ROCK CHUTE RESCUE: Patrollers Step Up in Mammoth Frontcountry Rescue

Mid-June is about the last time you’d expect anyone to be skiing the Sherwins, Mammoth’s in-town frontcountry stash. You would also be safe to assume there couldn’t be much more excitement in store for the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol, with only a couple of weeks left in a season that’s been stacked with danger and tragedy.

Well on Saturday, June 10, expectations and assumptions went out the window when Mammoth patrollers were called to rescue a skier who had wedged himself in a small crevasse halfway down a couloir above Mammoth Lakes.

The group of skiers, which included 25 year-old Jim Palmer of Mammoth, set out to ski Rock Chute, the most visually prominent and alpine line on the Sherwin Ridge. Only small snow patches remain on the upper half of the ridge, lingering reminders of dozens of waist-deep days that made up Mammoth’s biggest winter in history.

Rock Chute itself is a small couloir that splits a craggy cliff. In midwinter, it’s a couple of steep hops followed by three or four round turns to a wide-open apron. In late spring, the gut of the dead-north-facing chute is often rock hard, with the middle of the runout melted out thanks to a large boulder field. Almost every season, someone waits until the boulders are exposed and the snow is icy hard to have an inexplicable go at it—frequently with unfortunate results. This time of year the top of the chute is very steep, with a number of rocks and glide cracks (miniature crevasses) emerging near the rock walls.

One of these glide cracks saved Palmer’s life when he hit firm snow and lost control shortly after dropping in, bouncing off one of the chute’s walls during his 300-foot tumble. Palmer avoided a high-speed cartwheel through the rocks when he managed to fall into, or snag, one of the holes opening up on the side of the chute.

Another skier in the party was able to descend to Palmer, who suffered head and other injuries and was incapable of moving from his exposed position.

The Mono Country SAR team requested assistance from the Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol, helicopters from Nevada’s Fallon Naval Air Station and resources from the Fresno CHP.

Two ski patrollers climbed the ridge, which lies just south of Mammoth Mountain. Armed with a heli-dropped toboggan and gear, they were able to descend to the victim and lower him down the couloir and snowfield below to a safe LZ for the heli. According to Bobby Hoyt, Patrol Director, the patrollers then picked their way down the endless talus fields below the snow line, carrying the sled and gear back down to the nearest road.

Palmer was taken to Mammoth Hospital, and then, due to the severity of his injuries, was flown to Washoe Medical Center in Reno.