Injured hiker describes ordeal

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, Wash. – The sound of a .45- caliber pistol fired by a stranded, injured hiker in Olympic National Park alerted searchers to his location in a canyon clearing hidden by trees, park officials and the hiker said Thursday.

Tim Bailey, 32, of Mountlake Terrace, said he fired his pistol intermittently from last Monday until he was found Wednesday and hoisted out of the ravine by helicopter.

He started with 14 rounds.

“I have five left,” Bailey said in a telephone interview as he and his wife, Whitney, 31, drove home Thursday.

Bailey, who was reported overdue Aug. 26, was found at the bottom of a ravine near the North Fork of the Sol Duc River suffering from a broken ankle that he splinted with foam from his backpack and strips of fabric from his tent.

An experienced hiker, he was on a three-day hike when he tried to traverse the wall of a drainage ravine late Saturday afternoon, slipped on loose dirt, and tumbled 150 feet down the ravine, landing in a small clearing near a creek.

Although he broke his ankle in his head-over-heels descent, he may have been prevented from more serious injuries by a sleeping pad he secured behind his neck 30 seconds before his long slide to the bottom, he said.

“I ended up having some cushioning for my head,” he recalled.

“For the first 20 feet, I thought, ‘OK, I can do that.’ Then I said, ‘OK, Jesus help me.’ ”

Bailey tried grabbing trees but rotated away as he gathered speed.

“Then I just gave a serious prayer to God and said, ‘Help me.’ I had a sense of peace. I said, ‘If this is death, I’ll be fine. I know I’m in God’s hands.’

“I thought of so many things,” he added.

“It was one of those moments where your sense of time kind of stands still, and a lot of things kind of get packed into whatever period of time that was.”

He landed on a 10-foot-wide clearing near a creek, splinted his ankle – he kept his tarp for shelter – and gathered wood for a fire he kept constantly stoked.

Bailey had brought a lighter, matches and extra food.

He built a bed with bark and moss.

On Wednesday, rescuers on the ground heard what sounded like a gunshot and directed a HiLine Helicopters aircraft, with National Park Service personnel on board, to the area where the noise came from, park spokeswoman Rainey McKenna said.

Searchers located Bailey by detecting smoke from the fire, she said.

Bailey’s rescuers finally saw him on their third pass through about a 20-foot hole in the tree canopy, Bailey said.

“It was an extremely emotional time of just yelling out praying that they’d see me,” Bailey said.

He said his 2-year-old son, Seamus, is fascinated with helicopters. The couple also have a son, 7, and a daughter, 5.

Little Seamus calls helicopters “good guys.”

The Coast Guard crew dropped lines through the trees and lifted Bailey to safety, he said.

“When I heard that helicopter, I was far more excited than (Seamus has) ever been,” Bailey said.