Brett's Amazing Story of Survival

Hello All:

Our adventures continue in New Zealand and I will have to say I have never had quite the adventure I had yesterday(April 5th).  Hopefully I will never experience anything like this again.  I will be dramatic by setting the stage for this story.  We left Christchurch this morning which is on the East Coast of the South Island and were heading to the West Coast thru a mountain pass called Arthur's Pass.  It is suppose to be a spectacular pass which it was.  It was a bright clear sunny day.  I have to admit I was a real pain in the butt this morning and was not making it a very nice trip this morning.  I think the stress of the trip/stress of Kelly's leg and being immobile is not making me very pleasant at times.  Kelly is the real rock/planner/packer of the family.  Things got better after a nice walk in a garden of massive rocks with the kids-exploring around and Kelly got some quality sun time waiting for us in her sitting with leg up position.  We than went to a lakeside picnic area for a nice lunch.

After lunch and all that running around the kids quickly fell asleep.  We arrived at Arthur's Pass very quickly after they fell asleep and I really wanted to see this beautiful waterfall at a place called Devil's Punchbowl.  I decided it would be best to let them sleep and I would just quickly put on my running shoes and run about 1 mile up a trail to the waterfall and be back in about 20-30 minutes and the kids would wake up.  Kelly was fine with that plan.  I parked as much out of the sun as I could and off I went.

The trail was advertised as a fairly steep moderately difficult trail and after running up, up, up I was a believer.  I passed a couple groups on the way up and remember one of group because it was a group of 4 kids with 2 women and what I assumed was grandpa.  Grandpa seemed on the older side to be climbing a big hill and the daughters seemed to be a little worried about him.  I was focused on my run and getting to the waterfall so I kept on a running.  Like a typical NZ trail the edges are steep and the trail is minimally maintained but this one had great stairs-fairly new I think.   I got to the waterfall and it was nice-never as nice when your family/someone else isn't with you.  I had a couple take my photo and I took a photo of them.   Off back down the trail to the waiting family-I was doing good time and looked forward to the downhill portion.

As I got up the only up hill part of my way down the grandkids were throwing rocks off the ledge and were a bit startled by me and stopped.  I assume they thought I was going to not like that.  I kept going and got to the top and came around the corner and there was grandpa and just a ways behind was the daughters.  I passed them and than the scream from the daughters I will never forget. WHERE IS DAD-He fell over the edge or something of the sorts I don't really remember.  It was the scream and panic that you know means something terrible has happened.  I knew grandpa had fallen over the edge and I have to admit I had a brief moment of should I go back to help or should I keep going down because I was probably really scared of what the outcome was going to be.  I turned around and ran fast up to them and he had fallen over the edge.  This was a shear drop down about 50 feet and than a small area of a slant in the ground than probably 200-300ft down to a river gorge.  I assumed he was dead at the bottom of the gorge.  I was terrified and the family was terrified.  No one could see him and so I ran farther down the trail as it cut back some on itself and gave a better view.  There he was about 50 feet down from the edge wedged under a tree and oh my god he was moving and trying to get up!  What now, what do you do.  I almost ran back to get Kelly to call for help than I said to them-look I am a Doctor someone else will need to go back to call for help.  I looked at one of the grandkids-said how old are you-she said 12 yrs old.  I told her to take my camera, go back and find a grey honda accord and tell the lady in there to call for help(that was our car and Kelly FYI). I told her she would need to call 111 in NZ.  Apparently upon reaching the car she found Kelly but kept saying she needed to find a girl in a grey honda civic because her grandfather had fallen and needed help.  She said a man in a grizzly shirt told her to find this lady in a grey honda civic.  After some confusion Kelly realized it was her she was looking for in a grey honda accord whose husband was wearing a Gizzy Boy shirt.  Kelly called  for help.

