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018 // Bram's pelvis opens like a book in a remote Taiwan canyon
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The things we love to do in nature can lead us to explore and discover places not just close to home, but to some very remote and uncharted places around the world.
These activities, like bushwalking/hiking, climbing or canyoning, give us opportunities to step outside the typical tourist or visitor experience, not only opening our eyes to cultures different to our own, but on a deeper level, the chance to connect with the local outdoor community through our shared love of wild places.
In this special double episode of Rescued, we hear from 3 friends, all highly skilled and experienced canyoners, as they find themselves in the embrace of Taiwan’s small and dedicated canyoning and rescue community, after a life-threatening fall during a multiday expedition.
If you ever needed a reminder of the value of regular, high-quality wilderness first aid training and the importance of being able to rely on the people you adventure with - this is it.
This isn't a straightforward pack n’ send case of helicopter, paramedics and hospital. Their reliance on each other, their skills and a solid sense of humour is put to the test throughout this 2 day ordeal.
Key learnings from this episode:
- The importance of having the right skills, training and experience for the environments
- The ability to make fair self-assessments of the above
- Planning is key to better outcomes
- Research multiple contingency plans, if your exit from a canyon doesn’t work, are there alternatives you can see on satellite imagery? Plan refuge and camp spots
- Being able to rely completely on your adventure buddies if something goes wrong. Q: Can you say this about strangers you connect with on MeetUps or similar?)
- Value of research, local knowledge and connections
- Huge thanks to the incredible and supportive local canyoning community of Taiwan
- Being smart about choosing your emergency contacts and setting up a What’sApp group - briefing them all properly with plans, contingencies and giving them permission to act as your advocates if something happens
- The essential recert and muscle memory of quality wilderness first aid training
- Benefits of choosing to study Wilderness or RAFA over simple Senior First Aid
- Brainstorm and practice of roping and rescue problems at home and in easier environments before being confident to execute them in challenging ones
- Good open, inclusive and frank communication in and around a patient
- How humour can help with stressful situations
- Everyone knowing their job and getting it done
- How party size can change outcomes in an incident
- Importance of essential survival skills eg: fire making, knowing priorities for survival
- Stove, lighters and Nalgenes as essential canyon equipment
- Making sure your first aid kit is up-to-date (when was the last time you made sure you had enough panadol and ibuprofen?)
- Bright clothes, bothy bag, emergency blankets to draw attention
- Knowing how to prepare for helicopters and downwash
- Aussie registered PLBs activated overseas are received by AMSA in Canberra
There's a bunch of different ways you could help support the work of this pod:
- Leave a review on your platform of choice
- Leave a donation towards the costs
- Visit my sponsors at Paddypallin.com.au
- Buy my book - "How to Navigate - the art of traditional map and compass navigation in an Australian context."
- Check out my Navigation Courses
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Rescued'
00:00:01
Speaker
you Rescued is a podcast of conversations with rescuers and those who've been rescued. It's about the lessons we learn about ourselves, the places we go and why, without judgment or shame, to help us have better adventures, manage risk and deal with the unexpected.
Global Exploration Through Adventure
00:00:21
Speaker
three
00:00:24
Speaker
The things we love to do in nature can lead us to explore and discover places not just close to home, but all around the world. These activities like bushwalking, climbing or canyoning give us opportunities to step outside the typical tourist or visitor experience, not only opening our eyes to cultures different to our own,
00:00:47
Speaker
but on a deeper level, the chance to connect with the local outdoor community through our shared love of wild places.
Canyoning in Taiwan: A Life-Changing Experience
00:00:56
Speaker
In this special double episode of Rescued, we hear from three friends, all highly skilled and experienced canyoneers, as they find themselves in the embrace of Taiwan's small and dedicated canyoning and rescue community after a life-threatening fall during a multi-day expedition.
00:01:17
Speaker
If you ever needed a reminder of the value of regular, high-quality wilderness first aid training and the importance of being able to rely on the people you adventure with, this is it.
00:01:30
Speaker
want start by thanking you so much for joining me here. And I'm going go for a bit of an introduction. So Maddie, can tell little bit about yourself and how you know these other two people in the room?
00:01:44
Speaker
So i met Jason... like less than six months ago, probably four months ago um when we were doing our canyon guide course. Yeah, we really got along, did a fair few canyons together.
00:01:55
Speaker
And then Bram met in Italy a few years ago we went and did some canyoning in the Dolomites. And yeah, we've been friends since then. That's what we like. Lovely people and solid canyoners too. So yeah that was the introduction that you are all canyoners.
Personal Canyoning Journeys
00:02:12
Speaker
I'm going to just jump to Jason.
00:02:15
Speaker
um So you met Maddie at the Canyon Guides course. And how long have you been canyoning before then? I started off really young. I think I was about three in my first canyon. Wow. My dad my dad took us out on the Wallangambie River, I believe. I don't really remember. Kept at it. um Rediscovered my love for it ah when I was about 15, 16. Ever since then, spent every living moment outdoors, canyoning.
