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LITTLE COTTONWOOD CANYON — Authorities say an 18-year-old woman's condition has improved after a medical helicopter hoisted her out of Little Cottonwood Canyon following a 50-foot fall Wednesday.
Police are also asking hikers to be more prepared in light of an unprecedented spike in search and rescue operations this summer, saying about 20 such rescues have occurred in the mountains of Salt Lake County over the past 30 days.
Abigail Ward, of Salt Lake County, was hiking with her 15-year-old brother when she slipped and fell from a steep precipice at Lisa Falls around 1:15 p.m. and landed in a pool of water, said Unified Police Lt. Lex Bell.
Ward was knocked unconscious. She was still unconscious when she was hoisted out of the area by a Life Flight helicopter, Bell said. Her condition was upgraded from critical to serious late Wednesday afternoon at a nearby hospital, where she was put into a medically induced coma.
Ward's brother was able to rescue his sister from the water, call 911 and give emergency responders his GPS coordinates, Bell said. The helicopter crew should also be thanked for the nimble rescue, the lieutenant said.
"It would be really difficult to get to her quickly and get to her down off the mountain without having the helicopter as quickly as we did. … It was really fortunate that life flight was able to get to her get the hoist there and get her hoist up and out of there. It saved us a couple hours, I would imagine, in the rescue effort."
Police believe Ward slipped in a steep and wet area of Lisa Falls, Bell said. He said the terrain in the area is "extremely" steep.
"I don’t think that they were ill-prepared. I don’t think that they were people that shouldn’t be hiking," Bell said. "They looked like they were ... in good shape. It just seems to be tragic circumstances where she slipped and fell."
Ward suffered significant head and internal injuries, according to Bell.
The lieutenant said his agency has been involved in roughly 20 rescues over the past 30 days and 35 rescues overall this year, a pace that is "busier than we’ve ever had in the past." The workload puts a strain on volunteer search and rescue crews, who normally are called to 40 to 50 hiking rescues in the entirety of a typical busy year, he said.
"These are people taking time out of their day, out of their job, out of their life to come rescue people," Bell said. "We’re taxing them."
One Life Flight official said the civilian-operated service has also performed an extraordinary number of hoist rescues in 2016. Life Flight has performed 17 hoist rescues so far in 2016, already well above the yearly average of between 10 and 15, said Jess Gomez, spokesman for Intermountain Healthcare, which runs Life Flight.
That number includes eight rescues performed in just one month this year, said Life Flight operations director Bill Butts.
