Miracle at the Quarry

The lone hiker was walking up the trail to Ensign Peak to view a winter sunrise over Salt Lake City. The Ensign Peak trail itself is considered to be easy, but it skirts the top of an old granite quarry and has a couple of spots where it has a little scree. Scree is a type of weathered gravel that slips easily underfoot, and it can be far more treacherous than people realize. I used to be the director of the Wasatch Hiking Club and have seen quite a few broken limbs and other injuries brought about by scree.

At a point that had direct exposure to the cliffs below, the hiker suddenly slipped and fell down an increasingly steep slope, plunging towards the retired quarry below. Failing to arrest his fall, he landed hard on a tiny, two-foot-wide ledge above a sheer drop of 70 feet. As he fought for breath, he realized that his phone had fallen away and shattered on the rocks below. It was 29 degrees Fahrenheit, and his pelvis and leg were broken. In this condition, it would be only a matter of minutes before hypothermia would begin setting in.

Some 3 hours later and about 400 feet away, some homeless people crawled from their tent into the cold morning air, convinced that they had heard someone crying for help. As they walked into the quarry, they were shocked to see a man’s hand holding a dying flashlight and waving back and forth from a small ledge high atop the old quarry walls…