JACKSON, Wyo. — A mountain climber was rescued from the Grand Teton last week after becoming injured, according to the Jenny Lake Rangers.
At about 3:15 p.m. on July 31, the Jenny Lake Rangers were contacted to assist a climber with a broken ankle on the Upper Exum Ridge, estimated to be 13,100 feet in elevation, the agency posted to Instagram. The rescue mission was complicated by severe thunderstorms, and by the fact that the Teton County Search and Rescue helicopter was “unavailable for a mechanical issue,” the post reads.
The Rangers requested the help of Pocatello (Idaho) Helitack to transport a team of climbing rangers to the Grand’s Lower Saddle for a ground-based rescue operation, and enlisted Gallatin County (Montana) Search and Rescue to provide a helicopter capable of short-hauling. (Short-hauling is a rescue tactic in which a helicopter team uses a long rope to tow a patient out of terrain that can’t accomodate a helicopter landing.) Both of those teams headed to the Lupine Meadows Rescue Cache to help.
Pocatello Helitack shuttled the four climbing rangers to the Lower Saddle, from which they began climbing the Upper Exum route to find the patient. The Gallatin County SAR helicopter arrived and completed a short-haul extraction of the injured climber around 8:20 p.m. The patient was taken to a Grand Teton National Park ambulance to seek further medical care.
The team of climbing rangers helped the unharmed climbing partner back down to the Lower Saddle. Everyone had been flown off of the Lower Saddle by Pocatello Helitack by 9 a.m. on Aug. 1.
“It was a pleasure to integrate with these high quality teams for such a complex incident, and highlights how lucky we are to have such amazing cooperation between agencies in our region,” Jenny Lake Rangers posted to Instagram.
