Hiker survives 1,200-foot fall down ravine after avalanche

A Washington state hiker was rescued after surviving a dramatic 1,200-foot fall down a ravine on Mt. Ellinor over the weekend, officials said.

A search and rescue team from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island raced to the Olympic National Forest Saturday night, after getting a distress call around 6:20 pm from a man saying that he was unable to find or contact his hiking partner, the US Navy said in a statement.

“We got on scene and we saw multiple avalanche paths, and using our night-vision goggles, because it was dark outside, we were able to see the top of the mountain where there were a bunch of footprints from him and his partner, but we couldn’t really see where the footprints ended up going,” Lt. Joey Curtis, who took part in the rescue operation, told the news channel KING5.

After finding no trace of the missing 30-year-old trekker near the summit of the nearly 6,000-foot mountain, the rescue crew began searching the bottom of a large avalanche runout some 1,000 feet down slope from the peak.

During that phase of the search, crewmen spotted a flashing light near a boulder field slightly below the avalanche runout — and more than 1,200 feet below where the hiker initially fell.

The Naval Air Station crew traveling by helicopter lowered a rescuer to the hiker’s location and, fearing further avalanches or rock falls, quickly hoisted him up to safety.

The biggest concern for the rescuers was that the hovering helicopter could trigger another avalanche, so speed was essential.

The hiker was then flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle to be treated for a broken arm, symptoms of hypothermia and massive scrapes.