rest of the route down(appr 2.5 miles) back to vehicles and get a rescue going. We marked a waypoint and then gave Rachel the GPS so she could give an exact location to SAR. We also assessed what we had left in clothing, water, lights, etc. so an accurate detailed report could be given to any rescue party and to prepare us for what could be several long hours. Although it got colder as the sun set and the night came along, we had enough to keep the three of us(Kathy, Alice and myself) warm for the circumstances.
Rachel called 911 from the highway and Kern Fire was able to get a fast and efficient rescue operation going. Even though they had several missions ongoing, they were able to dispatch a helicopter to fly in from Bakersfield. This was a thankful and very pleasant surpise for us because a manned ground rescue would have been considerablely longer and more complicated from where she was stranded.
Remarkably from the time Kathy broke her leg until the time she was lifted into the helicopter was 2 hours. This was a remarkable effort by a lot of people and I especially want to thank them all including
Kern County Fire Department(station 71) Captain John and his team of 6 on the ground were calm, organized and professional.
Kern Fire Helicopter Team - Ryan was the team member that ziplined down to assist Kathy - he has only been on the team for a year. Thanks again Ryan.
Kern County Sheriff Department. Deputy(Snr Deputy?) Stevens waited for Alice, Rachel and I to hike and drive out even after the emergency crews were gone. He is an old friend and an assett to the Lake Isabella area. He really cares about the people in his community.
There are probably a whole lot of other people who were involved that I did not meet or get a chance to say thank you to as well.
Kathy was taken by ambulance to Kern Medical in Mt. Mesa and stayed overnight. X-rays confirmed that she had a break in the tibia and the fibula. She had nothing but praise and nice things to say about the staff and treatment while she was there. And I am sure it is not just because of the heavy drugs they gave her. Today (Monday Feb 18th)she was ambulanced down to San Juaquin medical. They performed surgery including a plate to repair the "spiral" fracture in her leg.
oh by the way notes:
I am glad they were able to use a helo for extraction. We were looking at a possible litter and carrying her out to the road. The drainage we were in was heavily overgrown at the bottom and would have required clearing some to get her through that. I was partially clearing some during the usable light while we waited in case that was to be. I remember telling Rachel when she came back (see below) - tell them we will need a saw and some water please.
The only real mistake that I saw we made. Somehow we let Rachel get away without my keys to the truck. When we discussed this after it was over; we all agreed that we had thought about keys several times prior to her leaving; but somehow collectively we missed it when she was leaving. She realized this when she got down to the ranch house about a mile down the road. Although the rancher did not have a phone he did take her partway back up to get back to us and the keys. We were able to give updated info on our situation and it only cost us about an exta 15 minutes. So if that was the worst of our "mistakes" - I can live with that.
Of tremendous value to the S&R effort was an "exact" location of where we were. Thinking to take a GPS reading before we left and relaying that info probably made a difference on being allocated a helo at a time when many rescues were ongoing in Kern County.
Let that be a lesson to so many who underpack for a planned dayhike(and I am guilty of this as anyone). Plan for the unexpected and make sure that you are prepared to deal with unforseen situations that may arise.
picures posted on my smugmug for the days hike:
wish I had taken more at the time or some of our rescue and after - but it was not the time or place.
http://tomcat-rc.smugmug.com/gallery/43 ... #256047825
On Saturday Rachel and I had hiked in Death Valley - hiking Pyramid Peak - with lots of newly blooming wildlflowers - trip report and photos will come at a later time.
Alice, Kathy and Nathan had hiked the group hike up on the Whiskey Flats Trail and Bull Run Falls.
We decided to get together and do a hike on Sunday that we failed to summit from last week. The idea was to again head up the south ridge leading between Heald and Nichols and bag one or both of these peaks.
What we did not realize was - the upper portion of this route sucks. It is a combination of heavy bush whacking and large block boulder scrambling up and down bumps and saddles trying to get to the ridge between the two peaks. Progress was slow and Nathan again had to turn back around noon. The four of us continued on and finally reached the skyline ridge around 1:30pm. We decided Nichols was a better choice than Heald. Heald would have been a northern slope and added slippery snow into an already long day. The route from the saddle to Nichols had a good use trail and was nicely ducked. We made the summit a short time after 3pm and spent about a half an hour celbrating and enjoying the peak.
