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Jed Boal Reporting Two hikers fall from treacherous terrain high in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Life Flight retrieves one with serious injuries. The other is dead.
The teenage boys were hiking in an area of sheer cliffs, when something went terribly wrong.
Search and rescue crews still have not pieced together exactly what happened up in the Lake Blanche area. They know this; two male hikers fell in a dangerous area. They saved one, but the other did not make it.
"We were running out of daylight. That was a serious issue."
Search and Rescue crews faced great challenges on the ground and in the air. At 4:30 a hiker called 911 and said he'd fallen 100 feet. He was disoriented and hurt.
It took Life Flight and news helicopters a couple of hours to find him as he clung to a rock, with head and neck injuries.
He was on shale that was covered with five feet of snow. That means rescue crews faced a serious avalanche danger. Nevertheless, Life Flight plucked him off the rock in serious condition.
Meantime, rescuers had no idea what kind of shape the other hiker was in. As the sun was setting, they struggled to come up with a safe rescue plan.
Life Flight went back up to the mountain, and lowered an experienced rescuer. He discovered that the other hiker didn't survive. The rescuers then backed off from the dangerous terrain.
They plan to return to the mountain to recover the body tomorrow.
The names of the victims have not been released.
As we've reported, rescue teams have had a busy few months.
One week ago tonight, two hikers became stranded near the Brighton Ski Resort. A helicopter spotted them and the men got out with hypothermia.
Last month, a rock climber fell 30 feet in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Rescuers got him off the mountain and into a helicopter.
The hiker was wearing a helmet and avoided worse injury.
