TACOMA — A mountain rescue leader says a well-equipped group of skiers and three mountain rescue units all helped to get a seriously injured hiker off Mount Rainier.
The News Tribune reports that rescue incident commander Glenn Kessler says a 911 call from the injured hiker was patched through to Mount Rainier dispatch late Tuesday afternoon. The 61-year-old man reported he had fallen 50 feet near Panorama Point, hitting a rock and suffering a compound fracture of both lower leg bones in one leg.
Kessler says a group of skiers descending from Camp Muir found the man and radioed park rangers with GPS coordinates. The skiers also protected and warmed the man for several hours as temperatures fell to the upper 20s.
Kessler says teams from Tacoma Mountain Rescue, Seattle Mountain Rescue and Olympic Mountain Rescue battled high winds as they carried the injured man off the mountain on a rescue litter. Rescuers got him to an ambulance early Wednesday morning.
The hiker was not identified.
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