by Bob Madgic
When the women took refuge in the rock enclosure, they wisely left their lit flashlights perched on a high rock. A ranger “spotter” on a distant point overlooking the canyon saw the light beams and guided the two rangers via radio as they descended. After hiking in the dark and cold all night, Mackie and Emmerich reached the most dangerous part of their journey, a drop down a steep and slippery granite incline. Rather than risk a fall, the two waited an hour for dawn before continuing.
Meanwhile, the four shivering and terrified hikers lay cuddled together trying to fend off the frigid temperatures. In addition to their other medical problems, one of the teens had a sharp pain in her side—a symptom, the two adults worried, of appendicitis. The night passed. None slept a single minute, their chilled bodies approaching hypothermia. Only the shared warmth from their snuggled bodies saved them.
The women left their shelter at dawn and began walking as best they could. Mackie and Emmerich, who by now had reached the canyon floor, spotted them at around 7 A.M. Emmerich administered medicine to the more seriously impaired woman, the one who had suffered a seizure, while Mackie prepared hot food and drink on his camping stove. The severe pain in the teen’s side had abated and ultimately would prove to be benign.
Back in Yosemite Valley, a rescue helicopter from Lemoore Naval Air Station near Fresno had been summoned, and when it arrived, it flew to Tenaya Canyon to evacuate the party. The chopper transported the hikers and Emmerich to the Valley, then returned to retrieve Mackie. Thus ended a successful mission.
BY THE TIME JACKSON and Campbell left Little Yosemite Valley, it was nearly 10 p.m. Jackson, who had turned twenty-three the previous month, was in superb physical condition. A long-distance runner like Hoog, he had spent the summer weeks hiking and running the parks trails. Campbell, on the other hand, as a horse patrol supervisor spent more time getting about on horseback than on foot. And he had arrived at Little Yosemite Valley this day wearing cowboy boots rather than hiking boots, not anticipating a trek through rough terrain in the dark. Even more worrisome, how would he scale Half Dome’s slippery granite in slick leather soles?
Hoog and Dan Crozier followed on the heels of Jackson and Campbell to rejoin their hiking companions at the base of Half Dome. All told, the pair would log more than sixteen miles of hiking, mostly uphill, over fourteen hours. To that, Hoog added a jaunt up and down the cables on Half Dome. As they retraced their steps, the rush of the evening’s excitement overcame their fatigue.
Right from the start, Jackson outpaced Campbell, who was silently cursing himself for not having worn hiking boots. Or better, he wished he had ridden John Paul. Jackson reached Sub Dome at 11:15 P.M. and kept on going. Campbell got there ten minutes later. By now his feet were sore and blistered. He needed hiking shoes. Approaching a tent, Campbell flashed his light, roused the sleeping occupant inside, and inquired about the man’s shoe size. The startled camper surely thought this was some kind of sick joke, but then he saw the ranger uniform and concluded it wasn’t.
Size twelve, he responded.
It was Campbell’s size exactly—a “lucky break,” he later recalled.
Campbell said he needed hiking boots. The camper offered what he had: his high-top sneakers. Campbell pulled off his boots, stashed them near the tent opening, donned the sneakers, and vanished.
It was 11:30 P.M.
MEANWHILE, RANGERS Horner, Mayer, and Ducasse rode their horses up the John Muir Trail. The terrain blocked out moonlight in many places, making it almost impossible to see anything in the shadows. Horner, the park’s horse patrol supervisor and an experienced horseman, assured his companions that their mounts knew the trail and could be relied upon to stay on it.
Mayer and Ducasse were quite leery about trusting animals to negotiate the narrow track at night, with its numerous granite steps, rocks, drainage abutments, and occasional steep drop-offs. They themselves couldn’t even sense in the dense blackness whether they were going uphill or down. Flashlights were out of the question because the light might disrupt the horses’ vision, creating an even greater hazard. So the riders had no choice but to place all faith in the animals’ ability to grip stone with their hooves and keep a hand in front of their faces to ward off any unseen branches. All the time Horner listened to his walkie-talkie for updates on the rescue and if there would be an attempted air evacuation.