We had a better route planned down that actually is truer to form of the description described in Ruby's book. It was a fast pace down and within an hour we were neary to the old mine road at about 4300ft elevation. We were still in a drainage but with good route and minimum hardships. I was leading and suddenly from behind me I heard Kathy state:
"Oh no - I have broken my leg"
I had not heard her fall or slide so I was not sure I had heard correctly; but it quickly became obvious that something was wrong. Alice and Rachel were right behind and we all handled the new developments as a team making a lot of good decisions(IMHO)
After splinting and stabilizing her we then discussed our options. There was now about 45 minutes or so of good salvageable light left. Since Rachel is the fastest of our group, she was the obvious choice to run the rest of the route down(appr 2.5 miles) back to vehicles and get a rescue going. We marked a waypoint and then gave Rachel the GPS so she could give an exact location to SAR. We also assessed what we had left in clothing, water, lights, etc. so an accurate detailed report could be given to any rescue party and to prepare us for what could be several long hours. Although it got colder as the sun set and the night came along, we had enough to keep the three of us(Kathy, Alice and myself) warm for the circumstances.
Rachel called 911 from the highway and Kern Fire was able to get a fast and efficient rescue operation going. Even though they had several missions ongoing, they were able to dispatch a helicopter to fly in from Bakersfield. This was a thankful and very pleasant surpise for us because a manned ground rescue would have been considerablely longer and more complicated from where she was stranded.
Remarkably from the time Kathy broke her leg until the time she was lifted into the helicopter was 2 hours. This was a remarkable effort by a lot of people and I especially want to thank them all including
Kern County Fire Department(station 71) Captain John and his team of 6 on the ground were calm, organized and professional.
Kern Fire Helicopter Team - Ryan was the team member that ziplined down to assist Kathy - he has only been on the team for a year. Thanks again Ryan.
Kern County Sheriff Department. Deputy(Snr Deputy?) Stevens waited for Alice, Rachel and I to hike and drive out even after the emergency crews were gone. He is an old friend and an assett to the Lake Isabella area. He really cares about the people in his community.
There are probably a whole lot of other people who were involved that I did not meet or get a chance to say thank you to as well.
Kathy was taken by ambulance to Kern Medical in Mt. Mesa and stayed overnight. X-rays confirmed that she had a break in the tibia and the fibula. She had nothing but praise and nice things to say about the staff and treatment while she was there. And I am sure it is not just because of the heavy drugs they gave her. Today (Monday Feb 18th)she was ambulanced down to San Juaquin medical. They performed surgery including a plate to repair the "spiral" fracture in her leg.
oh by the way notes:
I am glad they were able to use a helo for extraction. We were looking at a possible litter and carrying her out to the road. The drainage we were in was heavily overgrown at the bottom and would have required clearing some to get her through that. I was partially clearing some during the usable light while we waited in case that was to be. I remember telling Rachel when she came back (see below) - tell them we will need a saw and some water please.
The only real mistake that I saw we made. Somehow we let Rachel get away without my keys to the truck. When we discussed this after it was over; we all agreed that we had thought about keys several times prior to her leaving; but somehow collectively we missed it when she was leaving. She realized this when she got down to the ranch house about a mile down the road. Although the rancher did not have a phone he did take her partway back up to get back to us and the keys. We were able to give updated info on our situation and it only cost us about an exta 15 minutes. So if that was the worst of our "mistakes" - I can live with that.
Of tremendous value to the S&R effort was an "exact" location of where we were. Thinking to take a GPS reading before we left and relaying that info probably made a difference on being allocated a helo at a time when many rescues were ongoing in Kern County.
Let that be a lesson to so many who underpack for a planned dayhike(and I am guilty of this as anyone). Plan for the unexpected and make sure that you are prepared to deal with unforseen situations that may arise.
picures posted on my smugmug for the days hike:
wish I had taken more at the time or some of our rescue and after - but it was not the time or place.
http://tomcat-rc.smugmug.com/gallery/43 ... #256047825