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Skier hurt in fall
A Jackson man was in critical condition Monday after injuring his head in a fall from an 80-foot cliff in the backcountry south of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.
By Michael Pearlman and Cara Froedge, Jackson Hole Daily
February 19,2008
A Jackson man was in critical condition Monday after injuring his head in a fall from an 80-foot cliff in the backcountry south of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.
The incident Sunday was one of two for which a Teton County Search and Rescue contract helicopter was used to transport victims. Earlier in the day, rescuers picked up a pair of uninjured snowmobilers who had gotten stuck in the Blackrock Creek drainage southwest of Togwotee Mountain Lodge.
According to reports, Curtis Stauffer, 32, was skiing on Pucker Face off Cody Peak and made several turns before tumbling backward over a low-angle, 80-foot cliff and then sliding for another 100 feet on the snow.
Stauffer’s partner, his brother Marcus, screamed for help when he discovered Curtis had fallen and hit his head. The first to respond were 17-year-old Ian Johnston and his friend Brett Riotto, who heard the screams from the No Shadows area of Cody Peak.
They traversed over and saw Curtis Stauffer was upside down in the snow, Johnston said.
“He wasn’t buried, but he was in a lot of pain, squirming and moaning,” he said.
Johnston called 911 about 1:30 p.m. and then, with Riotto and Marcus Stauffer, helped keep Curtis Stauffer from moving for about 30 minutes until Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Ski Patrol arrived.
He said other skiers passed by but refused to help, even after they were asked to, because they said, “We can’t listen to the moaning and screaming.”
Johnston, who said Curtis Stauffer was wearing a helmet, said it appeared he banged the right side of his head against a rock. A sheriff’s report states Stauffer suffered a broken arm and a head injury.
“We were trying to keep him from moving,” Johnston said. “He was fighting us the whole time.”
The Stauffer brothers both live in Jackson. Curtis Stauffer is the bar manager at The Granary, where he has worked for three years, said manager Wes Clarke. He is married.
Ski patrollers were the first to respond to the ski accident and reached Stauffer around 2 p.m., packaged him and, along with Johnston, Riotto and the victim’s brother, packed out a landing zone. Helicopter pilot Ken Johnson, Dr. A.J. Wheeler and EMT Arlo Niederer flew to Teton Village and attempted to reach Stauffer but were thwarted by gusty winds.
The helicopter was forced to return to Teton Village, where equipment was unloaded to lighten the load and the victim was moved to a landing site lower on the mountain. After circling several times, Johnson was able to land around 3:30 p.m. and transport Stauffer to St. John’s Medical Center. He was then flown to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, where he remained in the intensive care unit Monday.
“Ken Johnson did a fantastic job,” Wheeler said. “I don’t know that anyone else would have been able to do it.”
The helicopter rescue wasn’t Johnson’s first flight of the day. Earlier Sunday, Search and Rescue volunteers airlifted a pair of snowmobilers who had spent the night out Saturday after getting lost on Togwotee Pass. The two Minnesota men in their 20s had been last seen Saturday afternoon riding near the Continental Divide Trail, where members of their party had gotten their snowmobiles stuck. Two guides responded to a call for help and reported seeing the men riding north into a steep, densely treed area. The two men were reported overdue by family members that evening.
A helicopter was dispatched at first light Saturday morning. After locating the riders’ tracks, rescuers spotted the men around 7:30 a.m. in the bottom of the Blackrock Creek drainage, where they had gotten their sleds stuck.
Deep snow, heavy tree cover and the steep terrain made it impossible for volunteers to ride snowmobiles into the site or land a helicopter in the area, so rescuers opted to do a short-haul evacuation, in which a rescuer hangs from a rope under the helicopter. The two victims were placed in “screamer suits,” nylon bags that can be wrapped around a victim, and then quickly transported to the road in an operation that took only eight minutes. The two sleds were then removed from the site using a long line and the rescuers were then short-hauled from the scene.
Teton County Search and Rescue director Tim Ciocarlan confirmed it was the first time Search and Rescue volunteers had used the technique during an incident, though they had conducted more than 50 training sessions using the technique throughout the winter.
“It is a risky maneuver and we thought about it hard before we used it, but it saves so much time,” Ciocarlan said. “Ultimately, we had a far higher level of safety by using it. We were in and out in less than two hours total, with the victims in and out in eight minutes.”
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