Search and Rescue team successfully rescues one of their own

“Long, dangerous, dark and technical…”

Sometimes it is better to be lucky rather than good. In the case of a 22-year-old Gunnison man who survived what should have been a tragic climbing accident last Thursday, June 23, he was both.

 Scott Krankkala is an experienced climber. He has worked for Crested Butte Mountain Guides and is a member of the Western State College Search and Rescue team. He is good. But surviving a 20- to 40-foot freefall on the west side of Crested Butte Mountain and “rag-dolling” down a talus scree field makes him lucky.
“Yeah, I have to admit, I am very lucky,” Krankkala said Tuesday morning from his home in Gunnison. “It is crazy how much worse it could have been after falling that far and not having a helmet on at the time.”
“I wouldn’t have made it,” said Crested Butte Mountain Guides owner Jayson Simons-Jones. “The only thing we can figure is that he’s 22 years old.”
Krankkala, along with his climbing buddy Mike Bromberg, had spent Thursday afternoon putting up a new route up the pink granite cliffs located lookers left above Grant Lake in Skyland. They weren’t working, they were recreating. “It’s definitely an adventurous atmosphere up there,” commented Simons-Jones.
According to Mt. Crested Butte Police chief Hank Smith, at the bottom of a cliff they had taken off their gear, including helmets and harnesses, to finish up for the day about 5 p.m.
Krankkala said he and Bromberg had “pulled the ropes and packed everything up. I remembered a trekking pole left on a nearby rock and went to retrieve it.”
After getting the pole and starting back down, he slowly stepped on another shelf, and the rock collapsed. He plummeted off the side of the mountain.
“He was a real lucky guy,” said Crested Butte Search and Rescue president Nicholas Kempin. “He was apparently rag-dolling and cart-wheeling in the loose scree. There is nothing soft anywhere up there.”
“I remember going to test the ledge and then dislodging the rock and going down,” said Krankkala. “As soon as I stepped on it to test it, I said ‘Oh, no’ and knew it wouldn’t be good.”
He fell and then “tumbled like a rag doll on the loose talus for another 50 feet.” Bromberg watched the fall and then called local authorities from a cell phone before heading down to comfort his friend. That was about 5:15 p.m.
“Mike reports that I was instantly moving after stopping and has no reason to believe I lost consciousness. I was reported to be very disoriented and confused for about a half hour, at which point I was much more coherent and started to remember details of my accident. Within the first hour and a half, Jayson Simons-Jones arrived on scene with Steve Banks to help assist. Shortly after several members from CBSAR and Western State Mountain Rescue arrived,” Krankkala wrote to friends in an email.
Kempin said his crew responded to the scene above the intersection of Tony’s Trail and the Upper Loop. “We reached the patient about 7 o’clock. It appeared he had some serious head injuries. We did an evaluation and stabilized him as much as possible and then packaged him for the ride down. We set up a rope lowering system and it took until about 3 a.m. to get him down to an ambulance. We used 3,200 feet of rope to get him down.”
Kempin and Smith said it was a very tricky rescue. “He seemed to have severe head lacerations and a broken ankle,” said Smith. “It was a very long, technical take-out. Most of it was on scree with falling rocks. It was steep and nasty. It was a tough rescue.”
“It was crazy,” said Kempin. “It was long, dangerous and technical. There is crazy rock fall up there. It is all loose and rotten. So you add in the fact it was pitch black after the sun went down and it was really dangerous. Normally if someone yells ‘rock!’ you can look up and see it and get out of the way. But in the dark, you have to listen and dodge it by sound. Falling rocks struck several team members but luckily no one was seriously injured. They just got some bumps and bruises.”
Kempin said 12 members of the Crested Butte Search and Rescue along with eight others from the Western State College team all assisted in the operation. “It took every one of those people,” he said. “It would have been tough doing it with any fewer. It was really something. Crazy. We’ve done a lot of sketchy rescues but this one ranks right up there. Grunting him down that far in the dark with rocks falling all around wasn’t easy. I’m proud of the teams. They hung it out there.”
“Everyone was very professional,” added Smith. “It was a long, risky rescue under tough conditions.”
Krankkala was transported to the Gunnison Valley Hospital early Friday morning and then flown to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction. He was released Saturday. No bones were broken but he has some pretty good lacerations and his foot is still in pain. “I’ll take it,” he said.
Lucky.
“I am indebted to all of you fellow rescue team members in Crested Butte and Gunnison who made such a long technical evacuation such a well-coordinated effort,” summed up Krankkala.