00:02:40
Speaker
for For people who might not be familiar with what canyoning is, especially the type of canyons that we've got here in the Blue Mountains, how would you describe what canyoning is to someone who's got no no idea?
00:02:52
Speaker
At least in Australia, I like to think of it as ah extreme bushwalking. Extreme bushwalking. Yeah, so it's just traversing, i guess, creeks with narrow sections. as oftentimes lots of climbing and abseiling down waterfalls, just following the river and enjoying the beauty it.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, the beauty is is certainly something. So I might ask Maddy, and I'll come to the third person in a second, but Maddy, speaking of the beauty of canyons, what can you say about some of the things that you typically expect to see in a canyon?
Canyoning Across Continents: Europe vs. Australia
00:03:26
Speaker
My favourite type of canyons are really nice, narrow slots. So ones that have really tall walls, you know, 50 to 100 metres, and they're nice and narrow, um you know, less than, you know, 20 metres wide and have lots of water in them. I really enjoy, like, European canyons, like in the Dolomites for their beauty, and in New Zealand for the beauty and the white water.
00:03:49
Speaker
um And in Switzerland, they have some really nice canyons that aren't that beautiful, but are really fun with lots of slides and really good jumps. So that's the kind of canyoning I love.
00:04:01
Speaker
So the third person in the room, fram do you want to tell me a bit about your canyoning background? So canyoning here in Europe is completely different than Australia, I think. It's less of a bushwalk and more of fun in water and actually enjoying the canyoning itself.
00:04:18
Speaker
I really like high water and nice jumps and slides and all those kind of things. What Maddy said that Switzerland does offer all the dolomites or... that's my caning background so when i came to australia and did some games it was completely different still really fun and more beautiful more beautiful i don't know so parts might be more beautiful but the dryness really got to me like was it was summer 38 degrees and i was just sweating everywhere i was was wishing much walking too Yeah, too much walking. Like in Italy, especially where I work, most places you just drive up with your car, you walk five minutes, you go in the canyon, and when you arrive at the bottom, there is your second car, and it's done. You go to the bar, you drink a beer, you eat a pizza. Yeah.
00:05:05
Speaker
That sounds very different, very different experience. now Now, Bram, we can't help but notice you have an accent. do you want tell us where you are today and where you're from?
Bram's Outdoor Passion
00:05:16
Speaker
Yes, I am i'm ah in the Netherlands. That's the country that I'm from. um I'm at my parents' house now because of the injury recovering. What do you do in in terms of what draws you to the outdoors? what Do you spend a lot of time in the outdoors?
00:05:33
Speaker
I think a fair bit. It it depends on on what area I am in the world, of course. And when I'm here in the Netherlands, there's not much, not much, there's no mountains. have the flattest country of the world. So um yeah, here there's not much mountain stuff. Of course, there's some places with some woods and some forests, but it's not the same.
00:05:51
Speaker
um So I don't spend much time in the outdoors here in the Netherlands. I started being more in the outdoors when I was 18, 19, and I started working in Belgium as a guide in the Ardennes. starting to do everything, kayaking, mountain biking, climbing.
00:06:05
Speaker
And some coolies colleagues there were caning guides. So they they took me on a trip once and it was quite an extreme trip. There was like a lot of big storms and it was in the Jura in France. And they They had to use all the techniques that they knew as canyon guides. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. One time I was stuck underwater in my first canyon ever for like 30 seconds. And that's quite some time, especially in your first canyon.
00:06:28
Speaker
ah So I was like, this is amazing. I want to know more of this. I like this adrenaline. um So that's how I started with with exploring more canyons and learning more techniques. And now I'm a guide in Italy normally or in different places. I've guided in New Zealand as well, for example.
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's my my background. That's how I started. And that's what I still love the most. I really like high water and ah white water and difficult places where you are a little bit scared, but you have to push through to to get to the end.
00:06:57
Speaker
In terms of what you like about that, you know, you said when you're a little bit scared, where what happens in your mind when when you're in those high water situations? That's a good question. I think you you actually get a little bit sharper, like way sharper. You see everything happening around you and you you you can you read the water and when it's high and when it's difficult and your nerves are there, of course, if you're scared, thats if you're really scared, that's too much. like If you're really scared, no one is sharp, I think. But if you...
00:07:27
Speaker
become a little bit little bit nervous or sharper. You're like, okay, this is serious. We have to watch out now. And yeah, you you you see more, you connect everything, you find the right line and you you try to get it, of course, in in the most safest way.
00:07:40
Speaker
What about you, Jason? How do you feel in terms of in in those situations? Does that um experience of Brahms ring true to you as well? Like when when the stakes are high, where do you go in your head?
