Accident on Mt Kenya

WILDERNESS & ENVIRONMENTAL MEDICINE, 22, 87–90 (2011)

WILDERNESS ESSAY

Accident on Mt Kenya Oswald Oelz, Dr med; Ken Zafren, MD (translator) Triemli Hospital, Zürich, Switzerland (Dr Oelz); Alaska Native Medical Center, Anchorage, AK and Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA (Dr Zafren).

Introduction By Ken Zafren, MD The following account first appeared in 1999 in the autobiography of Dr Oswald Oelz. In addition to being an Editor Emeritus of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, Dr Oelz was the Chief of the Medical Staff of Triemli Hospital in Zürich, Switzerland. He is also known for his accomplishments as an extreme climber, expedition doctor, and expert in high altitude medicine. From Mit Eispickel und Stethoskop1 (With Ice Axe and Stethoscope) by Oswald Oelz, MD1 (©1999 AS Verlag, Zürich) Translated from the original German by Ken Zafren, MD.

Accident on Mt Kenya by Oswald Oelz, Dr med We reached the main summit of Mt Kenya after a rapid ascent—the first rope team that year. At that time this African mountain was still a hot tip for mountaineers of a somewhat serious inclination and was accordingly isolated. On the second day of our approach march, at the Kalmi Hut near the climbing route, we met an English and American group whose ascent had failed due to ice on the rocks. That didn’t dampen our enthusiasm. The beauty of the approach march and the impressive figure of the double summit had added to our elation. The main summit is the 5199-m-high Batian, named after a native chieftain. It was first climbed in 1899 by Sir Halford Mackinder and his guides César Ollier and Joseph Brocherel from Courmayeur. The twin summit—Nelion (5186 m)—likewise bears the name of a native chieftain. It was first reached in 1929 by the legendary adventurers Eric Shipton and Percy Wyn Harris. On the 5th of September 1970 at 6 in the morning, we started climbing the 700-m-high north face and enjoyed extended unroped rock climbing from Grade 3 to Grade 5 on solid granite. After a long couloir and a large amphitheater, a magnificent chimney led to Firmin’s Tower. About noon we were enveloped in thick fog and spent an hour and a half looking for a passage to Ship-

ton’s Notch, the key to the last part of the ridge. It began to snow, and we used the rope for the last 100 m to the summit. Just as Gert was telling me in the fog that he would turn around in half an hour whether or not we had reached our goal, I stood on the summit. We were enormously happy that we had finally reached this, our first real summit outside of Europe. I allowed myself 5 minutes for the then obligatory Gitanes Maisblatt (a kind of cigarette) and felt that this was really my best mountain climb yet. In increasing snow squalls, we returned the 3 rope lengths along the summit ridge to Shipton’s Notch. Further descent would now lead to the face and begin with a rappel anchor that was marked by 2 old rope slings. Shipton’s Notch is a comfortable place for several people to stand. While I hung another sling, Gert was standing 1 m to my left and was following the descent route with his eyes; with his left hand he held on to a giant boulder. Without being able to react, I was forced to watch as this boulder, together with my friend, as if in slow motion, tilted forward and crashed. I heard the noise of the rockfall, Gert’s scream, smelled the sulfur smell, and caught the quickly unwinding rope in my hands. In a split second, the skin was ripped from my fingers and palms until my friend’s fall was stopped for the moment by crashing into a rock rib. Somehow I succeeded in wrapping the rope around my left arm and elbow, to belay and stop the fall. How that was possible puzzles me to this day. Gert screamed in panic and enraged by pain that I should lower him a few meters, so he could lie down. He also told me right away that he had an open fracture of the lower leg. When I climbed down, the first thing I found was a piece of his shinbone the size of a matchbox. Gert was lying on a sloping ridge of rubble; he was bleeding from wounds on his head and legs. A piece of shinbone was poking out of his mangled pants underneath his ankle; this wound was bleeding especially hard. Using a binding I attempted to control the bleeding, at which point Gert said it would probably be smarter to bleed out than to wait for a slow death. He told me he had

