{"id":76415,"date":"2018-03-10T13:16:46","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T20:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hunter-rescued-friday-night-in-falls-creek-area\/"},"modified":"2018-03-10T20:16:46","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T20:16:46","slug":"hunter-rescued-friday-night-in-falls-creek-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hunter-rescued-friday-night-in-falls-creek-area\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunter rescued Friday night in Falls Creek area"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=deae3246-6681-41ce-9c00-12e586fcceda&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"831\" height=\"467\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A 46-year-old man was rescued Friday night in the Falls Creek area north of Durango.<\/p>\n<p>Ron Corkish with La Plata County Search and Rescue said they received a call about a stranded hunter shortly before 6 p.m. He said 26 rescuers responded, including five from Durango Fire Protection District.<\/p>\n<p>Corkish said the man, whose identity he declined to release, was hunting mountain lions with a friend when he overexerted himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe had a recurring medical condition, and our theory is because of the time he spent out and hiking, he had a medical episode,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The men were on a cliff band west of Falls Creek Main behind the Falls Creek fire station.<\/p>\n<p>Corkish said the challenge of the high-angle rescue was exacerbated by the darkness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a steep approach and it was dark, so we were afraid of not being able to see rock fall from above,\u201d he said. \u201cThe elevation gain was another 400 to 500 feet up, and about 150 feet of that was vertical.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The men built a fire to keep warm as they waited for rescuers, Corkish said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike any good friend, he wouldn\u2019t leave his buddy behind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>A team at the base of the cliff cleared a path to the road. A second team scaled the cliff band with medics to treat the man and establish anchor points for the rescue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey packaged the patient, set up the anchor points for vertical lowering, and the team at the bottom received the patient as he was lowered,\u201d Corkish said.<\/p>\n<p>Rescuers were able to retrieve the man and transport him to Mercy Regional Medical Center at about 11 p.m., Corkish said.<\/p>\n<p>The man was doing well Saturday morning, according to his friend, Corkish said.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:mrupani@durangoherald.com\">mrupani@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>overexerted himself hiking hills north of Durango<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1480,28,1807],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-76415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-fire-protection-district","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-search-and-rescue"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76415","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=76415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76415"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=76415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}