Account of Stiffler's Accident

Woah. Thank you both for sharing these accounts. Definitely valuable to read as a relatively new leader.
Mike - I'm so glad you're okay! Hope the road to full health is a short one.

Glad to hear that you’ll make a full recovery, Mike. Hope the process is as smooth as can be! 

BTW: Andy Rich is Coordinator of Remote Rescue Training at the University of Utah. He develops curriculum in addition to overseeing the remote rescue technician certification courses. With 15 years experience as an outdoor educator, whitewater guide, mountain guide, and industrial rescue and rigger, Andy specializes in managing groups in technical and hazardous settings.

Bill Keshlear wrote: BTW: Andy Rich is Coordinator of Remote Rescue Training at the University of Utah. He develops curriculum in addition to overseeing the remote rescue technician certification courses. With 15 years experience as an outdoor educator, whitewater guide, mountain guide, and industrial rescue and rigger, Andy specializes in managing groups in technical and hazardous settings.

Took high angle rescue from Andy Rich through Remote Rescue Training at the U, he among the other amazing instructors, gave me much greater confidence working with ropes and would be the number 1 person I would like to be there if I needed help in an emergency while climbing.

While I didn't take a self-rescue course, he teaches in a way that makes it easy to transfer the learning towards rescue techniques while on the wall.

I'm sure his help was invaluable during this incident.

KUTV news this am (7 am sat june 30) ran a short video of the rescue

The video is here https://fox13now.com/2018/06/29/video-released-showing-amazing-hiker-rescue-in-little-cottonwood-canyon/

Doesn't show all that much, but you can see my blurred face as well as some of the people involved.

I did see the blood splatter. Looks like the victim was alert and able to assist his own rescue. Nicely done.

It has been a year (and two days) now, so I thought I would post an update for anyone who might be interested. It look a while, but I have recovered pretty well. My remaining symptoms are:

- A stiff neck
- A little bit of numbness and tingling in both hands and my left foot, mostly in my thumbs and forefingers
- I have some remaining muscle weakness in my upper arms, shoulders and upper back. I used to be able to do 10 pull-ups, 50 push ups, and curl a 40lb weight "off the couch". Now I can do 5 pull-ups, 25 push ups and curl a 25lb weight. My ability to lift heavy items out in front of me and overhead has been most affected it seems. A one arm shoulder press with 15lb is still pretty difficult. My upper body endurance has suffered as well, but that seems to be continuing to improve.
- My shoulders and upper back are persistently itchy
- When I yawn my arms shake uncontrollably. It's not a huge amount and I can suppress it by tensing my muscles.

My leg strength and endurance does not seem to have any problems, so I can ski and ski tour at pretty much 100%. I have definitely been knocked down a couple grades climbing. Before the accident I was regularly climbing 5.10 trad and 5.11 sport and occasionally sending a 5.11 trad route. Now I can sometimes send a 5.10 sport route and I have been mostly focusing on more moderate trad. My mental game is pretty weak, especially when it involves small pro. I think it is slowly improving, but run outs even on easy terrain are very hard to deal with. I am also a much slower leader, moving more carefully (fearfully) and placing a lot more pro than I used to. At this point, the physical issues (weakness, mostly) have become secondary to the psychological ones, and I suspect it will take a long time to get my confidence back.

In case people have any doubt, spinal cord injuries suck a lot. My recovery timeline was pretty much as follows:

- During the first 6 weeks or so after SCI, the cord is in a state called spinal shock. During this time, otherwise healthy and functional pathways are disrupted due to changes induced by the injury (swelling, metabolic changes, stuff like that). While still in spinal shock (and especially the first 4 weeks) I was unable to lift my arms above 90 degrees and I could barely raise my hands to touch my face, my hands and arms were almost entirely numb, my left foot was numb, and I had very poor fine motor control. I was unable to do a lot of daily tasks. Getting dressed was difficult to impossible, I couldn't bathe myself, I couldn't cook, holding and using a fork was very difficult, etc. My walking gait was pretty screwed up at first too. It was very stiff and I wasn't properly articulating my ankles and using my toes. I was also deeply exhausted all the time, but unable to sleep well.
- Once the spinal shock started to wear off, motor control and sensation improved very quickly. Unfortunately, regaining sensation meant that numbness was replaced by terrible neurogenic and muscle pain. When motor control neural pathways are damaged, sometimes the muscle goes into a state of full contraction called spasticity. In particular the muscles around my upper back, shoulders, and intercostals were fully contracted and had been for weeks. This felt like a combination of having a bad muscle cramp and wearing a 70lb backpack all the time. Sleeping was desperately difficult for the first few months because of the pain. I resorted to taking a sedative and painkillers every night and was still lucky to sleep more than 4 hours a night.
- For the next few months I slowly and steadily made improvements in strength and motor control. The pain slowly subsided, with the intercostal muscles being the last to improve. At 6 months out I was finally able to sleep without pain and even sleep on my side for a few hours at a time.
- I climbed again for the first time in late august (followed the first pitch of pentapitch and followed gordon's hangover) and it was a real struggle. My upper body was profoundly weak. In late September my wife and I headed out on a road trip out east. I tried leading in the RRG and NRG, but it was pretty disappointing. I simply didn't have the strength or endurance to climb at a reasonable level yet.
- I took a break from climbing from Jan - April for ski season and was very happy to find I could still ski at the same level.
- Starting in April I have been climbing a lot more. My strength and endurance are much closer to normal now and even though I am climbing at a lower grade I am mostly enjoying it again.

Some random photos:

Helmet damage:

The piece that pulled, you can see the gouges on the lobes:



My MRI, showing cord damage (white spot) at C2/3:


Climbing through the crux of Stiffler's shortly before blowing it:


Trying to climb Rock Wars in October....It was a bit ambitious. I bailed right after this:


Ski season:


Recent climbing trip to the eastern sierra:


In the end, I got very lucky. Most people with high level central cord injuries (CCS) don't recover to the extent I did.

Holy moly. Thanks for checking in and I'm glad you're on the mend!

Congratulations on the recovery!!!

Good luck on a speedy recovery.....

I cratered from 100' to the ground ice climbing once

Falls happen way too fast I was airborne for about 2.7 seconds or something like that.

I was seated next to an engineer once on a plane and he calculated how long I fell for.

I broke my femur in 5 places and my pelvis in six....

Pulled out two pieces of gear and a biner broke......

The ground was the next stop......

Wow.  Thanks for the update.  And the reminder to not fall (ha!).  Double up on that pro!

Cheers!

Incredible, Mike.  You are one tough SOB and a true inspiration.

Congrats on the comeback and thanks for the details about your recovery. Hopefully it keeps getting better for you!!

Thanks for the update.  It's a great learning experience so appreciate your willingness to share.  The itchy shoulder/back itch that you describe - I know the feeling.  Nostalgia Paresthetica sucks & given what you experienced, it's no surprise that you've got it. My wife thought I was joking when I said I wanted a back-scratcher for my birthday - until I wore it out and had to get a second one.

Thanks everyone for the support and sharing your own stories.

JSH, wow that is pretty scary. It sounds like your injury might have caused cauda equina syndrome? Glad you are doing well, and yes sleeping on my side is amazing. I can even sleep on my stomach now, sometimes.

Jim, that is crazy. In some ways my recovery was fast compared especially to lower body injuries like yours. I sometimes wonder, if I had landed upright instead of upside down would I still be out of commission now with a bad leg/ankle break?

Jonathan, notalgia paresthetica sounds awful. My itchiness is annoying, but manageable. It flares up when the muscles in the area are sore, but most of the time it is pretty low level.

Yea I was in physical therapy for like 4-5 months and it took two years for my limp to go away.

Worst part was sitting around doing nothing until the bones healed enuf to do PT...

But by then your leg you haven't used for that long the muscles all felt like beef jerky...

atrophied......

Then there was the whole I couldn't really sit down on a toilet cause of the pelvis.....

It pretty much sucked ass but you get thru that stuff.....

I remember one day in the hospital an aid came in and I was having a bad day she was German and said to me which I'll never forget

"Ach when your 90 you'll forget all about it"

 

Thanks. 

Sorry to hear that Bryce.  We were the two guys who had just finished rapping when you both showed up (Stifflers Mom right?).  Was this the young man who had never been above pitch 5 and was asking me about the 6th pitch?

Thanks for sharing your experience and happy to hear you're still able to get after it! I'll also say I've had 2 cams ever pull on me and both times they were C3s... I've retired them from my rack. I know they can be bomber in the right placements and some people love them but I'm just too suspicious to keep using em.