Missteps and tricky treks

Dan Rolph - Exeter Examiner Editor

By Dan Rolph

For this issue’s editorial, I’m going to share a personal story.

Several weeks ago, my wife Molly and I decided to stop by a new food truck that has set up shop in St. Joseph to try their poutine we’d been hearing so much about. Coincidentally, my sister had told us a few days before that she and her husband were planning on visiting Poutine Feast in Sarnia that day, so I snapped a photo and sent it to our family group chat, thinking she’d reply talking about some of the fun they were having.

Her response was not what I expected.

“Nice! We also intended on poutine, but instead I decided to twist my ankle on a hike and now the EMS is rescuing me.”

As it turns out, I had sent a message my sister as she was laying on the forest floor just off a trail at Mystery Falls near Parkhill, unable to complete the hike with an injured ankle and leg after falling. With shoddy cellphone reception and without a way to properly communicate their location, her husband was making the trek back to the parking lot to meet up with first responders.

The evening proved to be one of the most eventful ones in my sister’s life.

Two paramedics were the first to make it to her, led back to her by her husband. The paramedics helped my sister as best as they could given the circumstances.

However, once they’d arrived it was clear that my sister wouldn’t be walking out of the trail herself. They toyed with creative strategies of getting her to safety. At one point they floated the idea of her dragging herself to the nearby river to be rescued by boat, but it was eventually settled that she’d need to be carried out.

When firefighters reached the scene, they loaded my sister into what she described as an oversized IKEA shopping bag and disembarked on the tiring journey back to the Mystery Falls parking lot. They began lifting her in rotating teams of six alongside the paramedics and my sister’s husband, who refused to take breaks along the path back, weaving through the narrow trail.

With some determination, the crews got her to an ATV, which was able to bring her the rest of the way back to the parking lot — a godsend to everyone involved after what ended up being a two-hour journey.

When she finally got to the parking lot, she was surprised by just how much of a scene she had caused, all because she’d fallen in a very inconvenient spot.

Dozens of firefighters were there to assist, police officers were on hand to direct traffic as emergency vehicles navigated the area, and an ambulance was waiting for her arrival to whisk her off to the nearest hospital in Strathroy.

Until that moment, she hadn’t quite grasped the seriousness of her circumstances, and seeing the size of the response was when the reality of her rescue finally became clear her.

Once the x-rays were done she got the news. Several fractures, including multiple fibula fractures and an avulsion fragment.

You just never know when something as simple as an afternoon hike will turn into an emergency.

What we do know is that we’re incredibly lucky to have people in our community willing to be there in our time of need. I’m not sure what my sister would have done without them.