5-ton boulder keeps California hiker pinned to ground for 7 hours — but Navy medics, other volunteers make daring rescue

Navy medics and several members of a volunteer search and rescue team braved steep terrain and frigid temperatures in the middle of the night to rescue a hiker in California trapped by a heavy boulder for hours.

On the afternoon of December 5, Inyo County Search and Rescue — "an all volunteer 501(c)(3) non-profit organization," according to its Facebook page — received a report of a hiker incapacitated by a giant boulder near Santa Rita Flat in the Inyo Mountains, not far from Independence, California, about 150 miles east of Fresno. Two volunteers were dropped into the area via helicopter, while four more drove there in vehicles. By the time the rescuers arrived, the sun had long since set.

Rescuing the hiker proved to be enormously challenging, as the man was "in great pain," a statement from the search and rescue group said, and the boulder weighed between "6,000 and 10,000 pounds." Not to be deterred, the rescue team put together "a system of ropes, pulleys, and leverage," which allowed them to shift the boulder just enough to move the hiker's left leg out from underneath it.

But releasing the hiker's leg from the weight of the boulder solved only one problem. Rescuers then had to determine how to transport him away from the mountain to a hospital for treatment. Despite the dark and the cold, a helicopter from U.S. Naval Air Station Lemoore arrived to extricate the badly injured hiker. As there was no suitable landing spot in the area, a Naval medic "rappelled from the helicopter to the scene," ICSAR's statement said. Together, the medic and the hiker were then hoisted back into the helicopter and whisked away to a Fresno hospital.

The clock had already struck midnight by the time the hiker was taken to Fresno, meaning that the man had languished underneath the boulder for approximately seven grueling hours. The Inyo County Search and Rescue team members then returned to their base and signed out at 4 a.m., the group's Facebook statement said.

The name of the hiker and his current condition remain unknown.

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