‘Saved by Pedro’: Rescued climber ready to give back, joins Search and Rescue team

After being rescued from a climbing accident at Chimney Rock and recovering from the injuries, Ammi Midstokke has joined the ranks of the volunteers who saved her.

“I get to keep my foot,” Midstokke said last weekend at a Priest Lake Search and Rescue weekend winter training camp. “That’s a big benefit of having rescue teams available.”

The Sandpoint outdoors enthusiast was rescued in September after a 1.5-ton boulder shifted and trapped her foot as she hiked out from climbing the Selkirk Mountains granite spire east of Priest Lake.

Her climbing partner Jason Luthy did what he could to make her comfortable, but he couldn’t get her free. He had to phone for help as the sun was dropping toward the horizon.

More than 20 rescuers from Priest Lake Search and Rescue and the Bonner County EMS Wilderness Response Team set out on foot after 8 p.m. with rope, medical gear and heavy pry bars. Negotiating steep, rocky terrain, the rescuers reached Midstokke at 12:49 a.m.

They delicately moved the boulder and extracted Midstokke, 36, from the deadly situation. Then they helped her deal with pain and cold through the night until a helicopter from Fairchild Air Force Base could fly in at 7 a.m., hoist her litter on a cable and fly her to medical care.

Four months later, her foot has mostly healed from being crushed for nine hours by the boulder, although nerve damage is still an issue.

“I’m ready to give back,” said Midstokke, a nutritionist with Two Birds Nutrition in Sandpoint. She noted that every time she saw PLSR director Mike Nielsen after her accident he handed her an application to join the team of about 200 volunteers. “Search and rescue groups need everybody’s support,” she said.

“I’m an experienced outdoors woman. I never thought I’d be the one needing their help. I figured search and rescue was for the ill-prepared crusty hikers.

“Now I know that even badass climbers can have an emergency. Anyone can. Sometimes it’s all about really bad luck.”

Members of the 36th Rescue Flight stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base also impressed Midstokke, not just for their skills, but for their pride and humanity.

“They were so professional,” she said. “They followed up to see how I was during recovery. I was so moved by that. They sent me a t-shirt showing a flying helicopter with a donkey tethered below it in a sling with the title, “We saved your….”

When the airmen heard Midstokke was enrolled in the winter survival and rescue training they were conducting last weekend for PLSR, they brought her another memento.

After teaching her group how to secure a victim in a litter for a helicopter cable pick-up – a lesson in which Midstokke had first-hand experience – Capt. Augustin Viani called her out and gave her a special poker chip.

“It’s the same chip we put in the pockets of the wounded we rescue in places like Afghanistan,” he said. “When they recover and get their stuff back, they find the chip.”

The memento includes the Air Force unit’s rescue creed: “That others may live.” An emblem on the chip features a guardian angel holding a globe and the inscription, “Saved by Pedro,” a name they give to a rescue helicopter.

Midstokke hugged Viana, noting that she didn’t have the chance during the rescue.

“Being helpful makes everyone happy,” she said as she continued with her group in 35-degree temperatures to practice signaling, building fires in a wet environment and making emergency winter shelters out of snow, tarps and natural materials.

“I hope it gets warmer before I get my first call to go out on search and rescue,” she joked.

“Seriously, I wouldn’t just be happy to help someone; I’d be honored.”