SHORTLY AFTER 11 P.M., moonlight broke through partially clearing skies, spurring Reilly to move ahead with plans for a helicopter rescue. Although he still lacked a firsthand evaluation of the emergency scene, Reilly approved a request to dispatch Medi-Flight of Northern California, an air ambulance service from Memorial Hospital in Modesto, approximately a hundred miles west of Yosemite.
In 1985, such service was a relatively young concept, one rooted in knowledge gained from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. In particular, army surgeons tending the 250,000 casualties of the Vietnam War saw the need for timely triage and quickly learned the importance of rapid transport and treatment of wounded soldiers. Findings showed that victims’ chances of survival were best within the first hour of critical injury, the so-called golden hour. After that, the odds declined dramatically.
Also, research on heart attacks had demonstrated the value of prompt cardiopulmonary resuscitation. CPR must take place within four to six minutes of heart failure to restore cardiac function and oxygen circulation. Otherwise, the damage may be irreversible.
The emphasis on immediate treatment gave rise to a host of new emergency services. First came the expansion of emergency rooms at hospitals. Before the 1970s, many general acute-care hospitals didn’t have anything like an emergency department; only a few large medical centers did, and they were mostly teaching facilities. Prehospital care was almost nonexistent, and medical treatment usually didn’t begin until a patient arrived at the hospital. Typically, patients were delivered to the nearest hospital either by hearses, because they were the only vehicles available in which people could lie flat, or by an ambulance if one was at hand. At the hospital, a nurse, intern, or on-call physician would administer treatment in a room stocked only with basic medical supplies—bandages, suction, oxygen, scalpels, hemostats, splints, restraints, sutures, syringes, and a few medications. It may or may not have had any emergency equipment. If it did, this “emergency room”—now a misnomer in all but the smallest hospitals—served as the staging area for care. For serious cases, the on-call nurse would summon a staff physician, the patient’s personal doctor (if known), or perhaps another general practitioner or surgeon outside the hospital.
Over time, as the importance of sophisticated emergency care gained recognition, ambulances bypassed small hospitals with limited facilities in favor of larger medical centers with better emergency services and equipment. Thus evolved dedicated emergency departments, which were common features at most hospitals by the early 1970s.* Spurring this movement was the federal Emergency Medical Services Systems Act of 1973 authorizing the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare to provide grants to states and other jurisdictions to develop and operate emergency medical services. Expanded legislation in 1976 helped promote EMS systems in rural and other medically under-served areas.
Still, high-quality emergency rooms were inaccessible to many victims within the golden hour. What these patients needed was treatment at the scene, and that meant improving ambulance services. Up to the 1970s, ambulance drivers in most areas of the country had to meet minimal standards—get their fingerprints checked, pass a special driver’s test, and take a basic first-aid course. The situation called for trained professionals who could provide immediate, appropriate emergency medical care in the field, which prompted the creation of prehospital emergency medicine certification programs. Paramedics soon became essential members of ambulance teams.
Some urgent cases, however, necessitated the kind of sophisticated treatment available only at well-equipped hospitals. The solution: faster transport to those facilities by helicop
ter. A few advanced hospitals around the country therefore began offering air ambulance services with EMTs, nurses or paramedics, and sometimes physicians on board to provide expert care.
An auxiliary development in emergency medicine was trauma care—treating patients who have severe and multiple injuries at regional centers that offer a team of multidisciplinary experts and special trauma gear. Trauma is the leading cause of death among people younger than forty-four (auto accidents are responsible for about half of such deaths) and one of the country’s most expensive health-care problems. While many trauma deaths happen immediately many others occur past the golden hour for any number of secondary reasons. In response to this need, some hospitals gained designation as trauma centers.
On Half Dome this night, Rice’s and Weiner’s critical condition mandated transport to a trauma center. Not only can lightning injuries be highly destructive and lethal, but sometimes they aren’t readily detectable, as with damage to vital organs or the brain, impairments to the nervous and circulatory systems, or a weakening of the immune system. Only a highly trained physician using advanced technology might correctly diagnose and treat such injuries. With each passing hour, the future well-being of Rice and Weiner hinged on Medi-Flight’s ability to pluck them from Half Dome and deliver them to a trauma center.