Problem Solving in Canyoning
00:07:53
Speaker
I definitely agree. i do enjoy ah enjoy problem solving. Yeah, right. seeing the problem in front of me you look at it um you look at it at every angle and you figure out how to approach it.
00:08:04
Speaker
So yeah, I definitely agree with that feeling of becoming sharp and seeing everything around you and figuring out how to move past it. Touching back on something Bram said about, you know, you looked from that first experience in a canyon, you looked at the guides and they were using all of the tools in their toolkit, you know, all the things that they knew to do to problem solve that situation.
00:08:29
Speaker
How do you go about getting those that knowledge and those skills to understand and to read, to be sharp in those situations? How do you do that, Jason? um In my experience, i i was self-taught for a lot of it. um And then i trained to be a guide. So I completed my Cert 3 outdoor leadership year.
00:08:51
Speaker
And I gained a lot of skills through there. So learning how to not only manage yourself in a canyon, but manage others. yeah And having all those tools of people management and rope skills and everything to to move a group past ah a problem.
00:09:04
Speaker
And ah in in addition to that, i I just spend so much time researching and playing and practicing. have a set of anchors set up at my house. so Right. So if i I think about it, I come up with these problems of what happens if I have this issue and I only have this set of gear and I and i make do and I figure it out. Yeah, right.
00:09:24
Speaker
And Maddy, what does that that um concept of problem solving mean to you in terms of the outdoor space?
Preparing for Expedition Canyons
00:09:33
Speaker
I think especially in regards to like expedition canyons, I love the kind of planning of those expeditions. so trying to figure out possible entries into the canyon.
00:09:45
Speaker
Sometimes you get lucky and you can enter on a road. And then sometimes you have to try and navigate into the canyon. And then trying to you have to always think about what could possibly go wrong. So normally before I go into like an untracked canyon, and something without any track notes, I'll try and look at a topo map and a satellite and find out several exit points somewhere.
00:10:09
Speaker
And then, you know, think about weather, look at many different weather models, try and figure out little refuge points if we do somehow get an unpredicted storm in the canyon.
00:10:20
Speaker
and I love doing that kind of planning and just trying to work out what could possibly go wrong and how I can fix it. do you know, the it's interesting. the It's almost like some people might find it a disconnect between Bram's enthusiasm about the adrenaline And that's really fun and we love jumps and it's fun because, you know, it sounds all very sort of, you know, type two kind of adventure.
00:10:45
Speaker
But it's actually when you start peeling back the layers, none of this stuff happens without planning or forethought is what I'm hearing. Yeah. What would you say to people who who might think that, you know, canyoning is ah is a dangerous sport or activity?
00:11:03
Speaker
I think every sport is dangerous, um but you just have to take precautions and try and mitigate all the risks. so i guess my main risks that I try and mitigate is you know weather, everything you take with you um Normally with jumps and slides and stuff, we'll get someone to check it first.
00:11:23
Speaker
you know Most accidents are preventable. There's always some things that you just don't see coming. And yeah, there's dangers in everyday life, but I always try and be as safe as I can and try and have backup plans and try not to take too many risks that we don't have to.
00:11:42
Speaker
yeah.
Risk Management in Canyoning
00:11:42
Speaker
yeah Even the concept and the word risk is an interesting one. um Bram, what's your sort of understanding of of risk? Risk is is something that you have to, that you can calculate, of course. And if you have, but you can calculate if you have experience. So what Jason also said, like they' doing a guiding course and getting more experience, learning more techniques is really important. I think sometimes on Facebook, I see people say like, oh, I did three canes in my life and now I want to take my family of five into the cane. And I'm like, you're not qualified enough to do stuff like this, right? Like,
00:12:17
Speaker
Yes, I do whiskey stuff on the cane. And sometimes I do really whiskey stuff on the cane. But I have done years of training. like I have done many courses in different counties and different techniques. I know what I'm doing in in the situations that I put myself in. I don't put myself in situations that I don't know what I'm doing because I know that I'm not capable of doing this. So in that, I think that not knowing stuff is really risky. And if if you do know your stuff,
00:12:43
Speaker
Most risks don't disappear. They're still there, but you know how to work around them or how to manage those risks. And then it's actually not that dangerous of a sport, but just a really, really fun sport in my opinion.
00:12:55
Speaker
So Mehdi, one of the words you touched on there was... a particular type of trip that you like, which is this, you said, expedition canyoning. Can you explain how that might be different to, say, a canyon that, you know, you can find in a guidebook or that a commercial guide might go and take um clients down?
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, so i guess expedition canyons I would kind of classify as canyons that either haven't been done before or they've been done very little and there's very little information about it.
00:13:27
Speaker
It's probably a little bit more intense than something like the wilderness canyons in Australia where they're all in the Jamison Guide being a lot of people that have done it. um Expeditions are kind of like canyons that you don't know where the entry point is, you don't know where the exit point is, you don't know if anyone's ever done it before and you don't know how many drops there are and you may be spending many days in there. so the canyons that we did in Taiwan, some of them had been done only once before, some only twice, and people were taking, you know, nine days, sometimes 15 days in these canyons um and carrying 30, 35 kilo bags.
