Climber hangs on for life

Part 3: “Am I going to be OK?” a dangling climber asks as rangers finally reach him in this last installment of “Courage on Friction Pitch,” a three-part serial about a lightning strike last summer that left climbers dead and injured high in Grand Teton National Park, Wyo.

“Down and comfortable,” Craig Holm coolly radioed to the pilot above as he unhooked the rope that had tethered him to the helicopter and lowered him onto the 10-foot-wide mountain ledge.

Holm peered over the edge, 50 feet down to where Rod Liberal was dangling off Friction Pitch in a ghastly upside-down V. He figured Rod’s back was broken.

“Rod,” he yelled. He heard moans below.

Holm rappelled down a thin rope at elevation 13,000 feet and soon was hanging near Rod’s waist. He attached a tether from his harness to Rod in case the climber’s rope was damaged by the lightning.

“I’m Craig,” Holm gently began. “We’re here to get you out of here … How ya doing? Talk to me.”

Rod mumbled incoherently.

“Rod, do you know where you’re at?”

“I think I’m in Grand Teton,” he said in almost a whisper.

“Do you know what happened to you?”

“No.”

Rod was too weak to tell Holm how much pain he was in, how relieved he was to see him. He had willed himself to keep going by thinking of his wife, Jody, and their baby son. He kept praying.

“Whoever gave me life,” he said to himself, “please help me keep it.”

It was past 6 p.m. The two men were suspended side by side next to jagged, steeply sloping rock, with layers of ledges below. Holm was in a sitting position in his harness, his feet against the wall.

Rod was bent backward, belly toward the sky. His clothing was tattered under his left arm and across the left side of his chest.

Holm unzipped Rod’s jacket, pulled up his T-shirt and saw a purplish, spidery 6-inch mark that appeared to be a lightning burn under the climber’s left arm, expanding across part of his chest.

Rod’s breathing sounded like a snore and that worried Holm, who fashioned a chest harness from nylon slings, wrapped it under Rod’s arms and around his back, and lifted him onto his lap.

Now both faced the wall. Rod’s breathing improved. Holm continued his medical check.

“Does this hurt?” he asked, pressing Rod’s ribs.

“Owww,” he moaned.

Rod winced when Holm pressed his lower back, hips and left side — his chest, arm and shoulder.

Next up for Rod was oxygen. But the tank was stuffed in Holm’s backpack. Cradling Rod, he couldn’t pull it out without the risk of dropping it on a rescuer below.

“George!” Holm yelled. “I’m going to need an extra hand down here.”

Ranger George Montopoli, who had been setting anchors above, is one of many Teton veterans. During the off-season, he’s also a math professor in Arizona.

As Montopoli descended, Holm kept talking. But Rod had his own question.

“Am I going to be OK?” he asked. “I’ve got a 3-month-old son.”

“What’s his name?” Holm asked.

“Kai.”

Holm figured Rod had a 50-50 chance, but he wasn’t about to tell him that.

“We’re going to do everything we can,” he promised.

Rod was in no shape to be plucked from the mountain as the others were — in a helicopter-borne harness. Rescuers above lowered the 100-pound, orange plastic litter, which consists of a backboard and basket. It was rigged with four straps from a center ring.

With Holm holding the litter steady and Montopoli crouched like a cat on its narrow rims, they pulled the backboard out and gingerly moved Rod onto it and then into the basket. With Velcro straps, they secured his body, bundling Rod in a sleeping bag and down coats.

It was 7:56 p.m. Rod had been hanging for more than four hours.

The litter was attached by four adjustable straps to something rangers here call “the god ring.” They joke the large metal O is called that because you put all your trust in it — or, if it breaks, you’ll see God.

Montopoli climbed up to help raise the litter, which now weighed about 400 pounds, including the basket, Rod and his escort, Holm.

Atop Friction Pitch, ranger Leo Larson radioed a rescue supervisor.

“What’s pumpkin hour?” he asked, referring to the 30-minutes-after-sunset deadline for helicopter flying.

Close, he was told.

“You guys catch that?” Larson said. “Let’s go!”

Working from a narrow ledge, Larson, Montopoli and two other rangers, Jack McConnell and Marty Vidak, hoisted the litter, using pulleys.

Foot by foot, Holm walked up the wall, steadying the litter at his waist and shielding it from banging against rock.

He narrated as they moved: “Rod, we’re going to haul you to a place where we can fly you out. This is going to be a little bumpy.”

Rod was more sluggish.

“Tell me about your son,” Holm urged, trying to keep him alert.

When they finally reached the ledge atop Friction Pitch, the rangers quickly readied Rod for the helicopter ride down. As pilot Laurence Perry hovered, the god ring holding the litter was attached to the chopper’s 100-foot rope.

It was 8:57 p.m.

“Lifting,” Perry announced. The basket rose, silhouetted in the last glow of the fading sun.

Holm edged close to his patient, slinging his left leg out, grabbing one of the litter straps and draping his body horizontally across the outside of the basket.

“Rod, we’re flying,” he shouted in the wind, his face 6 inches away. “We’re going to set you down in the meadow. It’s almost over.”

Twelve minutes later, they landed.

The storm clouds on the Tetons were long gone. The night sky was brilliant with stars.

Epilogue

In late September, Rod returned home. His friends surprised him with a party on his 28th birthday.

He survived pneumonia, pancreatitis and kidney problems that required dialysis. He used a cane for a troublesome right hip. He required months of therapy and healing. He’s still unable to climb a year later and may require hip surgery.

The other climbers’ injuries ranged from third-degree burns to a broken shoulder.

Erica Summers was laid to rest on her fifth wedding anniversary.

Her husband, Clinton, told their two young children their mother is in heaven. “These things happen for a reason,” he said.

On Sept. 27, Rob Thomas scaled the Grand and built a marker of rocks where Erica and Clinton had been sitting. He removed a hunk of granite to engrave in memory of Erica and the climbers who survived that day on Friction Pitch.

Last month, on the weekend of July 24-25, a year after the tragedy, all of the climbers except the still-injured Liberal, made a climbing expedition to the Grand and discretely placed the memorial which said, simply, “Touched by God.”