BANFF – A man in his mid-30s was taken by STARS air ambulance to a Calgary Hospital late Sunday evening (Aug. 23) after a scrambling accident on Mt. Chephren in Banff National Park.
STARS was dispatched at 7:40 p.m. to the Waterfowl Lakes campground south of Saskatchewan River Crossing to meet with Alpine Helicopters and the rescue team, which had plucked an injured scrambler off the top third of the 3,307-metre peak.
“It sounds like he was down-climbing a section, and he pulled this rock off and then he fell a short distance,” said Brian Webster, a visitor safety manager with Parks Canada.
“There’s a little bit of uncertainty, but the rock he pulled off fell on top of him and that may have contributed to the incident and him hurting him back.”
After the accident, the group used a satellite communication device to raise the alarm.
Webster said it was late in the day and rescuers were lucky to get to the injured man before darkness set in.
“They were still descending and were still on the top third of the mountain and had very little daylight … we were lucky to be able to get to them that day,” Webster said.
“When attempting these bigger objectives, get up early, plan on being done early and then if you have an incident, you’ve got some extra daylight to manage it,” he added.
“If it had been 40 minutes later, they would have been spending the night out and we would have had to go in early the next morning.”
STARS met with Alpine Helicopters and the rescuers at Waterfowl Lakes campground.
“We rendezvoused with them, EMS and Lake Louise Fire Department to transport a male patient in his mid-30s to the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary,” said STARS spokesperson Fatima Khawaja.