00:14:08
Speaker
And you're sleeping inside of the canyon as well, so you're bringing in overnight gear and problem-solving every day, trying to work out the most efficient way to get through the canyon.
00:14:18
Speaker
It's quite fun. um It's fun trying to work out how to get out of there as well. and I'm just sort of seeing... massive massive amounts of spreadsheets. Am I right in that? or um i was doing a lot of planning on like apps.
00:14:34
Speaker
so and So writing a lot of notes. I didn't actually have notebooks, but I had like a and note app on my phone where I was writing a lot of information. um There's not much information at all in Taiwan on canyoning because it's quite a new sport there.
00:14:49
Speaker
um So people would say these names in Taiwanese. um And then you translate them into something that you think is an English name and then they'd give you another English name for that canyon, which is completely different to the Google Translate version.
00:15:04
Speaker
And then there's just no information online about these canyons. So you'd ask for a good reference of someone and, you know, you'd sometimes be lucky enough to get one, sometimes you wouldn't. Most of the time you just get a ah name of the creek.
00:15:19
Speaker
and then they'd say roughly how many days it took them. And so you'd go and look at the creek on um Google Earth, and then I'd go look at a topo map, and then I'd go look at a satellite image on a different app and just try and plot in like possible entry-exit points and try and plot in the best parts of the canyon that I might want to see.
00:15:40
Speaker
So, yeah most of the time it was quite hard finding any information. Yeah, so loads research-heavy planning and and prep as well. Jason, how do you plan for the that what you don't know Conservatively, I think would be the word to use, is um you can make educated guesses on what you're going to encounter in the canyon and you can make educated decisions of what you're going to what you're going to pack and what you're going to plan. So in this particular case in Taiwan, what we were doing was looking at
00:16:14
Speaker
ah Google Earth, looking at satellite imagery, we're able to identify points of constriction in the creek. Points of constriction normally will take longer. There's normally down climbing and waterfalls within those points. um So we're able to look at those points and figure out roughly how long it would take us, and then we would compare compare it with how long the creek actually is or how long the river actually is and what the elevation loss is.
00:16:44
Speaker
And from there, we're able to plan the amount of anchor material we're going to take, what ropes, and whether or not it will be an overnight trip or, you know, how many days it will take.
00:16:54
Speaker
And from there, we' we're able to organise food and and whatnot. Yeah. Okay. Wow. A lot of a lot of planning and preparation.
Why Taiwan for Canyoning?
00:17:03
Speaker
So whose idea was Taiwan? Taiwan.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, well, me. Yeah, my idea. Where did that idea come from and and why? It's a combination of two or three things, I think.
00:17:17
Speaker
The first thing is I was in Australia and I had to go to Europe. So you need a layover in Asia and then you're going to look in Asia. And in Asia itself, Taiwan is the best country for canyoning.
00:17:29
Speaker
So that combination was a ah big point to choose Taiwan, of course. And I had some friends in Taiwan or I knew some people in Taiwan that I wanted to see again, Kayaneers. So yeah, those those those two things combined made me choose to go to Taiwan. And I asked some people to join me, which was Maddie.
00:17:47
Speaker
Yeah, and Maddie knew Jason. So that's how we got Jason in the team as well. and That's how we ended up with the three of us. So Taiwan was the stopover gra for you to get back.
00:17:58
Speaker
but Before you started planning the trip, did you know anything about canyoning in Taiwan or had you heard anything about it? Yeah, I've been in Taiwan one time before and I'd gone to two canyons with some friends that I met there.
00:18:10
Speaker
ah Just easy canyons, no expeditions. So I knew there was a lot of canyons and I met some other Taiwanese canyons in New Zealand. um So with all those things connected, I think I had like five or six contacts in Taiwan.
00:18:23
Speaker
and And as Maddy said before, there's no information online or in any books about Taiwan. So connection is what you need. So I thought with those five, six connections and a strong team, it would be nice to be two weeks in in Taiwan and enjoy the canyons there.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah, sounds amazing. And what about Maddy and Jason? Had you heard about um Taiwan Canyons? ah Yeah, mainly about the canyon Malachan.
00:18:51
Speaker
i think it was made famous by Andrew Humphreys and his team that went and spent, I think, 13 days in it. Wow. And you just see all these amazing photos of the beautiful slot canyons over there, and it just looks very enticing.
00:19:04
Speaker
Tell me about the rock in Taiwan. It kind of looked a little bit like volcanic-type rock. In some areas it was really solid, um and then in other areas it was...