88 3 ways to die at this spot – namely by shock and bleeding to death, by freezing to death, or by fat emboli from his shattered ankle. He was realistic. Only if I could bring help very quickly did he see a small possibility of survival. I saw none. If he survived the first hours or days, there was nevertheless little hope of bringing him down alive to the foot of the mountain by the long and extremely unfavorable descent route. But, until he was dead, we could still at least do something. So I packed him in extra clothes and stuck him in our bivouac sack. Two pitons anchored him to the wall. I also left him our whole stock of provisions, namely a deciliter of whiskey and a box of stewed plums. We parted and he asked me to give his regards to all his male friends and especially to all his female friends. I will never forget the descent in a further worsening snowstorm with bare, bleeding hands and fingers, and with a rope partly damaged by rockfall. I moved without feeling pain, cold, or wet, completely concentrating until I reached a certain practice rock 1 m above safe ground. After dark I reached the Kalmi Hut, in which the 8 British and American climbers from the previous day were waiting for another climbing attempt. After they heard my story they immediately offered all their help. The strongest in the group descended in the night to a lower hut where they found a radio and medicines. I was provided with hot, sweet tea. I couldn’t eat. On the following day, I tried to climb up to my injured friend with Dick, a mountain climber from Los Angeles. By 10 AM the snowfall became heavier and the climbing became increasingly difficult. In addition, Dick suffered increasingly from acute mountain sickness and was finally so worn out that he had to turn around at an altitude of 4900 m. The pain in my burned fingers and bare palms was hard to bear. However, the worst feeling was the thought that Gert would now die alone if he wasn’t already dead. It was night when we made it back to the Kalmi Hut, with dripping noses, frozen through, and worn out. Already 4 mountain climbers from the Kenya Mountain Club had arrived with medicines and rescue equipment. All of them were suffering from acute mountain sickness. In the club, they previously had discussed a possible rescue mission on Mt Kenya and were of the opinion that it would be impossible to bring someone with a serious injury down alive from the vicinity of the summit to the valley. In spite of that they wanted to try, and we learned that mountain climbers from all of East Africa were on the way to Mt Kenya to help us. The next day, with Silvano Borrusso, an Italian living in Kenya, I made a renewed effort to reach my friend. Although Silvano also suffered from high-altitude symptoms, we reached the rock ridge that separated us from Gert at 5:30 PM, more than 48 hours after I had left him.

Oelz and Zafren I called out to him for a long time. Since I didn’t receive an answer, I was sure he was dead. So I climbed over the edge behind which I had left him, saw the red bivouac sack that covered his body and desperately screamed his name. A miracle occurred: Gert pushed the bivouac sack to one side and said with a soft voice: “My God, Bull, you’re still alive.” I screamed into the radio that we should push forward as quickly as possible, he was still alive, we could still save him—and received no answer. However, this transmission was heard at the foot of the mountain and motivated the rescuers who had arrived in greater numbers. Gert was suffering from great pain and received a first injection of morphine. He drank a little and immediately threw it up again. In the previous 48 hours he had consumed a swallow of whiskey and the fruit preserves, which, without his knife, he had to open with rocks. There followed another cold, uncomfortable night on a steep rock ledge. The 8th of September began with radiant sunshine and the first visit from airplanes. We fashioned a makeshift splint for Gert’s injured leg, whereupon Silvano tried to carry him on his back for a few meters. Gert immediately cried out in terrible pain and lost consciousness. We moved him only a few meters and again anchored him to the rock. He was a dying man who could scarcely swallow liquids, and I did not yet have intravenous fluids available. Heavy snowfall awakened us early the next morning. Gert told me that he had expected to die in the night and he thought how horrible it was that dying was taking so long. Several times during the night he had asked me to unclip him from the pitons so he could roll over the rock ridge and fall in to the abyss. Again we heard the sound of several airplanes and then a new sound, that of a helicopter. Suddenly, there was hope for more rapid help. Then there was a very loud bang, then silence, and the helicopter sound disappeared. We believed that the helicopter had crashed; it fit so well into our desperate scenario. Later we learned that our assumption was correct and that Jim Hastings, a young American pilot, had lost his life in the accident. In the afternoon, 4 mountain climbers along with the rescue leader, Robert Chambers, reached us and brought us the long-awaited intravenous fluids. The veins in Gert’s arms were scarcely to be found; with my numb fingers I had to stick him at least 20 times until the needle was in the right spot; then it slipped again. Finally, I made it and infused a first liter of glucose solution. During the night the intravenous fluids, which were hanging from the pitons above Gert on the rock wall, froze. Later I held a burning gas

