Injured Hiker Tramway
September 1, 2024
Round Valley below San Jacinto Peak
2024-036
Written by: Richard Yocum
So many SAR missions begin with information that is very incomplete, unrelated, confusing, or even erroneous or conflicting. This mission was certainly no exception. After all the dust had settled and we pieced together the full story, we realized that there had been two completely separate and unrelat-ed incidents, both of which just happened to be very close to Round Valley, that occurred within minutes of each other, and resulted in emergency calls for help by a beacon activation on an inReach device and 911 cell phone calls from two different individuals.
A Scouting group was camped for the Labor Day weekend at Round Valley when a member of the group made a diagnosis of acute appendicitis in one of the juvenile Scouts. His dad ran the couple of miles down trail to get cell phone reception near the Long Valley Ranger Station. On the way he passed a solo hiker in his late 70’s who had tripped and taken a very bad fall, severely lacerating his leg on a sharp rock, and wrenching his back. The hiker activated his inReach beacon and was later helped by five members of the Scouts group in a several hours long painful hike down trail to the Ranger Station. The juvenile reported with appendicitis was extracted by Riverside Sheriff’s Aviation Rescue 9.
RMRU received a “head-ups” at 2017 hours 8/31/2024 for “a possible injured juvenile out of the tram” and then an actual callout at 2259 hour for an injured elderly hiker in near the Sid Davis Trail near Round Valley. This was RMRU’s 6th mission over the past 8 days. With our resources therefore some-what fatigued, the mission was pushed to 0600 hours on 9/1/2024 when both Tobias and I were able to respond to the lower tram station.
From the upper tram, we headed into the field but did not get far before we encountered a solo hiker very slowly, painfully, making his way out. He had spent the night in the restroom of the Ranger Sta-tion. We performed an assessment and walked him back to the upper tram station where we cleaned and dressed his leg wound.
We then rode the tram down together and saw him to his vehicle so that he could drive himself to the hospital.
RMRU Members Involved: (Tobias Moyneur and Richard Yocum)
Other Agencies Involved: (Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, Aviation’s Rescue 9 helicopter, and Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Staff)