00:19:16
Speaker
a bit and loose and chossy and unfortunately some of those areas ended up being like the lips of abseils. But some a lot of the areas were because they were in deep canyons with high flow, the rock was bashed until it was really solid, so that was quite nice.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, right. one of One of the canyons that we did ah was really interesting and it was ah um this conglomerate rock. really interesting we passed through some limestone outcrops to get to it and then inside the canyon there were but some cave-like features it was bizarre wow so it seems like a pretty diverse landscape to be moving through yeah exactly right so how long was the trip planned to be then so you you you fly out of ah of australia and you're aiming for was it a couple of weeks in taiwan
00:20:05
Speaker
Two weeks was the planning to be the two and half two weeks i think yeah was the planning to be there with the three of us. ah For one of us, it became a little bit longer than two weeks. but And so two weeks in Taiwan.
00:20:19
Speaker
And um how many canyons had you planned to do while you were there? and Or was there one specific one that you just wanted to to really head into and you know give it a red hot go?
00:20:31
Speaker
I think we went over there expecting to be washed out of all the really constricted canyons because it was the start of typhoon season. So we were just going to do really open canyons.
00:20:44
Speaker
But we ended up having like a, I would say probably one of the driest seasons they had there. There was no water anywhere. wow Pretty much... No rain. Every now and again you'd get one small storm, but um typically at that time of year you'd see a lot of storms. So we were really lucky in that regard that there wasn't any storms at that time of year and the water levels were so low.
00:21:08
Speaker
So we were able to do slightly more constricted canyons. the The plan kind of changed when we got there. Yeah, and what about any other sort of research you were able to do or even chatting with some of your friends from there, Bram, was there was the reality of what you found when you actually got into these canyons very different from what you had expected?
00:21:28
Speaker
The information was was bits and pieces. So it was we had to we had to connect everything ourselves. So of course we had to drive through all the islands and then talk to everyone on the go and try us to get as much information as possible. So it was just making new connections as well. like I came there with with maybe four or five people that I knew.
00:21:46
Speaker
I think now we know the whole K&N community there. like Everyone tries to connect everyone together. They say, for this area, you need to talk with this guy. For this area, i talk with this guy. ask them for questions.
00:21:57
Speaker
so So we just put all the bits and pieces together on the go and and and made solid of plans for for the canyons that we went into, I think. Yeah, so really tapping into that local knowledge. Yeah, yeah.
00:22:10
Speaker
Massive thanks for the support from the team at Paddy Pallon, who since 1930 have been leaders in travel and outdoor adventure. In fact, did you know that Paddy himself, a member of the Sydney Bushwalkers Club, was a volunteer in the original search and rescue arm of the Federation of Bushwalking Clubs in New South Wales?
00:22:30
Speaker
Nice one, Paddy. Take me to the day that we're going to focus on now. So how did the day start and what did you set out to do?
The Adventure Begins
00:22:42
Speaker
The day started amazing. can i I have done a lot of jumps, a lot of slides in in everywhere, of course, because in Europe there's everywhere slides. So the day itself that it happened, we had just had an overnight in the canyon. So we slept the night before in the canyon and we woke up in the morning and we had camp perfectly built up at this beautiful place where there was a beautiful jump slide.
00:23:03
Speaker
So jump slide, you just jump into the slide and you just slide out into the water. And it's amazing. So we actually woke up completely dry, of course, put on a wetsuit and we take the jump slide into the pool. We are wet and that's where the day started. And I couldn't have wished a better day to start like this. Like it's, yeah, I love the jump slides. What was the weather like? What was the temperature? It was it was good weather. It was a nice day. It was a beautiful day.
00:23:31
Speaker
Overnight was 10 degrees and I think it was up to 20-ish, 22 or something during the day. um it felt pretty warm. Nice.
00:23:42
Speaker
So what happened after um that wonderful morning wake-up jump slide? Yeah, we continued the cane. Beautiful. it it was really nice part of caning.
00:23:53
Speaker
I think the upsell before whole accident happened was a nice waterfall as well, like a 30 meter, really beautiful, really nice pool after it. And it was, it was really nice. Um, and then we go to the upside. It was, it was actually the second or maybe the third, but I think it was the second upsell today.
00:24:09
Speaker
Early morning it was nine in morning when, when everything changed.
Crisis Strikes: Bram's Fall
00:24:13
Speaker
And up until that point, I mean, it's sounding like it's just a dream trip so far, you know, good weather, good people, good research and planning, um good gear. You had everything with you you needed. You were set up to to be able to spend many days in the canyon if you had to.
00:24:31
Speaker
So tell me, what what did you see the top of this abseil? What were you looking down on? So and went up to the first abseil and, or to that abseil, there was a small old bolt from the first, and the only team that had been through that canyon before.
00:24:48
Speaker
It looked like an odd style expansion bolt, but it wasn't quite an expansion bolt. It was on one of those pin bolts where you bash a pin in the middle and it expands the metal in the end. And it had a bit of cordlet on it. So i replaced that cordlet because it was core short and then tightened up the nut again.
