A Bolt from the Blue

by Jennifer Woodlief

  Rod’s oxygenation was initially 70 percent, and his doctors relied on the tracheotomy tube in his throat to help him breathe. Just about everything that happened with his body was life-threatening. When he was eased off the ventilator, his kidneys shut down.

  His right leg was swollen so tremendously from the hours he had hung from his climbing harness that the doctors considered amputating it. He experienced circulation problems and blood-releasing toxins, and his liver stopped working. He developed pancreatitis. Every time he was put on dialysis for his kidney damage, his blood pressure would drop precipitously.

  Rod had a chest tube inserted to drain the fluid filling his right lung. Inexplicably, he did not have a broken back, but his right hip was severely dislocated, causing internal hemorrhaging, calcification, and nerve damage. He also contracted pneumonia while he was in the hospital.

  Finally, by the end of his time in the coma, Rod began to improve. With repeated dialysis, his kidneys eventually kicked back in. By the end of six weeks, his lungs and pancreas started to function normally. He regained the use of his left arm, and his engorged right leg shrank back to normal size. He underwent mobility therapy. His father-in-law recorded hockey scores for him and sent them to him every day, and Jody posted them in his hospital room. His favorite nurse put fresh slices of green apples by his head each morning so he could smell them.

  Meanwhile, the doctors were heavily involved in another aspect of Rod’s treatment. He had second-degree burns from his left arm across his body, extensive but not deep, for which he spent 43 days in the burn unit. There were burns on more than 12 percent of his body, including his right leg, stomach, and chest. He had a lightning exit wound on his foot, and the underside of his left arm, expanding across his chest, was stained with a particularly gruesome purplish, spidery, six-inch lightning burn.

  Following his release from intensive care, Rod was moved to the Salt Lake Regional Hospital for three weeks of rehabilitation and physical therapy. After spending nearly a month and a half in the burn unit with no windows, Rod was desperate to view the outdoors. There was a big window in his room at the rehab facility, and he redesigned the furniture to push his bed up against it so he could see out. The second night of his stay, the sky lit up with a huge lightning storm. The staff was forced to move Rod’s bed completely to the other side of the room, where he spent the night cowering under the covers.

  Undeterred, Rod asked his doctor to write him a prescription stating that he was required to be taken outside every day. To fill that prescription, the hospital staff had to move his whole bed outside, where he spent time near a fountain and a bunch of rose bushes. It was during one of these outdoor visits that a medical helicopter landed at the facility, and Rod experienced a full-blown panic attack. He heard the sound of the rotors and he was instantly back at the scene, dangling from that mountain, grisly memories streaming back to him unbidden, forcing him to relive the horror—They’re leaving—looping on the dread.

  By the time Rod was discharged from the hospital, his five-foot-eight frame was down from 155 pounds to 115, yet he walked out with just a cane to support himself, in good spirits, feeling that he had done something right.

  Rod left the rehab facility on the two-month anniversary of the accident, just days before his 28th birthday. When he got to his house, the other climbers from the Grand trip were in his backyard to surprise him and welcome him home.

  In an effort to regain his strength, Rod did squats, lifted weights, went bicycle riding, and stretched constantly. He felt that he had a good attitude, he was grateful for his family, he was ready to get back to his life. His company, going well above and beyond, kept his paychecks coming, sent flowers, and paid his rent, despite the fact that he had no disability insurance.

  While those facts are all true, the reality of Rod’s aftermath is actually a much darker story. After being discharged from the hospital, he still suffered from major nerve damage. He had internal scar tissue that restricted his mobility and prevented his leg from straightening completely. He had essentially lost his proprioception, the sense of knowing how one’s own limbs are oriented in space, and consequently had to concentrate intensely to be able to take steps or reach for things.

