Someone I follow on bsky shared this story, Hiker Trekked 10 Miles to Safety After Impaling Himself on Pole:
"David Cifaldi and two of his friends had been hiking for about seven hours up Montana’s tallest mountain on July 20 when he slipped on a rock and fell. He saw one of his trekking poles on the ground, but the second one was nowhere to be found."
This is a really dazzling little story -- Cifaldi was lucky to miss his internal organs, equipped with medical training, and careful enough to bring all the stuff you need to call for help from the top of a mountain. I'd be interested to know if his group's location was even helicopter-able, because some are not.
I recently read the beautiful book Wild Rescues by National Parks paramedic and wilderness firefighter Kevin Grange. It was fun to think about Cifaldi's logistics after what I learned in Grange's wonderful memoir. Please check out Cifaldi's story and Grange's book, so I won't spoil anything really.
But, one of the most interesting parts for me was that a serious medical case will be transported from inside Yosemite or Yellowstone in multiple phases. Park paramedics approach as close as possible, but much of these parklands is not accessible for an ambulance. Some isn't even accessible for a traditional stretcher.
The other big issue is distance. Park paramedics are able to take the time to drive to the edge of their park, which could be an hour or more from where they picked up the patient; but the nearest hospital could be a further two hours. They often coordinate handoffs to the paramedics of the next jurisdiction, so they can get back into the park. Sometimes, they have the helicopter park where it can and then drive the patient to the landing spot.
I love this kind of thing anyway (ambulances are cool, parks and mountains are cool, logistics are cool, stuff about rural people's real lives is cool), but Grange's calling is what really stood out to me. He describes a very real sense that he is doing meaningful work and satisfying a spiritual urge. Cifaldi, too, is a wound nurse who takes on emergency medicine as a choice. It's satisfying that he was able to protect his own life using the skills he learned in order to protect others' lives.
I also thought about the 1991 movie The Doctor, where William Hurt plays a talented, cold, and nasty high-ranking doctor who gets a taste of his own medicine after a cancer diagnosis. It's kinda the schadenfreude version of Cifaldi's amazing and heartening self-rescue.
Wishing you a peaceful week, with no medical evacuations.