Ride a long/ Hike a long

So today I had arranged to go ride with one of my buddies. He is a deputy for the Weber County Sheriffs Office currently assigned to the Liberty/Eden/Huntsville area. Well I meet him for some lunch at a pizza place, it is called Alpine Pizza. The pizza joint is located in Eden, if you ever get there you need to go to lunch or dinner the pizza is just fantastic! I had the Buffalo Chicken ranch pizza, it was freakin fantastic! So we are just enjoying our lunch and commenting to one another how much of a nice day it has been.

We get about half way through our meal and the radio goes off, it is dispatch calling his number on the radio. Well he gets a call of a suspicious circumstance that a horse was running down a hiking trail with no rider on it. So.. that is a little bit suspicious right? But we are thinking that it just took off and the owner didn't tie it up right. Well like 10 minutes later as we are on the way to the call, dispatch comes back across advising they have another call on the horse, however some Forest Service workers grooming the trail found a female that had been bucked off the horse. Well, this now creates a medical call and they tell us she is about a mile in, well neither one of us have any of our hiking gear, but we have to go in and help right? I was kind of excited because I do enjoy a good hike! I have never been on this trail before so I don't know what I am getting myself into or what the terrain is like. So as we get there, one of the medical crews is already on site and we see them starting up the trail, so we get out and start walking as well. Well the fire guys freakin flew into the woods and they were then gone out of our site, well my buddy has his bullet proof vest on, and all his duty gear. This is approx 30 lbs of extra weight; well we stop and he sheds the bullet proof vest, we will just pick it up on the way back down.. So we continue walking in, and we get at least a mile in.. well we have to make sure that we are heading the right direction (because that would suck if we weren't) anyways we keep walking.. come to find out, the patient is like 2 miles in on this trail.

So the medical guys start doing there medical treatment and I am just a spectator and holding the back board etc. Well they decide they need to hoist this lady out.. because they think she broke her pelvis and them to carry her out would be rough on them and her.. because its not a nice trail.. So it was my buddy's and my job to go search out a place to where we could either set the helicopter down or find a decent place to hoist the patient from since they were by some trees.

So they bring the patient out of the tall tree area to the spot we found, and now we wait for lifeflight to come.

Here we are waiting for the Helicopter so we can get this lady to the hospital!


This is LifeFlight coming in to look at the area to see how they were going to do this.


Here they area again.. going back by us. The area is full of scrub oak and on a hill side, its impossible to find a landing spot.

So Life Flight flies by us to go to Snowbasin to set down and configure the hoist so they can come back and lower there medical person in get the patient ready to be hoisted.


Down comes the paramedic to prepare the patient for transfer.



Patient is all bagged up and waiting for the helicopter to come in and pick them up.


There they are being hoisted up to the helicopter (this was very windy due to all the backwash from the helicopter)



And.... they are flying away.. (yes they carry the patient on the outside of the helicopter.. until they get to the place where they can land and secure the patient.)


This is my buddy giving the thumbs up sign, because we got the patient the help she needed and everyone was safe and sound. If you are wondering why he is holding his shirt, it's because he is the kind of guy who will take the shirt of his back for you! (he really took it off to shield the patients face from all the flying debris and dirt when the helicopter came in)

So.. I upheld the Boy Scout Slogan today.. "Do a good turn daily" and one could prob say I got some of the Boy Scout Law accomplished too. It was a rather lovely day since I got to spend my time outdoors.. and helping someone in time of need.

The patient is going to live, she is in a lot of pain and has a pelvic injury. She will have some recovery time.. but wasn't very happy about her horse when she was waiting for the helicopter, she had a bit of a sense of humor about it, she said she won't be riding that horse ever again!

The moral of this story is kids..... to only ride things that have HORSEPOWER! rather then HORSES.. since horses have a mind of there own they will do what they want... and sometimes that means not wanting you on there back!

These pictures were taken from my Blackberry phone.. so thats why they aren't the best!

The End.