A hiker's nightmare: stranded for hours after tearing a tendon

A local hiker’s trip on the Fourth of July turned quickly from a morning hike into an ordeal that has shaken his confidence in Mineral County’s Search and Rescue.

“This is my backyard, I’ve been going up that trail since I was in high school,” said Kelly Garcia. “It was just a freak thing that happened.”

Garcia, a 50-year-old Superior native, took off around 9 a.m. on July Fourth for a walk up to the Bonanza Lakes; a hike that is extremely familiar to him. He told his wife Roberta that he would be home by 3 p.m., not knowing that he would be spending most of his day on a grueling hike with a torn Achilles tendon.

Garcia said that after driving as far as he could, he hiked a mile on the partially snow-covered Cedar Creek Road and then turned off onto the State Line Trail, a fairly flat path that follows the Idaho/Montana State Line.

When he was a little more than two miles up the State Line Trail, Garcia stepped onto a patch of snow that gave way and stumbled forward while his left foot stayed stuck in the snow.

“I knew exactly what I’d done, I had torn my Achilles tendon,” Garcia said.

As he lay in pain, Garcia realized that he had one piece of luck: Miraculously, his cell phone had enough signal to call out and he immediately contacted his wife, telling her to call the sheriff’s office and inform them of his situation. He said that his cell phone records indicate that he called his wife at 11:30 a.m.

“I got on the phone and I told her ‘I’m in trouble.’ I knew this was going to be tough,” Garcia said.

Roberta Garcia immediately called dispatch and told them that her husband was stuck on the State Line Trail and that while it was not a life-threatening emergency, he would most likely need some help getting down.

“I told her we just needed a couple people to help get him down to his vehicle,” Roberta Garcia said.

She was then informed that it would take six hours for someone to get to her husband. Roberta Garcia was surprised, but she gave dispatch her husband’s cell phone number and told them he could be reached on it. She then called Kelly and told him that it would be six hours before anyone could help him.

At 11:40 a.m., according to Garcia, he received a phone call from Mineral County Search and Rescue President, Mike Byrnes.

Garcia said that the first thing Byrnes asked him when he picked up the phone was whether or not they could land a helicopter nearby.

“I said yeah, but I don’t need a helicopter. I’m not that badly hurt, it’s not that kind of thing,” Garcia said.

Garcia then told Byrnes his exact location and that he planned on starting to make his way down the trail as best he could to prevent his leg from stiffening and swelling up.

Byrnes said that he asked Garcia not to try to hike down the trail because he might further his injuries, but Garcia continued anyway, expecting to meet search and rescue personnel on the way down. Garcia also said he did not want to allow his ankle time to stiffen up, further immobilizing him.

Meanwhile, Byrnes was gathering his crew and preparing for the rescue. According to Garcia, Byrnes told him in a later phone conversation that he had determined Garcia was six miles up the trail, despite the fact that Garcia had told him otherwise.

“We felt that in light of where he was at and the conditions of the road and the amount of snow that was on the road and the information that we had that the best plan of action was to get a helicopter,” Byrnes said.

Byrnes proceeded to contact the search and rescue organization at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia where he got approval for air rescue, free of charge to both Garcia and the county.

“It was going to be the safest way, for him and for us, to get him out of there,” Byrnes said.

Langley Air Force Base authorized the rescue helicopter to come from the Maelstrom Air Force base in Great Falls, however, there was a storm between Missoula and Great Falls, preventing the helicopter from taking off.

“That killed us by a couple of hours,” Byrnes said.

By the time Byrnes had rearranged a new flight, also free, out of Spokane, Wash. Garcia had already made the grueling hike out of the wilderness.

Garcia said that the pain of walking on his wounded foot was intense and the entire time he expected to see rescue personnel.

“On a scale of 1 to 10 that pain was a 10.5,” Garcia said.

Byrnes said that Garcia made his call just in time to prevent the helicopter from taking off from Spokane.

“I canceled them just as they were warming up the helicopter to go,” Byrnes said.

Now that Garcia is safe and sound, he is concerned that no one came up to help him on his hike down and that his advice that the trail was easily walked and that a helicopter was not necessary was totally disregarded.

“I walked out of there with one leg and two guys couldn’t come up there and get me,” Garcia said.

Byrnes says that he made a decision based on the condition of the trail that it was not safe for his workers to hike up after Garcia.

“We felt that safety-wise, for the patient and for our staff, that it was better to go with the helicopter since it was at no cost to us. Since we’re the ones doing the rescue we’re pretty much the ones that are in charge,” Byrnes said.

Garcia said that he was really concerned that it took them more than four hours to arrange the helicopter and it appeared that even by the time he had rescued himself that there was no form of rescue in sight, but Byrnes disagrees.

“Just because someone doesn’t see a helicopter doesn’t mean that it isn’t coming,” Byrnes said.

Roberta Garcia said that no one ever contacted her to notify her of her husband’s condition or what was happening with his rescue.

“I know what could have happened to him, hurt, all alone up in the mountains. I know what hypothermia looks like, I know what a broken bone that hasn’t been fixed looks like,” she said.

Kelly Garcia said that he feels like the search and rescue immediately abandoned any plans to send someone up to his location because it was not accessible by motorized vehicle.

“If they can’t ride those four-wheelers or snowmobiles, you’re out of luck,” Garcia said.

He said that if he ever finds himself in that situation again, he will call his friends for help rather than Mineral County Search and Rescue. He added that if anyone needed help in the woods, they should feel free to call him as well.

“That could have been anybody else. It could have been someone that is new to the area and they would have been left up there without a clue. Things could have been worse for somebody else and I just don’t want to see this happen again,” Garcia said.

Garcia said that he feels there is a serious issue with Search and Rescue’s leadership.

“I have shared the information with people in our community and they’re not really surprised that it happened. There’s a problem with our search and rescue organization and the community is very aware of it,” said Roberta Garcia.

Byrnes insists that he did everything he could for Garcia.

“Safety for our people is of the utmost importance as well as safety for the patient and we felt that that since safety was an issue that it was in every one’s best interest to use the aircraft, especially since it was at no cost to anyone,” Byrnes said.

Garcia and his wife plan to contact the Mineral County Commissioners and Mineral County Sheriff Hugh Hopwood to voice their complaints.

“I feel like I was just abandoned,” Garcia said.