Accident on Mt Kenya stove under the bottle so that the intravenous fluids could flow again. I caught myself hoping that Gert would now finally die, because I didn’t think we could bring him down from the mountain alive. I wanted to leave this horrible place on this horrible mountain in this horrible weather. Then I considered again whether, had I known that we would end up in the Devil’s kitchen, I would have given up the trip. No, I wouldn’t have, and I would have done it again. This was the most intense awareness of life that I had ever experienced. Sometime we would emerge from this place. The next morning—the 10th of September—it was terribly cold. There were now 5 men. We built a cableway for the first difficult traverse to our descent route. The attempt to use this to transport Gert failed again due to his unbearable pain. We had to wait for a stretcher. In the meanwhile I had used up our supply of intravenous fluids and morphine ampoules. In his feverish dreams Gert spoke about the fact that he had had a good life, that he was sad to go now, and that he deeply regretted everything that he had neglected in life. Here he referred expressly to his relationships with women. The afternoon storm was stronger than before, and our morale reached its absolute low point. The 11th of September dawned. For 6 days and 6 nights Gert had now been lying on the small rock projection with his severe injury. He was still alive, although with a high fever and constant complaints. He asked me, finally, to make a fire, and he heard voices of German girls, who visited us. He also demanded that we not sit around but rather rescue him at last. This became possible at midday when the longawaited stretcher arrived. Our cableway to the next rock tower sprang into action. Then began the long traverse over Grade 3-4 terrain. Four climbers carried the stretcher over the rocks while the fifth secured it from above. By dark we had reached the beginning of the vertical rappel station where we bivouacked again. Gert suffered again from feverish dreams. He called us drunkards and demanded his share of the red wine. Every 2 hours, I melted snow and Gert could then take a few swallows of tea. After another restless night, we began with the rappelling. The stretcher and the accompanying rescuers were secured at all times by 2 ropes. After many rope lengths another violent snowstorm set in. We were at the beginning of a long extremely problematic traverse over a sharp ridge. I saw no possibility of building a 60-m cableway to the next rock tower with the little remaining rope. Once again we were facing a seemingly unsolvable problem.

89 At that moment a figure emerged from the fog and snow squalls, speaking to me in Austrian dialect and pulling 3 ropes behind him. As the deus ex machina, I recognized Werner Heim, one of the strongest Austrian mountaineers of that time and one of the most experienced mountain rescuers. He told me that 7 friends from Tyrol had come to rescue Gert. They had already prepared the entire rappel route. Later I learned that 24 hours after the accident, Gert’s father had heard about the accident from a reporter and had immediately asked our friends to hurry to rescue us. With 1 day’s notice, the elite Tyrolean rescue team was flown to Nairobi. Two days later the 7 had arrived at the foot of the mountain. Five of them had just returned from the Himalayas, and therefore, were excellently acclimatized, so that it was possible for them to ascend rapidly without problems. The further lowering ran with magical rapidity, mostly thanks to the well-coordinated rescue techniques and corresponding maneuvers, occasionally supported by raw strength. For the last 200 m to the ground, Heim and I hung on the stretcher and roped down in one go to the foot of the wall. It was midnight when we arrived. In the meanwhile Gert had received further infusions from Dr Raimund Margraiter, a member of the rescue team, and we were optimistic that he would survive. At 4 o’clock in the morning, Dr Margraiter and I undid the bandages on Gert’s leg. The smell and the sight of the wound with the gray protruding shinbone chased away the interested onlookers within seconds. We were sure that his leg would need to be amputated. A radiant new morning dawned after an hour’s sleep. Police porters helped us to carry Gert on the stretcher several hours to the nearest road. His father was waiting there and that same evening he was brought to the hospital in Nairobi. Contrary to our expectations, the surgeon there took the risk of only cleaning the wound and not performing an amputation. During 9 days I had eaten almost nothing, and, in spite of that, I felt that I was in absolutely top shape. We were invited everywhere. More than 100 people from East Africa had helped, and everyone wanted to see us. The newspapers reported on the rescue. In an editorial in the East African Standard, we were called heroes, and my efforts were especially mentioned. The article ended with the sentence: “Kenya salutes this hero among heroes.” This documentation of my heroism now hangs in a dark corner of my wine cellar. The survival of my friend brought me the recognition that, in the mountains, one can survive even critical situations with appropriate will and with some luck, with the exception of avalanches, rockfall, or accidental falls that are immediately fatal. That took

90 away some of my anxiety about the future. Gert would undergo repeated operations for more than a year. He kept his leg although with a stiff joint; the matchboxsize piece of tibia stayed on Mt Kenya. Twenty years later we climbed this peak again, along with some of the rescue team. At the spot of the fall we thought about Jim Hastings, the young helicopter pilot and fastened a bronze plaque to the rock with the inscription: “In memoriam, Captain Jim Hastings who lost his life in saving mine. Gert Judmaier, 1970 –1990.”

Oelz and Zafren Postscript Gert Judmaier returned to work 6 months after the accident. He later became the Chief of Gastroenterology at University Hospital Innsbruck (Austria).

Reference 1. Oelz O. Mit Eispickel und Stethoskop. Zürich, Switzerland: AS Verlag; 1999.