Emergency! Emergency! ... Uh... nevermind.

On Friday it was a half day and for a couple weeks we'd been planning to do the hike up to the Twin Falls waterfall, which is just a few miles outside of Northbend along I-90. (The picture on this site is at low flow, we were there during spring runoff... MUCH more water, as you can see down below.) So we got our lunch/snack together, and headed off to the trailhead with our good friends, Lynley (Mom) Jack, Addy and Eli. Two moms and 6 kids, with one (Isaac) in a back pack. The trail is 5 miles roundtrip, and the kids were speeding down hill at quite dangerous velocities, then complaining and asking "How far?!?" on the up hill portions... Every dog we saw had to be petted and every shortcut, even the straight up hill ones, had to be taken,... pure kid joy. :) It was a GORGEOUS day, blue skies, bright sun, even the wind was warm and we were relishing every minute! The kids kept running ahead and we kept calling them back, Gideon had one of his best friends, Jack and Claire had a perfect playmate in Addy so they were plenty busy having fun. About 1/2 a mile from the falls as all the kids (even 3 year old Eli) are on a running ahead phase, I hear my name and turn around to see Lynley SITTING on the trail,...and she's grimacing. I hurry back to her and she's just sprained/strained her ankle, and I can see it swelling already. At this point I'm thinking, "... Ok, I need to get her to the little stream to ice(water) her ankle,...she can't walk, I can't lift her and the kids just ran around the bend. Uh... " Well luckily or rather divinely for me the next person around the bend happened to have a first aid kit and a hankerchief that she willingly donated to poor agonizing Lynley. At this point I was on the cell phone with Dan because I could see that Lynley was in A LOT of pain... I was thinking she'd have to be transported out somehow. That meant SAR, (search and rescue) would have to be involved. (Dan is a member of 4x4 SAR in our county so that was a plus right there.) So Dan is in onthe cell phone telling me what to do medically with her ankle while the other hiker is actually doing all the right things as he spoke to me. I'm back and forth between Lynley, Dan the hiker and trying to find our kids, who for all I knew were off swimming in the spring runoff, a 3 feet above normal river! I tore off down the trail when I saw that Lynley was in good hands for the moment and succeeded in finding all the children, safe and doing nothing more dangerous than trying to hurl rocks down the hill at hikers below. So I yelled for them to "Come here!...and WATCH ELI!!" Then I tore back to Lynley as the other hiker was getting ready to leave. She had wrapped the ankle with an ace bandage and a wet hankerchief and that was as far as she could go. Lynley, feeling bad all around, didn't want to bother anybody, SAID she was just fine and that she'd be okay. So the hikers moved on and I tried to figure a way to get Lyney down to the stream. She tried to crawl for a few feet and then gritted her teeth as she said she needed to stop and wait. AND THEN! she started nodding her head funny and shaking a little, I called her name and she wouldn't respond. She slowly looked back and forth put her head down and then let it almost fall back,... I'm calling her name (almost yelling) and telling her to lay down. I pulled her backpack off her and tried again but she was acting so woozy and unresponsive the best I could do was get her head closer to her knees, she had all but fainted on me! I get on the phone again and tell Dan we've got a case of shock. There was no one else on the trail at this point (which Lynley I'm sure was glad for, but I wasn't!) so I am alone, with a person going into shock, 5 kids, including a 3 year old, skampering around a trail with a very steep hillside, a river at the bottom, and Isaac on my back. Yeah,... can you say stress? Well thank the blessed heavens, Lynley started to come around at this point and another hiker came around the bend. I asked very quickly, "Can you help me? She's fainting!" (funny thing is he had a baby on his back too.) WE gave her a few moments to perk up, which she did very well,...and quickly, and then he was able to help her stand up and hobble down to the little stream that we started dowsing her ankle in. She said she was feeling giddy at that point. Severe pain, shock, fainting, Giddy,... all in one beautiful day!
Well we all sat at the stream and I pulled my stomach back out of my toes, and laughed a little with Lynley. We thanked yet another hiker and they went on their way. Dan told us to soak her foot for 20 mins then see how she's doing, and if she needed a carry out that he would call SAR for us. Well we knew she shouldn't go to the falls, but since we were so close I took the kids up to see it while Lynely soaked her ankle.

I snapped a few pictures, all sans Lynley, and then we headed back to the poor trail victim. Then we all sat, and pulled out our lunch/snack and had our feast.
Deviled egg sandwiches, apples, carrots, cookies and lots of fabulous tolt resevior water. Well, after our feast Lynley tried walking and found she could stand and walk ok, as long as she did no side to side movements... So we got ready to walk back out. Dan calls me just then and tells me that he just got a page out for "an injured hiker" right in our area, and says "I didn't call it in!" He rings off to go find out more info. We slowly but surely make our way down the trail. Half way down Dan calls and asks if we know the name of the people who helped us... Rebecca is the name they have. We were too busy being stressed and in pain to introduce our selves to our fellow hiker rescuers, so we are no help to him. Lynley is a super trooper and though she must have been in a whole lot of throbbing pain she doggedly kept going and with very little breaks made it down to the trail head in a decent time. At the trailhead there's a couple guys talking intently, not like they are there for a pleasure hike. I ask them if they are wondering about the injured hiker. Turns out they were the advance team from SAR and were trying to find out more information to determine whether to call out a rescue. We get more info and give more info, and it turns out Lynley was indeed the one that they were called out to assist (there wasn't any other 35 year old females with a strained ankle, kids and a baby around), and as she is okay they canceled the call out.
So we decided that we'll have to do the hike again so she can actually see the falls. But I did want to send out into the webisphere a special thank you to our mystery rescuer Rebecca, who called 911 for us, who could have saved a life had our situation been more serious. Thank you and God bless!

Below is the string of pages Dan got from SAR -(^^^^^ is County Sheriff's Office; CANNON is the person handling dispatch for 4x4; ##### is the Operation Leader for 4x4 SAR this week.)

-----Original Message-----
From: ----------------On Behalf Of Page Out Notifications
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 4:15 PM
To: pager@*****.org
Subject: [Pager] (no subject)

843-1 TRYING TO CONTACT SAR DEP AT THIS TIME VIA ^^^^^ DISPATCH, PH# GIVEN IS BAD, TRAIL HEAD IS OFF OF X38 IF I RECALL, PARK IS AT X34, DO NOT KNOW IF 4X4 IS REALLY NEEDED FOR THIS MISSION YET, PLS STBY CANNON [59]

-----Original Message-----
From: ------------- On Behalf Of Page Out Notifications
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 4:29 PM
To: pager@*****.org
Subject: [Pager] (no subject)

843-1 PER ##### 4X4 IS NOT NEEDED FOR THIS MISSION, I AM CONFIRMING THAT WITH THE SAR DEP WHO IS ENROUTE, AT THIS TIME PLS STAND BY FOR OFFICIAL CANCEL BY ^^^^^ FOR 4X4 CANNON [60]

-----Original Message-----
From: -----------On Behalf Of Page Out Notifications
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 4:36 PM
To: pager@*****.org
Subject: [Pager] (no subject)

843-1 PER #####, SUBJECT WALKED OUT THIS CALL IS HISTORY CANNON [61]