Climber sustains fractures

Thu., Sept. 8, 2005

Christopher Rodkey Staff writer

TUM TUM, Wash. – A man who fell while climbing rocks behind a friend’s house Wednesday evening will probably be all right, though he gave his companion a scare.

Frank Ulijohn, 35, had picked an especially tough route, up a steep rock face, said 15-year-old Zech Barney, who was climbing with his friend.

“I told him not to do it but he did anyway,” Barney said.

The two were not using climbing gear when Ulijohn slipped and fell 20 feet, breaking his ankle and wrist, and cutting his face and arm, said Rick Nichols of Stevens County Fire District 1.

Emergency crews stopped by a nearby home to borrow climbing gear, and a team of rescue workers donned harnesses for the work, Nichols said.

Crickets chirped and the sun had dropped below the horizon while crews from Stevens County set Ulijohn’s broken bones and strapped him into a protective basket.

Five rescuers roped themselves to the basket and carefully descended 100 feet to the ambulance, which rushed Ulijohn to Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Rock rescues are a rare occurrence, Nichols said.

“We get them occasionally, but they are not a routine thing,” he said.

Barney and Ulijohn had been climbing behind Barney’s home when Ulijohn fell.

“I climb this a lot – he should have listened to me,” Barney said before directing the rescue workers in the right direction down the moss-covered granite.

When Ulijohn’s fiancée heard the news, she rushed to the rocks.

“He scared the crap out of me,” Connie Stapleton said while fidgeting with an engagement ring on her left hand. “I told him, ‘Don’t you ever do this again.’ “

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