WHEN MEDI-FLIGHT began operating on December 1, 1978, it was only the third air ambulance program in California and one of only nine nationally. Founder Rick Donker, vice president of Memorial Hospital, had earlier developed the statewide EMT curriculum.
When an accident report came in, Medi-Flight customarily flew directly to the scene or wherever the injured person was located. There, Medi-Flight’s paramedic treated and, with the help of a flight nurse, stabilized the injured party, which typically involved inserting an IV and hooking up a cardiac monitor, then strapping the patient onto a gurney. The helicopter delivered the “packaged” victim to Memorial Hospital in Modesto.
Night flights were common at Medi-Flight. It received up to three or four calls on most nights, many from the California Highway Patrol. Each response depended on the amount of moonlight available for a safe flight, landing, and evacuation.
Given its proximity to Yosemite, Medi-Flight routinely flew there, perhaps once or twice a week in the busy summer months and maybe once a month or less in winter. However, flying a helicopter into Yosemite Valley could be dicey even in daylight, particularly on summer afternoons when the heat and thinner air made it more difficult for chopper blades to generate lift. Crane Flat, which sits above the Valley floor, gave helicopters more room to maneuver; consequently many victims were taken there for airlift out of the park.
Night flights to Yosemite Valley were less common. On moonless nights, victims in critical condition were transported by ambulance to Crane Flat to await air evacuation if and when conditions permitted.
Medi-Flight became especially cautious about night flights after a tragic mission on June 23, 1982. Just after 1 A.M., a Medi-Flight crew that included a top-notch pilot, paramedic, and nurse took off from Modesto for Sonora Pass in the Sierra Nevada to retrieve an auto accident victim in critical condition. In scant moonlight, while trying to manuever the craft for landing, the pilot was disoriented by a patch of darkness. Helicopter lights don’t provide adequate illumination in pitch dark, with no objects to illuminate. All the pilot sees is bright light and a black backdrop. In effect, he can’t see.* Airplane pilots can navigate by instruments when flying in utter darkness or obscured conditions, but helicopter pilots don’t use instruments in tight places like Yosemite Valley. For them, it all comes down to visibility. They need ambient light to see objects, landmarks, and the horizon—reference points for keeping the craft properly oriented. When visibility is poor, a helicopter pilot may be unable to sense if the machine is turning, tilting, dropping, or ascending and can quickly become disoriented, lose control, and begin an “uncontrolled descent”—or even flip the craft. That’s what happened in this case. When the Medi-Flight pilot hit a dark patch, he couldn’t see and, hence, couldn’t navigate. The craft began swerving and dropping, its tail rotor hit a tall cedar tree, and the machine crashed. All three crew members perished, including paramedic Dan Donker, Rick Donker’s twenty-eight-year-old brother.
In 1982 alone, nearly twenty air ambulance personnel were killed nationwide. So when authorities in Yosemite requested a nighttime evacuation from Half Dome on July 27, 1985, Medi-Flight was understandably guarded about accepting the assignment.
The pilot on duty at the time was Al Major, thirty-five years old. Major had learned how to fly helicopters in U.S. Army Flight School at age nineteen. Immediately after graduation in April 1969, he left for Vietnam, where he was stationed at Tay Ninh northwest of Saigon on the Cambodian border. Major flew UH-1Hs (Hueys) and AH-1Gs (Cobras), first as a pilot, then as an aircraft commander, fire team leader, and ultimately air mission commander. During his nineteen-month tour, he logged close to seventeen hundred combat flying hours. Although several times he returned to base with his chopper “limping” from enemy fire, Major escaped injuries or wounds. By the time he was discharged in 1970, he had received the Bronze Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, and fifty-three Air Medal awards, each one awarded for either twenty-five hours of combat flight or fifty hours of non-combat flight. Most of Major’s were the former.