00:25:05
Speaker
what's cordlet? It's a small bit of rope. Okay. So you're at the top of the abseil and you've got this anchor that you can attach into, but yeah, you wanted to take some precautions and make sure that it was in the best way possible. Is that correct?
00:25:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so I just checked the rock around that area and none of it really looked spectacular. That bolt was still there and it looked like the part of rock that it was in was relatively okay.
00:25:38
Speaker
This is an expedition-style anchor. So the cordelet is used in expeditions just to be lightweight instead of using like a hanger and an emelion. So they use a little bit of rope that they pin down with a nut.
00:25:50
Speaker
and And then they thread their ropes through that, or through a melian attached to that little cordelet. So i replaced the cordelet, tightened up the nut. and I put the rope through that, attached my abseiling device, and I leant really hard back on the bolt a few times in a safe area just to check that it would hold.
00:26:10
Speaker
abseiled and sat down and did a grovel start. And if you know anything about abseiling, grovel start is where you just sit down and kind of smear your body down the wall. it was like, perfectly perpendicular to the bolt itself, trying to put as minimal force outwards on that bolt as I could.
00:26:28
Speaker
um So I sat down and to started smearing down that abseil. It was probably about 10 or so metre abseil. um And it had a little ledge at the bottom of it and then a big deep pool after that ledge. and So I was abtailing down that, just smearing my whole body all the way down into the water. um And it held, and so I thought that bolt was fine.
00:26:50
Speaker
And then Bram came next. looked at the anchor and I made the same assumptions as that Maddie made and we saw the same things and yeah I went down and just being clipped in and leaning the anchor doing two steps down at that moment the ball broke out and of course it all goes so quick like but at the moment that you start falling you don't you don't know that you are falling until the moment that you hit the ground. Like it's it's a split second. it's you You don't have time. I always told by myself, at the moment that you fall, you have time to scream. You have time to to to position your body in the right position or like, oh, I'm falling. I can turn to the side or whatever, but there's no time. Like at the moment that you go, you already hit the ground before you actually can think one thing.
00:27:37
Speaker
So yeah, i hit the I hit the rock from six, maybe seven meters and I fell from the rock into the water. And with all the floating that you have, of course, you you float and directly you feel the pain through your body.
00:27:50
Speaker
a I don't remember screaming, but apparently I did. and then the next thing I remember is him saying, help, help. I'm in a lot of pain. so I dived into the water um and I found him kind of floating in the whole rope.
00:28:09
Speaker
with his backpack underneath him. and so his wetsuit and backpack were keeping him afloat. So I got my arm underneath his arms and kind of dragged him on his back to a little sandbar where he was semi-submerged and he said, it's not it's not good, Maddie, it's not good, we're not going to be able to get out of here.
00:28:31
Speaker
The way that I knew it was not good is because when I grabbed my right leg and I pulled that one up like the towards to to keep the pelvis closed. Um, but at the moment that I let go of my, my, my leg and my, my pelvis, then you pelvis opens up if you have a double break point to break points. So it falls open, like an open book. It's an open book pelvis break.
00:28:53
Speaker
Yeah, at the moment, of course, you feel the pain and you know it's it's bad. So Maddie was there to to help me swim to the side. Bram was saying how bad the pain was and I knew it probably had to be something pretty serious, like a pelvic fracture or something.
Emergency Response and First Aid
00:29:06
Speaker
And that's when I knew that it's probably time to...
00:29:10
Speaker
Just call for help. um So i went and put the beacon somewhere in the middle of an opening in the canyon about 50 to 100 metres downstream whilst Bram was just sitting on a shallow sandbar.
00:29:22
Speaker
And then I came back for Bram um ah checked that he was still okay. Jason came to the top of the abseil and he said, how am I going to get down? and I just said, throw your rope down and I will pass you the drill back up.
00:29:38
Speaker
Jason, you were still up on the top of the abseil. So what was your perspective? What were you witnessing? What were you seeing and hearing? So I was still packing the rope from the previous abseil.
00:29:51
Speaker
So I was at the top and i was probably about 20 meters away from them, but they were out of view. And what i remember hearing was Maddie scream. I thought, okay, something something's happened.
00:30:04
Speaker
Half a second after... Maddy screamed, but I heard Bram a horrendous scream. Wow. i i was like, oh, something is really wrong. I hadn't heard Bram scream like that, but I sort of ran over and i was at the top of this abseil and I look over and I see Bram floating on his back with this bundle of rope um around him, floating around him.
00:30:30
Speaker
I remember sort of looking over and trying to figure out what had happened. um you know What was racing through my mind was, did he mess up a jump or what the case was? I didn't know. All I could see was he was floating and and in quite a lot of pain.
00:30:45
Speaker
And I just had to sit up there and watch while Matty performed the water rescue. And Matty towed him the meters And then... to this sort of intermediate sandbar and then run over and pull the PLB and and do all the, you know, these important things. And I just sat there and watched, waiting for the drill to come up to come up so I could, you know, descend and help.