  When Rod got back to his job, he couldn’t sustain his attention long enough to complete his work, and his company had to let him go. He had significant memory loss and lapses in his attention span. He tried to skate again a few months afterward, when his brain thought he could do something for which his legs were not prepared. He got out on the ice, took two steps, and collapsed.

  Rod was scared that Kai would struggle in his lap and hurt him, so he wasn’t ready to hold or even touch his son. Once when Jody was in the bathroom and Kai was crying, Rod felt utterly helpless to comfort his child. He began suffering from dramatic mood swings, alternately enraged and fearful. He was easily agitated and impatient and became quick to anger, aggressive to a point. His behavior was hard on Jody, tough on the marriage. He turned to depression medication and painkillers, then quit cold turkey and crashed.

  Rod’s healing process has come full circle in the years since the accident. In the summer of 2004, a year afterward, he took a job as a software developer in Utah for a change of scenery, a fresh start. He went back on medication and developed a plan with his doctors to wean himself off of it gradually. He stopped relying on his cane, and despite constant pain in his hip, he continued with physical therapy. His body adjusted to the changes the lightning had wrought.

  Rod has made a nearly complete physical recovery from his injuries, so much so that he has competed in three marathons. He is back to playing hockey. Kai now has two younger brothers: Brennan, born on Rod’s birthday in 2006, and Easton, born in the summer of 2010.

  There are obviously remnants of the accident, both physical and psychological, that will always remain with him. He still feels uneasy when he glimpses lightning in the sky, and he makes his boys come indoors during rainstorms. He has a large scar on his right leg and unrelenting numbness in his right leg and foot. His nerve endings are permanently damaged. His left leg is hypersensitive when his kids knock into it. Despite these limitations, Rod says there is nothing that he can’t do.

  The year after the accident, Rod had not been physically ready to participate in a memorial climb up the Grand with members of the original group, but in 2005, he summited the mountain with Jake. While he doesn’t blame climbing for what happened to him, he has chosen to do no other climbing since.

  Rod’s short-term memory problems persist, but Jody has put this issue in perspective in the scope of their lives together. When he loses his keys, for example, she is likely to respond by teasing him, “How long are you going to use the I-was-hit-by-lightning excuse?”

  Regarding the rangers who saved his life, Rod has this to say: “They told me over and over that they don’t risk their lives . . . but I think they do.”

  Rod is acutely aware that neither of his younger sons would exist, and Kai would have grown up without a father, if it weren’t for the heroics of the Jenny Lake climbing rangers. He questions how he could possibly make them understand what their actions mean to him, how he could ever repay them for his second chance at life. The best answer he has come up with is for him to raise his three boys to be good men. That is the most, and the least, he can do to thank them.

  In a move definitely departing from standard procedure, the climbing rangers have followed Rod’s recovery. Most of them see themselves as one cog in society’s safety net; they prefer to do their job and save people’s lives and never know anything else about them. Occasionally, an injured party will send a thank you to the rangers afterward. One time, a woman twisted her ankle on the east face of Static Peak and wanted to pay for her rescue—when Renny explained to her that the rangers cannot accept monetary compensation but mentioned that they do drink whiskey, a case arrived at the doorstep of the ranger station the next day. After another rescue, a package of steaks was delivered to the
rangers from Kansas City.

  Rod, however, thrust his gratefulness right into their world. He came back to Jenny Lake and walked straight into the ranger station, not giving them a choice of whether or not to see him. He introduced them to Jody and Kai. Craig, who only likes to monitor the progress of his patients anonymously, said that it made his “skin crawl” to see Rod—then followed up that comment up with the explanation, “You can’t do your job if you’re crying.”

  All of the victims struck by lightning that day on the Grand still bear the remnants of charred entrance and exit wounds where the current coursed through their bodies. Jake Bancroft was in intensive care for three days, then emerged, as only Jake can twist a phrase, “100 percent except for my injuries,” by which he means that his heart and internal organs were intact.

