Gillette woman rescued after 100-foot fall in the Big Horns

For the second time this fall, Big Horn County Search & Rescue team members were summoned on Sunday afternoon to rescue an amateur photographer who slipped while taking photos of Shell Falls and fell approximately 100 feet.

The initial report, which came in at around 4 p.m., described the photographer as a 50-year-old woman.  According to a S&R social media post, the first team members on scene “determined that the subject had slid down a steep embankment between the falls and the visitors center, went over a vertical drop and was out of site below.”

Sheriff Ken Blackburn said the woman is a resident of Gillette, and that her travelling companion, also a woman from Gillette of about the same age, was able to make her way down to her friend and was with her at the bottom when S&R members arrived.

Two technical rope team members from Big Horn County S&R, one a paramedic for Cody Regional Ambulance, set up a rope system and rappelled to the subject’s location near the bottom of the canyon. After accessing the injuries, they decided to set up a rope haul system to extract the patient from the canyon. A third rope technician was lowered to the bottom with equipment for evacuation. 

The patient was placed in a full body vacuum mattress and litter system and a haul team brought her to the top with the three rope technicians. One rope technician was lowered back down to the second subject who was brought up as well. The patient was initially loaded onto a waiting First Flight of Wyoming helicopter, but she later chose to be transported by ground ambulance to Three Rivers Health.

Blackburn was unable to provide an update on her condition, saying only that she appeared to have suffered a shoulder injury.  Shell Fire and Cody Regional Ambulance also responded to the scene. By 7 p.m., all had cleared the scene.  

“Both Search & Rescue squads did an outstanding job,” he said. “That north-end ropes team does some incredible work. People discount the Big Horns and don’t realize how technical their job is, but that’s twice now that we’ve deployed the ropes team in a little over a month.  We know we have the third or fourth busiest Search & Rescue squad in the state.

In its social media post, Big Horn County S&R shared, “We would again like to remind the public to please take pictures from the viewing areas at Shell Falls. There are very steep slopes that end in vertical drop offs in many areas around the falls and in other areas of the canyon.”