Now I remember from my training as a doctor/survival course/trauma education that the worst thing you can do in a tragedy is to put yourself at risk and cause more injuries. Whoever taught me that  thank you cause at this point I calmed down some(took my own pulse as they say in residency training).  I am sure we were all really jacked up on adrenaline. I think I yelled down to him to STAY STILL-DONT MOVE and I remember someone else yelling similar.  At this point I moved down off the trail and found a reasonable route to get over to him-there were some fallen trees to provide footing and some bush to grab on to.  I entered from the side because he had falled down a rather shear drop.  I seemed to get to him rather quickly and his daughter was not far behind me.  Once again I was just amazed he was alive!  He must be very badly injured I thought.  I took stock of how he was positioned-he was lying on his right side pinned under a dead/fallen tree that was wedged between the rocks above and the ground below-it was as if you took a large log and wedged it in the ground than leaned it up against the cliff edge to build shelter but only more sturdy.  His right arm was pinned under him and his left arm free and his legs.  His head had several large abrasions on it with some bleeding but nothing terrible but it was obvious his head was injured.  At some point I tried to remember all my first aid-ABC right?  A-airway-seemed to be open, no major facial/airway trauma affecting that-false teeth all in place-Good. B-breathing-big concern here as he could have had a punctured lung or broken ribs that would interfere with his breathing or worse yet a tension pneumothorax which would kill him.  Chest was rising up/down and as far as I could see no penetrating chest wounds-although a broken branch of the log keeping him up was poking into his side but not into the skin.  C-circulation-ok check his pulses-everything is good-appears to be moving blood to his arms and legs.  He still is in danger of massive internal bleeding I thought.  Now I am thinking what next-well he fell and his neck, back, limbs are in great danger so I took a survey of his whole body as the ABC stuff is good. Head-obvious lacerations to his skull but it is all intact and nothing major-he is majorly confused so obviously he has a massive concussion-he was quite confused repeating did he fall and other things like I suppose I did something stupid and looking up and asking if fell from up there.  His pupils were appropriately more narrowly opened but equal. His neck and back were not tender when pushing on them yet it was difficult to get him to lie still-I am sure he was confused and kept trying to get up and we-which included daughter Kathy and now Bruce who was a fellow trail walker-all had to remind him to stay still until further help like search and rescue arrived.

Kathy was below him providing support so he didn't slip further down and also kept him in his current position.  Kathy was one of 2 daughters there-she had 2 children with her.  She was a nurse and lived in Australia.  Her other sister up above was living in Hong Kong and had 2 kids with her as well.  Kelly told me her husband was a pilot but I don't know much else about her.  She ran down to help clarify/coordinate with Kelly what was happening at the car park/trailhead which was only 500 meters from Arthur's pass village.  Kelly got more information and talked with the dispatcher about the situation and also at some point she talked with the helicopter pilots as well.  James or Jim as he preferred to be called was an apple farmer from just outside Toronto Canada and had always wanted to come to NZ and in fact it had been his dream to come see Arthurs Pass in NZ.  I could tell he was a stoic farmer who despite this fall and major head injury had a good stubborn streak in him.  He is 77 years old.  The other gentleman who helped was Bruce.  Bruce was a fellow trail hiker just 10 minutes or so before this who I had take my picture at the waterfall and I than took his and his partners photo.  Now we are on the side of a pretty scary drop hoping Jim stays alive and gets the hell out off this cliff.  Bruce is a kiwi from Hamilton.  His partner stayed up with the other family providing support as well.  It is hard to remember it all but Bruce, Kathy and I were all working together to try and stay focused on Jim and not too serious but it was still dangerous.

Well back to Jim-his neck and back seemed ok but you hear of broken necks/backs were people seem ok than they get up to move and whatever was broken and not stable comes apart and bam you have a bad injury made worse now.  So we kept him as still as we could with constant reminders about that.  His left arm was free and moving about with a good pulse-excellent.  both legs and hips are moving and appear good-excellent again.  his left arm is pinned under him and difficult see but he can drip my hand and squeeze it so that is reasonable reassuring.  Now his belly-you can lose lots of blood in your belly during trauma but his abdomen is soft and not tender.  Could this guy really fall that far and come out of this with no broken bones or major injuries other than his head.  it is certainly looking that way but his brain is a major concern-he is slowly answering more and more questions but it is still pretty mush.  I think Kathy and I are really concerned about bleeding in the brain and keep a close eye on his mental status and pupils.  His heart rate remains stable-if it increased and he becomes pale and cold extremities we worry about shock from blood loss.

