After spending Saturday night stranded on Rocky Mountain National Park’s Mount Ida with a broken leg, a 32-year-old man was flown off the mountain by helicopter Sunday to St. Anthony Central Hospital.
Ranganathan Chitoor Parameswaran of Lakewood was in stable condition Sunday at St. Anthony.
Parameswaran fell about 1 p.m. Saturday as he descended toward the Gorge Lake area with other members of a Denver hiking group, said Rocky Mountain National Park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson.
Two park rangers reached him late in the afternoon, and all three spent the night on the 12,880-foot mountain’s slope of loose rock and scree.
A 16-member rescue party arrived on the site about 9:40 a.m. Sunday, and it was decided to carry Parameswaran back to the summit where a helicopter could reach the injured man.
“It took us about an hour and a half to get him to a landing zone. We raised him about 200 feet,” Patterson said.
Sunday’s rescue was one of a string that park rangers and rescue crews have handled this summer.
While Patterson couldn’t say on Sunday how many rescue attempts have been mounted this season, she said in 2008 that there were 206 search-and-rescue missions, with 32 costing more than $500 each.
In 2007, there were 205 rescues, and 69 topped $500, she said.
In May, a 57-year-old man suffered a fractured rib and pelvis after he fell while trying to climb Flattop Mountain.
A pair of backcountry skiers spotted him at the base of Ptarmigan Glacier, where he had been for 24 hours.
The following month, four climbers who were roped together fell more than 300 feet as they descended a steep snow slope above Emerald Lake.
The entire group suffered injuries, and park rangers and Larimer County Search and Rescue members carried two of the climbers out on litters.
On July 6, a 54-year-old woman from Enid, Okla., was posing for a photograph next to Glacier Creek when she slipped and fell and was swept downstream.
Estes Park Dive Rescue, park rangers and others rescued her as she clung to a rock. She suffered from hypothermia and a broken wrist.
Later in the month, a pair of rangers alternated carrying a woman on their backs for about two hours after she broke her ankle near Black Lake.
A 62-year-old Durango man died after he collapsed below the summit of Longs Peak when he had a heart attack on July 20. Bystanders performed CPR for 30 minutes.
His body was flown to a helispot in the Upper Beaver Meadows area of the park.
Four days later, a 64-year-old man fell 10 feet in Longs Peak’s “Trough” area and suffered a head laceration, a damaged ankle and other injuries.
A pair of rangers and a friend of the man got him to a shelter, and he was flown out the following day.
This year’s assortment and pace of rescues is typical, Patterson said.
“I don’t know a tally for this year,” she said, “but I have been here for eight years, and it hasn’t been any less.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