00:31:10
Speaker
And eventually I did get the drill and it took me probably about five minutes to find a place for the bolt. the The rock quality around there wasn't the best. So I eventually found a place for the bolt. I descended and by the time I had sort of reached reached the others, we had the tarp.
00:31:28
Speaker
ah the top out and we were ready to pull him into his, into, ah into, onto the sand. So much going on. And I'm i'm just, I'm marvelling, Maddie. It appears just a really methodical and clear set of things that needed to happen.
00:31:43
Speaker
It felt like all my years of, like, experience canyoning and, like, doing BSAR and, like, all my training and all my guide training, all my first aid training just came together and I just felt so calm and clear-headed. Yeah.
00:31:58
Speaker
I just felt like exactly what I knew what needed to be done in exact order. I don't know why, but everything was so clear in my head. it was weird. You know that people talk about muscle memory? Yeah.
00:32:12
Speaker
And you think of the number of times you do like scenarios and role plays and you go through training. I guess ah it's because that's the response they're trying to get.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. We stretched you out of the water on the tarp and I just remember stretching you and you were screaming, stop, stop, leave me in the water. And I looked at Jason's face and his face was like horrified that we were doing this to Bram. And I said to Jason, don't stop.
00:32:44
Speaker
We must keep going. He's going to freeze to death. Yeah. And Jason's like, we're horrible people. but i just knew that we had to keep going. um So we dragged him out of the water once he had his pelvic splint on.
00:32:57
Speaker
And then I taped his feet together as well, which is like another important thing with open-look pelvic fractures, just to keep those feet rotated inwards. Yeah.
00:33:08
Speaker
The moment that they carried me out of the pool together, when the pressure of the water goes off, because the water pressures everything together, helps against the pain, of course. At the moment that they pulled me out of the water, I think I had the the worst pain that I had in my life. And they they They saw it. My face was gray or like white. like I was not there. I wanted to puke. I wanted to pass out actually from the pain because when they pulled me up from the front and the back to get me out of the water, which wasn't necessarily because in the water you get hypothermia 100%.
00:33:41
Speaker
and In that moment, I wanted to kill them both. like I had so much pain. You actually feel the bone of the pelvis scratch over each other, or like move against each other. And it was it was horrible pain.
00:33:54
Speaker
So when they put me down and and after a while, there was a lot of things happening in between those things, but I'm going to say now, but I was laying under a tree, a dead tree that was above me. So they wanted to move me to a bigger work in the sun, not under the tree in a really safe spot. And it was like maybe 15 meters, like where the beacon was. But Maddie said it's 15 meters away.
00:34:15
Speaker
I vetoed this. Like I said, the only way for you guys to get me there is to push me knockout first. Like i know I'm not going to go there. If you guys... move me again at this moment i will start swinging around me and it's it's not worded like i know this is not the best place that i'm in now but i'm not gonna move like i cannot move it was it was horrible to pain Do you have a personal story about an incident or time during an outdoor trip when something didn't quite go to plan?
00:34:43
Speaker
Maybe you got lost, injured, let down by some gear or something else. Look, honestly, it can happen to any of us at any time, regardless of how experienced we are.
00:34:54
Speaker
And it's by sharing these stories that we can all learn and help avoid them in the future. If that's you, I'd love to hear from you. So please drop me an email to rescued at lotsafreshair.com. That's L-O-T-S-A, freshair.com.
Preparing for Overnight Survival
00:35:12
Speaker
Everything just happened on auto autopilot. yeah after Everything just went into autopilot. we We figured out we need to get him out of the water. um We need to stabilise him. We need to get him warm. And we need to prep for some form of rescue. Mm-hmm.
00:35:26
Speaker
in that that sort of, you know, those sort of steps. So we we stabilized him, you know, we applied the pelvic splint, we got him onto the sand. i believe Maddy had started cutting his wetsuit off and I was going around collecting firewood and getting the stove out and we knew that we would have to sort of stay in that spot for quite a while.
00:35:46
Speaker
The next step was to get him to him warm. So remove his wet clothing, get a fire going, hot water bottles, you know, get dry clothes onto an emergency blankets out, go through all those steps. And then honestly, I think it took us about three hours to get all this stuff done. And it it just, it felt like an instant. Wow.
00:36:05
Speaker
It was just autopilot, at least for me. I don't know what it was like for Maddie, but it just, everything happened. training The training kicked in and it just fell into place. Yeah. You know, sometimes it's so easy to sort of, oh, not again, when your wilderness first aid certificate expires, you're like, oh, I've got to go do this again.
00:36:24
Speaker
But it just shows that the number of times you do it it, it's really a valuable thing. One of the most valuable things to carry in a canyon, even if you're not expecting any first aid things to happen that could save your life, is carrying ah stove.
