This is Jake and Mac’s account of the situation while driving home after.
After Adeline and Xavier have clean lines through gorilla, Matthew Boyd runs gas pedal into notch almost flips. He hits a hard high brace and dislocates his shoulder. He runs the flume, gets surfed in speed trap, and gets out of hole. This is when we realized his shoulder was out. We quickly but delicately pull him out of river at speed trap by his PFD. After massaging Jonah reduces shoulder successfully.
Mac Thompson runs notch catches eddy realizes the situation gets out of boat. After safety is set mac and Jackson run gorilla successfully. we start to plan matthews escape from gorge. Jackson burden paddles down ahead to pick him up at trailhead. Matthew Boyd and Patrick get ready to hike out. Sam Tayler runs pencil sharpener into the setup eddy but misses, goes wide into crack. He flips in the flume and hits upper neck at some point underwater. Rolls up and runs scream machine and niecies pieces. We all assume he is OK and focus back on getting on water. Jake does the seal launch portage gets below Nies' pieces and find Jack and Sam sitting in the eddy on my left. I ask if everything is alright. Jack says “we have a possible very serious spine or neck situation and are waiting for adrenaline to wear down to do a spine assessment he is feeling tingling in his fingers and feels like he’s going to pass out”
I get out of my boat and relay to the rest of my crew of sams situation. Everybody including Matthew Boyd switches their full attention to Sam. Then Gage, unknowing to situation, runs gorilla gets surfed for a second then comes through Nies' Pieces. Realizes the situation. Now all of Gages crew is here to help. We then slowly try to stand him up by holding both shoulders and stabilizing head. He nearlypasses out. We help him back into his boat with his legs out which was more comfortable he said. We are now stabilizing his head at all times throughout this rescue.
We all grab a side and lift his boat up onto the next ledge to begin the rescue and have room to place him on a stretcher. then Gage and Xavier paddle down through rapid transit to get the stretcher stashed at Groove Tube. We pick him up and place him onto stretcher. We then have to pick up him again to get the Velcro straps out from underneath him so we can have him more secured on the board. We use two pfds on either side, a throw rope under his head, and a spray skirt under his chin between his pfd.
Somewhere during all of this not entirely sure Patrick uses Scotty’s phone to contact EMS. We also make a Facebook post around this time that we probably need help with this extent of a rescue. We thought EMS would not come down the trail at all and had to pull him entirely out of the gorge ourselves. So we evaluate what safety gear we have Gage and several others go to set up anchors for some of the harder sections to carry him through. After that was squared away we begin carrying the stretcher down the "trail" around Power Slide and Rapid Transit, moving very slow, taking several breaks, making sure Sam is okay, and scouting next path to carry and what support is needed. For two complicated over head press hand off sections we set up anchors to support the side of the stretcher with his head incase anybody slipped.
During the first overhead press the first EMS person makes it down into the gorge to contact with us to let us know that they have arrived and will actually be coming down into the gorge and they will take over after we get to Groove Tube and onto the actual trail. The other overhead press was to get down a 6-8 foot ledge which put us below rapid transit. From below Rapid Transit we tie three kayaks together to create a rapid to float him over tothe portage to get to groove tube. Then we have to get him off this raft over a bunch of rocks and wood piles and over the last one wood plank bridge to where rescue squad met us. Sam is moved to a proper body board. All the kayakers then begin to hike back to our boats and boat out while Matthew accompanied by Patrick hike out. Jack stayed with Sam and the emergency rescue crew.
Put on at 11 am; accident must've happened between 1:15; We had him on the stretcher initially at 2 pm. Some of these events could be out of order but all happened.
Paddlers: Sam, Matthew, Jack, Jonah, Gage, Jake, Mac, Patrick, Xavier, Adeline, Scotty, Garrett, Brian, Jackson, Mitchell. Could’ve missed some names and or gotten names wrong. I met a lot of these people today and a lot happened today. Jack preformed numerous extremity checks throughout the situation and overall did a wonderful job guiding the critical beginning points of the rescue. We all thought he was healthy after he paddled away from gorilla. Overall I feel like we did the best we could.
Update from Sam Taylor:I have been released from the hospital with a good report, no broken bones. Pretty sore and shaken up and I have a follow-up appointment tomorrow morning to evaluate nerve damage because I still have some tingling in my hands.
Can’t express enough how grateful I am to all the paddlers who worked so hard to get me out of there, and the SAR and Henderson medical professionals who did all did a great job. So many people stepped up and were really dialed on their medical and rescue skills. Not an easy place to get someone out from, obviously. That was a really scary experience for me and I felt pretty vulnerable being on that backboard, and so many people took such good care of me. Hope to see y’all on the river sometime. Makes me really grateful to be a part of such a tight-knit community.