Before he agreed to fly the Half Dome mission, Major contacted the FAA’s Flight Service Station in Stockton for moon information. The station reported a quarter to third moon that would set behind Yosemite’s ridges at 1:42 A.M. Medi-Flight’s protocols called for departure within six to ten minutes after a call came in. The flight to Yosemite Valley would take approximately thirty-seven minutes, if all went well, and arrive shortly after midnight. It would be a tight window, but a rescue attempt was possible— if the moonlight held. Because he would need to refuel on this extended mission, Major also requested confirmation from Yosemite that he could access the fuel in the Lemoore Naval Air Station’s cache in the Valley (its helicopter search and rescue squadron sometimes performed rescues in Yosemite).
With these matters resolved, Medi-Flight accepted the assignment. Major took off from Modesto at 11:23 P.M. in the company’s TwinStar, a large, French-made helicopter geared to the demands of the air ambulance trade.
Whenever he flew, Major conversed sparingly and showed little humor. His main concern was the safety of his crew and helicopter. He strived to make each mission as routine as possible; he remained cool and detached while focusing only on immediate tasks. Major imposed a steadfast rule: When a call came in, he wasn’t to receive any information about the victims. That way, his decisions would be free of emotional influence.
Accompanying Major were flight nurse Maggie Newman and paramedic Bill Bryant. Because nurses undergo more training than paramedics do, the flight nurse is in charge of medical care on air ambulance flights. But such training focuses on hospital care, so nurses typically relinquish authority in the field to the paramedic, who usually has more experience with field traumas.
As a hospital nurse, Newman once witnessed a helicopter rescue; the high drama captivated her. After that, she wanted to be part of an air ambulance team. She got her wish and soon became, as she says, a “trauma junkie,” her adrenaline racing while dealing with life-and-death situations—from knife and gunshot wounds to car accidents, falls from precipitous heights, and other human calamities. Although Newman was scared to death most of the time, she tried never to show it. To achieve calm, she sometimes slept in the helicopter en route. Major didn’t like that; he wanted crew members to be on the lookout for other aircraft and obstacles. Newman occasionally donned sunglasses and a cap so Major couldn’t see her sleeping.
The nurse on the ill-fated flight that crashed in 1982 had been Medi-Flight’s chief flight nurse. Newman suffered panic attacks following the accident. After time off to reflect on whether this was really the right career for her, she returned to work as chief flight nurse at Me
di-Flight, the position she held in July 1985.
In all of her experiences, however, she had never treated a lightning victim.
Paramedic Bryant received his EMT certification when he was only a high school senior, in a class that Rick Donker taught. Bryant had been scheduled to man the doomed 1982 flight but wanted to go to Mexico on a getaway and got Dan Donker to cover for him. Others sometimes perceived Bryant as arrogant and a “cowboy” who often ignored protocols and instructions if he thought something should be done differently. He didn’t hesitate to correct doctors when he thought their actions were wrong.
Field emergencies often involve head traumas, broken necks, and excessive bleeding, each of which can cause shock. Among environmental injuries are hypothermia, frostbite, drowning, and snakebite. Logistical issues may complicate these medical problems, something that few nurses or physicians have experience handling. A patient with chest pain, for example, might be given oxygen and receive an IV and morphine—standard medical procedures. But if a victim is pinned inside a car that’s upside down in a muddy ditch, what then? Bryant insisted that fellow paramedics at Medi-Flight learn how to rappel, make an accident scene safe, fight fires, extricate people, carry out search and rescue operations, and perform other important nonmedical tasks.
Ironically, Bryant had taught segments of Linda Crozier’s EMT class. But as the copter lifted off in Modesto and headed toward Yosemite, he had no idea that Crozier was the very person who’d taken charge of administering emergency treatment atop Half Dome.
AS CAMPBELL HIKED up Sub Dome, he got a report on his walkie-talkie that an air ambulance was on its way, which meant he had to reach the top of Half Dome in time to establish a landing zone (LZ). Quickening his pace, he arrived at the bottom of the cables at 11:45 p.m. as Jackson’s silhouette appeared against the sky beyond the ridgeline above.