We all sit on this dangerous slope and I know I was thinking-this tree saved his life cause just beyond this tree is one other tree that might have stopped his fall and than no way-he would have been down a 200-300 ft steep as slope and I would think sure death.  I think we all think that but don't talk much about it.  Kathy amazingly is keeping it together well-no panic, no hysterics just concerned focus with comments like we are not telling Mom about this.  Jim's wife stayed back in Canada-apparently she is not a big traveler and maybe wouldn't have approved of this hike.  We get short bits of humor from this.  Jim still tries to get up and after some time passes he does move again and we all say sit still-he says to us he did that on purpose-I found it funny.  That stoic farmer father-is that great human quality going to fade away?  Are we all a bunch of whiny, lack of grit, poor me people now.   I can think of all the grandpa's I know-Kirk, Alfred and Roy.  They were all tough son-of-a-bitches and this Jim seemed no different For that matter so were my grandmas-Ruby, Odney, and Pearl.  I didn't know Grandma/pa Smith well.

Eventually a medic from the ambulance grew shows up and makes his way down and does a nice hello/survey of Jim.  He also doesn't find much wrong with Jim and by this time Jim is able to answer questions more clearly although not completely normal according to Kathy.  A couple other gentlemen show up with the medic and stay up on the trail.  A helicopter comes maybe 15 minutes later as well and at first passes over the scene.  We are in pretty dense bush so it will not be easy to get to him in fact I don't know how this will happen.  One of the guys has an orange basket like thing that you see on the rescue shows.  I think we realize Jim is doing ok, getting him into a basket will be near impossible in this situation-too steep, too dangerous.  The medic asks me if I think it is ok for Jim to sit up and I say I think so.  Jim is able to finally maneuver himself up with our help and sits on his butt.  he continues to do well.  The chopper starts to come back for another look-actually it was dropping the helicopter rescue guy down but we couldn't see that.  The medic says due to the lose rock above our heads that Bruce and I should just clear out so we make our way back up to the trail.  I am sure he told Kathy the same but no way are you getting a daughter away from her father in a situation like this-I wouldn't have left my family member either.  I was actually fine getting away cause I had lots of thoughts about my family sitting next to Jim for that 1-1.5 hours.  i wanted to be safely on the trail now.  The helicopter rescue man with Kickass on the back of his helmet showed up and made his way down to Jim.

Back on the trail I must have really been processing what had just happened cause I don't remember much of what happened over the next few minutes but Jim was up walking roped into something but under his own power with rescue people around him climbing off the ridge.  The chopper was coming back around again.  It is amazing what those choppers can do-it hangs above us now just above the trees with leaves and stuff flying all over.  It drops this cable with a weight down between some trees/branches to where JIm and Kickass are waiting.  Jim is wrapped in some thing.  Kickass hooks them in and signals by spreading his arms apart that they can hoist them up.  Up he goes.  I assume he was brought to Christchurch.  First they landed down by the trailhead and picked up one of the sisters and probably got Jim more treatment/comfortable.  We all sat around on the trailhead.  I remember Kathy just slumping down on the trail-exhausted and probably trying to take in what just happened. We made some small talk and than once things were cleaned up I finished my run-I ran back down to Kelly, Liam and Phoebe.  Liam was pretty worried.  Kelly was excited to tell her side of the adventure and I suppose I told some of mine.  Phoebe was Phoebe.  We packed up the car-Kathy and the family made it down and since we had some of their things we gave them their stuff.  I hugged Kathy and gave her my email so I can hear about Jim's outcome.  she had to drive a campervan back to ChristChurch to the hospital.  they were suppose to leave the next day to go back to Australia.  We were headed onto the West Coast and all its beauty.

Life works in such mysterious ways.  I think we are guided thru this life by something so much bigger than us.  What I remember most is that Jim dreamed of coming to NZ and in particular Arthur's Pass.  He finally gets here at 77 yrs old and than this happens.  He should have died, and maybe he did, I don't know yet, but he was in good shape leaving the scene.  If it wasn't his time luck didn't play any part of it.  I think this was part of a bigger plan.

I wrote this cause it was a really intense experience and I needed to share the experience.

The gorge where Brett was hiking and the helicopter flying out of it after the rescue.