Officials at Banff National Park have released video of a dramatic mountain rescue this summer, showing how its crews plucked a badly injured climber from a nearly sheer cliff face.
The conditions were almost perfect for climbing when Jonathan Lytton and a friend set out to climb Cascade Mountain.
Lytton, a professor at the University of Calgary's biochemistry and molecular biology department, was an experienced climber and the weather was clear and warm.
But he quickly got into trouble when a loose rock struck him as he scaled one of the mountain's more technically difficult sections. Lytton lost his grip on the rock face and fell more than 20 metres until he was stopped by his safety rope.
His climbing partner managed to pull Lytton onto a ledge and place a call for help to Banff dispatch.
The fall had cracked Lytton's climbing helmet and left him with head injuries, a broken ankle, dislocated shoulder and broken ribs.
The video, taken by a small camera mounted atop the helmet of one of Lytton's rescuers, shows them flying to the remote mountainside where he had fallen, treating his injuries and carrying him into their helicopter for evacuation to hospital.
Mountain rescue specialist Steve Holeczi and his partner Arron Beardmore said the video of their rescue shows that even experienced outdoorsmen in the best of conditions can get into trouble all too quickly.
"The message in this video is that it can happen to anyone," he said. "It was a nice day, these guys were on a climb that was well within their abilities and they had an accident, but they had a cell phone, our emergency dispatch number, they knew how to signal us on the cliff."
"Had they not done that -- not been able to initiate a rescue right away -- then the outcome might have been quite different."
Holeczi said the video can also help victims piece together what happened.
"He's so focused in on his own pain that he wasn't realizing -- so I think for him it really brought the whole day together, and it was quite a big experience in his life so to get that footage I think helped him out a bit with what happened that day."
Lytton, who is still recovering from the injuries sustained in his fall, said he has no memory of the fall and little of his rescue. "The last thing I do remember was climbing fairly confidently, then the next thing I remember is waking up next to my partner, and realizing something bad happened."
Seeing the video helped, he said.
"Seeing what they as rescuers were doing, and also just seeing the situation -- it provided some closure I think for me, from the partial memories that I had lapsed."
Parks Canada says that it hopes to share more of these rescue videos with the public through YouTube, to help people understand what goes on during a rescue and how to be safer in the mountains.
With a report by CTV Calgary's Kevin Fleming
