NORTH BEND, Wash. — A hiker is now recovering after a fall on Mt. Si Saturday morning.
The hiker was seriously injured, and it took a daring helicopter rescue to get him to the hospital.
“It was snowing and blowing and it was seriously cold,” said Doug Casey with Seattle Mountain Rescue in North Bend.
King County Explorer Search and Rescue got a call to help the hiker who fell on the Haystack Scramble near the summit.
“It’s deep enough that if you fall, you’ll either get injured or die,” said Casey.
Rescuers say the hiker’s weak cries for help drew the attention of nearby hikers.
“They heard him calling for help very quietly. They had been with him on the top, they encountered and spoke with him on the top. He had their phone to take a photo of them, and then he departed, and then a little while later, as they were getting ready to leave, they heard him calling for help,” said Erik Swanson with King County ESAR.
Those hikers called 911 with ESAR, King County 4x4 Search and Rescue, King County Incident Support Team, SPART, and Seattle Mountain Rescue all responding.
Locating the hiker was the first challenge. A ground crew with medics got to him, but teams had to wait for the clouds to clear, or else carry the hiker down the trail.
“We would have had to actively treat him going down the trail because he was pretty banged up,” said Casey.
The clouds cleared enough for a helicopter crew to reach the hiker and hoist him off the trail to get him to a hospital.
The six-hour mission wrapped up with rescuers also crediting the alert hikers who made the 911 call.
“I spoke with them afterwards and if they had not seen him, if they had not heard him calling out for help, there was probably not going to be anybody else up on top of that mountain for the rest of the day,” said Swanson.
Rescuers say its a good reminder for hikers this time of year that weather conditions at the trailhead and summit can be very different and it’s important to check the weather and pack essentials.