Hood River County, Ore., sheriff’s deputies coordinated the rescue Thursday of a Vancouver man who’d been hiking on Mount Hood.
Greg Stanphill, 23, was hiking the Timberline Trail and phoned around 2 p.m. that he was having complications due to asthma and needed help, according to the sheriff’s office.
Stanphill said he had forgotten his inhaler, was out of breath and had vomited. He was unable to continue his trek, deputies said.
He was hiking the trail alone from Timberline Lodge and intended to complete all 40 miles of it, the sheriff’s office said. A fellow hiker in the area, who happened to be an emergency room nurse, stopped to help Stanphill.
Four members from the Hood River Crag Rat team ascended the Elk Meadows Trail and located Stanphill. The group and other searchers helped him back to the trailhead by 8 p.m., deputies said.
Stanphill was well enough to go home after the rescue.
Hood River deputies say they responded to two other search-and-rescue incidents Thursday near Mount Hood. Temperatures were near 100 degrees on parts of the mountain, authorities said.
Earlier that morning, a 53-year-old man from Illinois was hiking the Timberline Trail when he became exhausted and called for help. Around 4:30 p.m., deputies were notified of a missing 86-year-old woman from Hood River. She had been berry picking with her husband in the Red Hill area north of Mount Hood, but they lost each other. Following an initial search, multiple agencies were called in; searchers found the woman at 5 a.m. Friday, healthy and in good condition after surviving the night lost in the forest.
“It is unusual for us to have three search-and-rescue operations in one day and is an example of how many people are recreating in the forest this year,” the sheriff’s office said.
