After climber survives gruesome injury in Sierras, it takes five helicopters to rescue her

A solo female climber was nearing the remote summit of California’s second-tallest mountain last week when she fell, injuring her leg so badly the bone was sticking through her skin.

What’s more, she lost her backpack. So, in a span of seconds, she went from nearing a personal triumph to finding herself alone and severely injured on a isolated and unforgiving mountainside with no food, water or extra clothing.

That became a potentially life-threatening issue when, shortly after the fall, a line of afternoon thunderstorms rolled through the mountains, bringing high wind, terrifying lightning and buckets of rain.

The Inyo County Sheriff’s Department’s Search and Rescue team, which coordinated the long and harrowing extraction, did not name the woman in a Facebook post on Monday, or provide a cost estimate of the rescue — which involved five helicopters and took two days.

The Inyo County Sheriff’s Office was notified by Emergency Services of SOS activation from a solo female climber.

(Inyo County Sheriff’s Department)

A spokesperson for the Search and Rescue team did not respond to requests for comment, but in a social media post they praised the stricken climber’s courage throughout the harrowing ordeal.

“Enormous bravery and fortitude was shown by this patient, and all involved were impressed by her ability to remain calm, collected, and alive,” they wrote.

Mt. Williamson is in the Eastern Sierras, about 240 miles northeast of Los Angeles, near Independence. At 14,380 feet tall, it stands in a range that towers over the Owens Valley.

Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the United States outside Alaska, is a few miles to the south.

While Mt. Whitney is extremely well-known and well-traveled — so many people want to climb it that the U.S. Forest Service has to limit the number to 160 a day in peak season — Mt. Williamson is remote and untamed.

“I’ve climbed it six times and I’ve never seen anybody else on the mountain, other than the people in our party,” said Dave Miller, a professional climber and owner of International Alpine Guides in Mammoth Lakes.

Because of its isolation, and the fact that there is no established trail above 10,000 feet, Williamson is, “many, many times more difficult” than Mt. Whitney, Miller said.

A popular guidebook calls the upper reaches of Mt. Williamson “a confusing maze of chutes, many of which lead to dead ends.”

The Inyo Search and Rescue Facebook post offered no details about the rescued climber’s experience, but it did mention that she was climbing “off-route” in that final, tricky stretch, at about 13,600 feet elevation.

“What gets people into trouble, more than anything, is getting off route and then getting on something harder or looser than they expected,” Miller said.

One compelling detail in the post is that the woman was alone in such a remote, and challenging wilderness. As a general rule, hikers and climbers are advised to go to such places in groups and to stick together in case something goes wrong.

But experienced climbers “solo” mountains all the time, and experts agree it can be reasonably safe as long as they stick to terrain that they can handle with ease.

And although Mt. Williamson is remote and difficult by a casual hiker’s standards, it would not be overly ambitious for an experienced mountaineer to tackle alone, said Howie Schwartz, another veteran mountain guide with decades of experience in the Sierras.

“I don’t think it would be an overreach for somebody who was familiar with these mountains and familiar with the area, it could be a good adventure,” Schwartz said. It would be a different story, entirely, for an inexperienced “city person” who knew little more than what’s available on the internet, he said.

Whatever her background, the woman rescued last week owes her life to multiple agencies that refused to give up trying to reach her even after bad weather and high elevation pushed them back time and time again.

And to a $400 satellite transmitter, called an InReach, that she used to send an SOS message and communicate with authorities despite the lack of a cellphone signal.

Soon after receiving the distress call on Wednesday, the Inyo Search and Rescue team requested help from other agencies, and a California Highway Patrol helicopter landed in the small town of Lone Pine and picked up two rescue climbers. “But dense cloud cover over the mountain forced the helicopter to return without reaching the subject’s location,” according to Inyo Search and Rescue’s Facebook post.

With daylight running out and the storm raging, a call for help went out to the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station. Even the Navy couldn’t get directly to the stricken woman, but just before midnight, they dropped four rescue climbers at 10,500 feet — about 2,000 feet below her.

By sunrise they had made their way to the bottom of the steep face the woman was trapped on, and they were within shouting distance of her, but they still couldn’t reach her.

The next day, Thursday, a CHP helicopter managed to drop two more rescue climbers 300 feet above the injured woman. They were able to descend and finally reach her, 23 hours after the ordeal began.

But getting to her was only half the battle; they still had to find some way to get her out of there. She was stuck in a “steep, narrow chute” — like a chimney surrounded by rock walls — that “exceeded the helicopter’s hoist capabilities,” according to the post.

So they called the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which has a helicopter equipped with an extra-long hoist cable. That helicopter showed up, but it couldn’t reach the high altitude.

Another call went out to the military, this time the California National Guard, and an extremely powerful Black Hawk helicopter was sent to the scene. That one was finally able to climb to the necessary altitude and hoist the woman to safety.

“This mission is a powerful reminder of the dangers of high-altitude mountaineering and the extraordinary efforts behind each rescue,” the Sheriff’s Department noted on Facebook.