An injured ice climber is on the road to recovery after a daring 10 hour rescue to get him off the mountain following a 60ft fall.
Slavek Zaglewski from Oakland, New Jersey had been attempting to climb the challenging ‘Shoestring Gully’ route, near Crawford Notch in New Hampshire’s White Mountains on Saturday, December 14. Ascending with a friend, the 55-year-old lost his footing and fell roughly 60ft / 18m, landing at the climb’s base.
Fearing for his friend’s life, Slavek’s companion, Mariusz Markewicz, notified search and rescue, who immediately set off to find the injured climber.
After receiving the call at around 7.30pm, a small segment from the Mountain Rescue Service, and the Androscoggin Valley Search and Rescue Service reached Zaglewski at 11.19pm and treated him for hypothermia. The remaining rescuers lugged 600ft / 183m ropes to a ridge atop the mountain route to assemble a sophisticated rope and litter system capable of lifting the climber to safety.
Commonly used by emergency services and mountain rescue, rope and litter systems allow rescuers to pack injured people into a gully and hoist them horizontally or vertically to safety.
At 12.46am, the litter reached Zaglewski, who was bundled into the gully and raised almost 400ft / 122m up the ridge. Still suffering from cold, the Oakland native was carried down the mountain by rescuers, who finally reached the trailhead at 5am on Sunday morning, nine and a half hours after they’d first received the call.
Impressed by the quick-thinking rescue operation, Sgt Alex Lopashanski, of New Hampshire Fish and Game, which had received the initial rescue call, told the Concord Monitor: “Without those guys coming out at night, he would have died that night, either from his injuries or the cold.
“It was a mission that really put together all the skills that they practice and are good at.”
Following his rescue, Zaglewski was immediately taken to hospital, where he’s been for the past two days. Despite the ordeal, the 55-year-old is expected to make a full recovery and didn’t suffer any major injuries from his fall.
“It does seem like he’s going to pull through without any long-lasting injury,” confirmed Lopashanski, who believes the climber fell due to loose rock.
“Instead of an ice climb, it was a frozen, unconsolidated rock,” he continued.
“Although it’s typically a fairly straightforward ice climb, ice just hadn’t formed there yet, which made the climbing difficult.”
Although it can be done safely, ice climbing is a challenging pursuit that demands prior knowledge and the right, working equipment. For information on how to get into ice climbing and what equipment to take, check out our expert guide to ice climbing.
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