  Initially, it wasn’t clear that would be the case—when Jake was given an EKG at the hospital around midnight on the night of the accident, his heart’s rhythm and electrical activity were extremely irregular and his creatine phosphokinase level was astronomical, indicating stress or damage to his heart and muscles. There were aspects of the ordeal that he remembered and talked about that first night in the hospital that he completely forgot by the next morning.

  On the mountain, the only pain Jake felt was around his ribs, but it turned out that there was a hole in his arm as if a chunk of meat had been ripped out of it by a hungry predator. Specific portions of his feet were blown off, and he lost most of one pinkie toe. He still has round holes basically tattooed on his body, scars larger than a silver dollar. He also suffers from permanent nerve damage, a feeling like numb or dead spots on his skin. He’s become used to the sensation. He remains unaccustomed to the migraines, the worst aftereffect for him, which have shadowed him—sometimes as many as two to three a week—since the summer of 2003.

  For the first six months after the accident, if the skies were overcast or there was a light sprinkle, Jake’s feet would begin to tingle, and he would start to go into shock. One time, when a storm came in during a fishing trip, he sat out the entire excursion in his car. Lately it seems to faze him less, although he has adopted a vast respect for the weather. Still, Jake describes the Grand climb as “It was a good time except for the outcome.”

  Like Rod, Jake watches his kids play—Kylie, born the summer before he climbed the Grand, and Cody, conceived almost immediately after the accident and born nearly nine months later to the day—and he remains convinced that if he went to sleep on the mountainside, he wouldn’t have woken up. He realizes that he was so deeply in shock, so hypothermic, that his body was shutting down. He knows that he would not have made it through that night, and consequently Cody would not have been born, if not for the climbing rangers.

  Rob Thomas sometimes looks to the sky and the mountains with anger at what was taken but always also with gratitude for what was given, which he defines as a greater sense of life. He has continued to climb and at last count has summited the Grand 13 times.

  Rob’s brother Justin, who experienced a premonition of death on the mountain, as a member of the Church of Jesus Chris of Ladder-day Saints was wearing garments, essentially sacred underwear, on the day he was hit by lightning on the Grand. The two-piece white garments are worn under clothing at all times as a constant reminder of faith and devotion and a symbolic gesture of the promises that Mormons have made to God. The top resembles a T-shirt, covering the shoulders completely and hanging below the waist, and the bottoms resemble boxer briefs but extend to the knee. In the hospital, the nurse attempting to cut off Justin’s clothing recognized that he was wearing garments and wondered aloud about them protecting him from more serious injury. Before proceeding any further, she called a bishop to give Justin a blessing regarding their removal.

  Clint Summers’s recovery, which he carefully distinguishes as his “physical” recovery, took about six months. He endured intensely painful skin grafts on his leg, taken from flesh on the other side of the same leg, a couple of inches over. After the hospital in Jackson, he was transported to a hospital in Idaho Falls for two days. He was discharged, still in a wheelchair, in time for Erica’s funeral, held on their fifth wedding anniversary.

  When Clint told his daughter, Adison, at age four that her mommy was with Jesus, he realized that she didn’t fully comprehend the enormity of the loss. The first Valentine’s Day without their mom, Adison and Daxton went to her grave with cards for her. They taped their messages to a white balloon and released it into the sky for their mom to catch.

  Two months after the accident, Rob Thomas went back to the Grand to set a cairn at the top of Friction Pitch for Erica and to carry down a 15-pound piece of granite from the area where she was struck by lightning. Clint had it engraved with “Touched by God” and Erica’s initials and dates of birth and death. The two men took the memorial stone up the Grand the following summer and put it where they knew it would be safe.

  Clint remarried the year after the accident, to a woman with two girls of her own, and in 2005, they had a baby girl, McKenna, together. His physical recovery from the lightning strike is complete, save for a scar on his leg, and an area, where his thigh was pressed against Erica when she was struck, that may never have feeling again.

