Please forgive the length of the following post. Both of the incidents given below occurred with small groups and not solo trips but I wanted to relay them.

While on a climbing trip with six people total, one of the members of our group slipped and injured his leg during the descent of a steep creek bed on the way down the mountain. We stopped, brewed tea, assessed the patient and made a plan.

Given the signs and symptoms presented by the injured person we suspected a possible fractured tibia/fibula and no other injuries or illness. Using foam sleeping pads we applied an improvised splint. Given our location, about a mile and several hundred vertical feet from the vehicles, we decided to self evacuate. The patient was stable, the weather reasonable and even though all of us were a bit tired from a couple of days of climbing the five of us felt strong enough to lift and move the injured person.

We built an improvised litter/travois and carefully moved down the trail in stages of about 50 yards. We made it to the cars, loaded the patient in and drove to the hospital with out incident. I'm even proud to say, the ER staff was so impressed with our splint they commented on the quality. And since it was made of radiolucent materials, they left in place until after the x-rays were done and it was time to put a cast on the patient.

We, the five non-injured climbers were able to safely evacuate an injured friend without much risk but a lot of hard work. Later, we discussed what we would have done if the accident had occurred much higher on the mountain. Our plan then wouldn't have been much different except to send someone out to get help as the rest of us attempted to the evacuation. Given the terrain of the peak, combing self rescue with outside help would have been a reasonable option since our moving the patient would have only made things easier for air or land based SAR. If we had not felt this was the case and sought outside help, we would've stayed put in a good spot to avoid making things worse.


On another climbing trip, at 17,000' on Denali, one of our party members experienced some very suspicious and severe chest pains along with some other symptoms. We called for help right away, even though others in the group and I had on previous trips been able to lower altitude sick persons down "rescue gully" and evacuate them to the 14,000' camp. In the instance a helicopter rescue was an option, the weather was not bad but unstable and the patient exhibited signs and symptoms of a possibly life threatening condition. The helicopter was able to land and evacuate the patient off of the mountain to medical care.

I guess that this long post was to give examples where self rescue was a reasonable option versus calling for an emergent evacuation. I think it comes down to making the decision based on how much risk/suffering the self/group evacuation will create versus calling for help. My own bias is to always self evacuate when possible, I will limp, hobble or crawl my way out alone or if in a group, do my best to self evacuate others. I am not anti-SAR and would certainly not decline help if available or refuse to call for help if needed.

All that being said, having a trip plan and leaving the information with reliable people can save you when circumstances make it difficult to get out alone. This might be as simple as sending a text to a friend and saying something like "running trail xyz, back at 7p." and texting them when you get back.