CALIFORNIA

Man survives 75-foot plunge at Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

BY NATHAN SOLIS | STAFF WRITER
FEB. 15, 2022 2:18 PM PT

A man plunged 75 feet from an observation deck near the top of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway over the weekend and miraculously survived, authorities said. ... An employee at a restaurant atop the Mt. San Jacinto summit noticed a man climbing over a railing on Saturday just before he slipped and fell, according to Greg Purdy, vice president of marketing and public affairs at the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.

Emergency officials received a call around 5:30 p.m. about a person going over the side of the cliff, according to the Riverside County Fire Department. The man — who was not identified — slipped on hard ice and landed in an inaccessible area, officials said.

Link to tweet

A helicopter from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department was requested, but because of the icy conditions, it could not assist in the rescue efforts. Instead, firefighters responded to the scene with ropes and riggings and rappelled down to the man’s location.

He was lifted in a Stokes basket — a stretcher used in emergency situations to lift patients vertically from steep terrain. The man had minor injuries but declined any additional medical care, Riverside County Fire spokesperson April Newman said. It was not clear why he climbed over the railing. ... “Our first priority is not the how it happened, but how a patient is doing during our rescue,” Newman said. {snip} The man who was rescued was accompanied by another person, and the two guests rode the tramway back down to the base, Purdy said.
_____________________________________________

Nathan Solis
Twitter https://twitter.com/tarantulaarms
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/latimes/
Email nathan.solis@latimes.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/latimes

Nathan Solis is a Metro reporter covering breaking news at the Los Angeles Times. He previously worked for Courthouse News Service, where he wrote both breaking news and enterprise stories ranging from criminal justice to homelessness and politics. Before that, Solis was at the Redding Record Searchlight as a multimedia journalist, where he anchored coverage of the destructive 2017 fires in Northern California. Earlier in his career, he worked for Eastsider L.A.