{"id":25886,"date":"2024-08-29T22:37:45","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T22:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/injured-hiker-rescued-by-helicopter-from-chicago-basin\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:29:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:29:30","slug":"injured-hiker-rescued-by-helicopter-from-chicago-basin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/injured-hiker-rescued-by-helicopter-from-chicago-basin\/","title":{"rendered":"Injured hiker rescued by helicopter from Chicago Basin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=5bff066a-d7ee-4672-b173-516e1a629c75&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Chicago Basin\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Chicago Basin<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy of San Juan Mountains Association<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A Classic Air Medical evacuated a 64-year-old hiker Thursday who fell in Chicago Basin, in the Weminuche Wilderness, said La Plata County spokesman Ted Holteen.<\/p>\n<p>La Plata County Search and Rescue was on standby but did not respond to the incident.<\/p>\n<p>Dispatch was able to coordinate the rescue through an SOS message from good Samaritans assisting.<\/p>\n<p>Preliminary reports indicate the man fell and may have suffered a head injury, although the full extent of his injuries was not known Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Using a Garmin InReach device, which enables parties without cell reception to communicate via satellite with emergency responders, another party of hikers was able to exchange messages with SAR.<\/p>\n<p>According to flight records, a helicopter from San Juan Regional Medical Center in Cortez responded to the area and was flying overhead around 4:30 p.m. SAR team members saw the aircraft headed to Mercy Hospital just before 6 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>If air extraction had failed, the patient would have had to walk or be transported<a href=\"https:\/\/sjma.org\/chicago-basin-trip-planning\/\" id=\"link-681801d313d23e8cf20d7d1b5649ed2f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> 6 mile<\/a>s to the nearest stop on the Durango &amp; Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-52f55763d044647b66e2f653891e0b06\"><a href=\"mailto:rschafir@durangoherald.com\">rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>64-year-old patient was transported to Mercy Hospital<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1531,1807,1924],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-injury","tag-la-plata-county-search-and-rescue","tag-weminuche-wilderness"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79141,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25886\/revisions\/79141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25886"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}