How a Disastrous Fall Led to a Record-Setting Thru-Hike

Time slowed as my momentum gained. An eternity separated me from my fate. This couldn’t be real. That’s when I passed out.

 

- Mary Beth Skylis

​I gazed over the ledge of Montezuma Canyon in southeastern Utah, a grin spreading across my face. even though i was pretty new to canyoneering, i’d already come to love the sensation of a racing heartbeat, adrenaline flooding my veins. I stepped off the jagged lip and began the plunge, relaxed but excited.

After descending about 200 feet, I realized something was wrong. The rappel device wasn’t giving me enough friction. I needed to slow down. I pulled hard on the rope and came to an abrupt halt. That’s when I heard my harness pop. Then I was loose, falling into the 45-foot gap between me and the ground. Time slowed as my momentum gained. An eternity separated me from my fate. This couldn’t be real. That’s when I passed out. 

I came to when my left leg hit the uneven, rock-ridden ground, bearing the brunt of the impact. My helmet cracked into two pieces as if it were made of clay. My sternum, ribs, pelvis, and a finger all broke, absorbing the impact of my fall. I felt my bones dissolving. My legs crumbled. I couldn’t breathe. 

My friends rushed to my rescue as I lay with my head pointing downhill. I asked them to rotate my body so I could breathe. I’m a paramedic, so I knew moving a victim with a possible back injury might determine whether I’d ever walk again. But gravity was suffocating me. If I couldn’t breathe now, what did it matter if I’d be able to walk again? I could feel the bones shifting in my pelvis when my friends adjusted me. But that was probably the least of my worries. I remembered it was common to tear an artery and to severely damage internal organs during a high-impact incident. Being positioned in a rugged canyon further complicated my predicament. I could bleed out in an hour.