from: http://www.nps.gov/zion/blogs/Canyoneer-Injured-in-Jolley-Gulch.htm
Canyoneer Injured in Jolley Gulch
March 13, 2014 Posted by: Zion National Park
On Tuesday, March 11th, Zion dispatch received a report of an injured canyoneer in Jolley Gulch along the park’s eastern boundary.
Initial responders discovered that the man had fallen approximately 30 feet unrestrained and bounced several times off the rock wall before landing on the canyon bottom. He was not wearing a helmet and suffered significant multi-system trauma.
Due to a lengthy carryout and his deteriorating condition, Grand Canyon helitack was asked to assist with a short-haul operation. In order to get to an appropriate short-haul extraction point, Zion rescuers needed to move the 250-pound man out of a pothole, perform a technical lowering operation, hand carry him down two more vertical drops up to ten feet in height, and navigate a slot canyon layered with snow and ice filled pools – all while in a canyon that was only three feet wide in places.
Gusty, erratic winds hampered the short-haul efforts before the Grand Canyon helitack crew was able to successfully extract the man and a Zion rescuer. To further complicate logistics during the mission, LifeFlight AirMedical (St. George, Utah) was diverted from this mission to another one, but Classic LifeGuard (Page, Arizona) was able to fly the man to a medical care facility.
Details of what happened to the group soon surfaced. The second and final rappel in Jolley Gulch is a two-stage rappel. This team believed that there were three rappels in the canyon and stopped after the first stage of the final drop. They recognized that there was no fixed anchor at this point and would need to build one of their own. They did this by wedging a piece of a literal 2×4 they had found in the canyon into a ‘V’ groove of the slotted canyon. Their rope was simply looped over the piece of wood and when weighted, the anchor held. Remove any tension from the rope and the 2×4 fell to the ground leaving the anchor nonexistent. This is what occurred. The patient neared the edge transition of the rappel and due to the awkwardness of the slot, unweighted the rope and the anchor failed.
This unfortunate accident serves as an example of how crucial good decision making is. If this group had chosen their anchors wisely, and the patient had decided to wear a helmet, their day in Jolley Gulch may have ended differently.