  Eight rangers, the ones who were on the Grand that day—Leo Larson, Dan Burgette, Craig Holm, George Montopoli, Jim Springer, Jack McConnell, Marty Vidak, and Chris Harder—received Department of the Interior Valor Awards in Washington, D.C., the highest honor a public servant can receive. They are given only to employees of the department who demonstrate unusual courage involving a high degree of personal risk in the face of danger and risk their lives while attempting to save the life of another.

  Following the incident, the Jenny Lake climbing rangers received a letter from Fran P. Mainella, the director of the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, stating in part, “One lost life is a tragedy. Your staff and partners, however, kept that tragedy from blossoming into a catastrophe.”

  Both pilots, Laurence Perry and Rick Harmon, were named Pilot of the Year by the Helicopter Association International for their part in the rescue, the most prestigious award given by the HAI. Laurence also received a Canadian Meritorious Service Decoration, bestowed on individuals who have performed an exceptional deed or activity that brought honor to Canada.

  Renny can still climb every peak in the Teton Range faster than most, but after 35 years as a ranger, a National Park Service rule for law-enforcement employees forced him to retire in 2010 at age 57. The provision was meant to relieve employees in physical or stressful careers and help maintain a vigorous workforce, and there was no exception for Renny, despite his obvious physical fitness.

  Renny did not go quietly into that good night. At his retirement party in July 2010, when formally presented with a memento of his service by a park representative, he responded, “Ah, the dreaded plaque.” Postretirement, Renny took a position as a commercial guide in the Tetons with one of the local tour companies, and Pete Armington hired him to work with Denali National Park to reestablish its short-haul program with new helicopters.

  Dan Burgette was also forced to retire, at 57, in 2005 (“They never got a pole long enough to pull me out of there”) and is now a master woodcarver based in Tetonia, Idaho. He recently returned to his childhood home in Indiana to log three walnut trees, a hard maple, and a cherry tree for use in his carving. Leo Larson retired in 2008 and has not “touched rock” since he left. He and his wife, Helen, now run their printing business out of La Jolla, California. Craig Holm left Jenny Lake to pursue a position with the fire department in Boulder, Colorado. Brandon is currently a ranger at Zion National Park in Utah.

  George, Jim, Jack, Marty, and Chris all remain Jenny Lake climbing rangers.

  Scott Guenther, one of the rangers who unloaded short-haul patients in the Lower Saddle during the Friction Pitch accident, now leads the team.

  In general, the mountains continue to be oddly forgiving in relation
to lightning strikes, given the harsh, unpredictable storms and the number of people caught unprepared. And yet, on the afternoon after Erica’s death, lightning struck a couple hiking along the Willow Creek Trail just east of Crestone in the Colorado Rockies, killing the 25-year-old woman and sparing her husband.

  Renny says that the Friction Pitch rescue was, “As good as we’ve ever done it and perhaps as good as we ever will.” Every rescue in the Tetons is, at its core, about these rangers and the missions for which they prepare, but somehow it almost seems as if the lessons learned from each operation in the 53-year history of the Jenny Lake rangers converged to groom them for this one epic rescue.

  Climbing rangers bristle at the mention of the word “hero”—“We do what we do, we don’t need recognition.” “We don’t see ourselves that way. At all.” “Just doin’ our job is kinda cool for us.”—but this was a mass-casualty incident at extreme altitude in vertical terrain with unsettled weather and only five hours of daylight. The operation simply would not have succeeded this spectacularly anywhere else in the country. This triumph, their victory, required a confluence of the specific backgrounds and skills and judgment of each of those men at that particular time in that exact place.

  Decades of groundwork, training, and technological advancements—the cell phone, the short-haul procedure—allowed the rangers to progress to the point where they were able to pull off a pitch-perfect rescue against all but impossible odds. One climber had died instantly, but five others were severely injured and undoubtedly would not have survived without help.

  Saving them all, some might say, was like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.