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Snakebite

Word has it that somebody rode off a cliff on Buck Run on Snake Mountain in Addison yesterday at about dusk yesterday. Somebody eventually heard his calls for help and they finally got him off about dawn today, with multiple fractures. He's in his twenties and from Pennsylvania, no other details available. :dead:
 

Discostu

Monkey
Nov 15, 2003
524
0
Where is Buck Run? I've probably been, but I don't know the names of most of the trails up there.

I hope this guy makes it through this ok, that must have been quite a fall, I'm glad to hear he is alive.
 

Skookum

bikey's is cool
Jul 26, 2002
10,184
0
in a bear cave
i'm riding a trail this Sunday that you'll be pretty much dead if you fall off from the exposure. This thread does wonders for my confidence in reminding me of that. Thanks JonnyB..... :rolleyes:

mommy! :(
 
Addison County Independent, Mondav, September 19, 2005

Rescued

100 climb Snake Mountain at nignt to reach injured man

By ANDY KIRKALDY More than 100 rescuers from a dozen agencies on Wednesday and Thursday helped rescue a 29-year-old Addison man from the steep slopes of Snake Mountain. Rescuers said he was riding a mountain bike at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday when he went off a cliff they estimad to be as high as 300 feet.

The rescue was complicated by darkness and a mixture of sheer drops and wooded, gravel-strewn slopes that Vergennes Area Rescue Squad (VARS) head Steve Fleming said had a 70- or 80-degree incline.

Fleming said he could not reveal the man's identity, but said the victim had moved to Addison earlier this year from the Philadelphia area.

Fleming said on Friday the man had injuries to his legs and hips, induding broken bones, facial cuts, and "scrapes, bumps and bruises," but that his condition did not appear life~threatening. "The guy was stable. His vital signs were stable," 'he said, and Addison Fire Department Chief Chris Mulliss gave the same assessment of the man's condition.

They said the man first fell between 150 and 300 feet down a cliff, while his bike, according to Mulllss, was caught in one of the many trees on the slope that also complicated the rescue.

The man then crawled further down Snake Mountain in an effort to save himself but had to stop when he ran into another sheer drop. Fleming and Mulliss estimated he may have moved 400 to 600 feet further down the slope.

That effort made the rescue more difficult, but it is possible that it may have also saved the man's life. When he could go no further he began yelling for help, and Addison Fire Department Captain Mark Torrey, who lives nearby, heard those pleas.

"He happened to hear someone screaming for help," Mulliss' said. "Mark was the whole key to saving a person's life."

Torrey called fire department dispatcher Jane Grace, Addison's town clerk, and she called out firefighters at 7:18 p.m.

Mulliss said Torrey went up the trail and stayed "within yelling distance" of the victim and guided rescuers to the spot.

Addison firefighters quickly realized the difficulty posed by darkness and the steep, wooded slopes and their unstable surface. They called for more help, notably the Stowe and Colchester technical rescue teams and VARS, as well as the Bridport, Vergennes, Ferrisburgh, Middlebury, Weybridge, New Haven, and Crown Point, N.Y., fire departments.

"It was a very challenging rescue," Mulliss said.

Working with flashlights in the gathering darkness, rescuers scrambled and rappelled down to the victim, Mulliss said, and quickly detennined that the safest way to get him to the waiting ambulance was to carry him back up to the trail above and from there down to Mountain Road extension.

Mulliss said there wotild have been at least as much steep terrain to navigate to the west, and that there would be no trail for rescuers to use.

"All this rescue, you've got to remember, was done in the dark," he said.

Rescuers strapped the victim first onto a backboard, and then lifted and strappect him into a "Stokes" basket, a large wire-mesh basket witb handles. Rescuers carried him in the basket by hand where they could, and lifted him with ropes where they couldn't, Mulliss said.

When they got him back to the trail, the large numbers of rescuers were put to good use. Colchester had what Fleming said was a large cart that had been wheeled almost a mile up the trail, but that still left about a half-mile of distance to the victim.

Rescuers then passed him from one to another down the hill until he could be placed in Colchester's cart and rolled to the VARS ambulance, where Mulliss and Fleming were helping coordinate efforts.

"They had to human-chain the guy down," Fleming said.

The victim was then taken to Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlingon at about 3 a.m., making the rescue about a seven-hour operation. Mulliss estimated it took about an hour to reach the victim, three and-a-half hours to bring him to the trail, and two-and-a-half more to get him to the ambulance. The incident thus left many without a night's sleep. Mulliss called the effort "definitely the biggest thing we've done in Addison as far as a rescue," and Fleming said it wils "the longest single rescue operation I've been on" in his 25 years as a volunteer.

Especially given the difficult conditions, Fleming had high praise for rescuers.

"It was a very good job by all the people, the technical; people and the local people," he said.

Even with the expertise and tireless work by his rescuers, another factor helped the victim after what Fleming called "a pretty good tumble" over the steep cliff.

"He was very lucky he didn't suffer more serious injuries," Fleming said.
 

blt2ride

Turbo Monkey
May 25, 2005
2,332
0
Chatsworth
stinkyboy said:
Pinkbikers at the scene reported a 4250 foot huck to flat.
Those dang Pinkbikers, I heard it was an even 5000 foot drop, when you take the transition into consideration. You know something, I'm starting to think that the folks at Pinkbike like to stretch the truth a little bit...