00:36:40
Speaker
some fuel, a pot, and two good Nalgene water bottles. If you can, yeah, if you can heat water and you can put them in a Nalgene, not trying to sell Nalgenes, but they hold boiling water without deforming.
00:36:55
Speaker
um And you can use them as hot water bottles and stop you from getting hypothermic. And I think it's probably one thing that really saved Bram from getting hypothermic and dying.
00:37:06
Speaker
Wow. Okay. So there's a long way to go in this journey. So, so Bram, the the three or four hours that Jason and Maddie were doing tasks as they ah appeared and as they came up, what were you, what was happening for you at that time?
00:37:22
Speaker
What was going through your, your mind and, and your body? I was laying on my little rock, minding my own business. No, but yeah. Um, No, yeah, i was I was laying on the rock and of course I couldn't help with anything. I was in in a lot of pain. um In the beginning, I had adrenaline as well going on for myself, of course. So the pain was there and especially when they moved me. But when I was laying down, actually, I had some moments of feeling kind of okay, especially also because of of all the...
00:37:51
Speaker
all my stuff being pushed together with the with the things, the brace. So they were doing their things and I was really happy that they knew what they were doing, making plans, talking good together. There really good communication around me. i Everyone knew their their jobs.
00:38:05
Speaker
Did you feel included in the communication that they were having or were they sort of whispering quietly? Yeah, no, we were still a theme, I think. Of course, they they had the overview. They could stand actually and look around us, what was happening around us, where but are we?
00:38:21
Speaker
Every time when there was communication, it was when they were around my body, at least for as far as I know. like i was I was the center of the problem. So the communication was around me. Everyone was working their own own thing, but I knew what was happening and I was really happy with what but the plans that they made, of course.
00:38:39
Speaker
after After everything was set up and I was cut open and and released from my wet clothes and there was fire going on, they made a play and plan climbing out of the the area as well to to look for a place with self-conception.
00:38:52
Speaker
um Everything went smooth, I think, so far. Yeah, but I think until the night set, until 7 p.m., I think we haven't made any mistakes in the full 24 hours, but and until 7 p.m., there were no mistakes made by anyone, I think. I'm just wondering what a different experience it would have been for you if you hadn't felt part of those so communications and part of that discussion and part of that team, like you said, but you that you'd established. Yeah.
00:39:22
Speaker
established No, I think it was really good to be part of it also because then you know what's happening. At the moment that you know what's happening, it gives you peace as well. Like I knew there was someone making a fire. I knew that they were trying to get my wet clothes off. I knew that they were looking on their phones for for quick ways out or witches to to reach or...
00:39:42
Speaker
Like I knew what was happening, with which gave me a lot of peace of mind also because it showed me how capable these two people were to to get me out of this really gnarly situation.
00:39:53
Speaker
yeah Yeah. You're already making me wish that if ever I find myself in a situation, I want Maddie and Jason there. You want them. You want them. It's always good to have a veterinary doctor on your team. so So this is where your background comes out. So Maddie, I'm going to ask you, because you've mentioned a few times there, um a pelvic splint.
00:40:16
Speaker
Can you explain for for us what that is and why it's important and how you actually do one when you believe that there's a a broken pelvis? yeah um So fractured pelvises, sometimes they'll get like an open book pelvis,
00:40:31
Speaker
where the pubic symphysis, which is like the lower front part of your pelvis, breaks open and normally it'll have a corresponding fracture at the back of your pelvis. So it can open like a book.
00:40:44
Speaker
So if you imagine the front part barn dooring open, um that can cause a lot of hemorrhage and they can bleed to death. So a lot of people die before they get to hospital if you can't stabilise that pelvis.
00:40:59
Speaker
The most important thing to do is firstly probably get first aid training so you know how to put one on properly, but I'm going to describe how to do it anyway. yeah If you put the pelvic splint on too high, it can open up the pelvis, so you must put it on ah little bit lower than you think you should.
00:41:15
Speaker
It's worth getting training for that. um And you have to do it up relatively tight. And what I used was a space blanket. I folded it maybe so it was about 12 centimetres wide, wrapped it around the widest part of his hips, which is actually where the eye bone kind of goes into the pelvis.
00:41:35
Speaker
And I tied that in a knot. I put a carabiner through that space blanket and then twisted that carabiner continuously until it was really taut.
00:41:46
Speaker
And that put enough pressure on his pelvis to hold everything together so that it hopefully would stop the hemorrhage and stop him from bleeding too much internally. we We also it tied his feet together as well, and that just keeps his legs rotated inwards so that his pelvis won't open back up.
00:42:05
Speaker
um And then we would just check in vitals every five to ten minutes, so making sure his mucous membrane colour was nice and bright and pink. and that he was conscious, so he was coherent in talking to us.
00:42:19
Speaker
um I checked his heart rate as well and just made sure that was relatively stable. Unfortunately, his urethra was also ruptured, which we didn't realise until an hour or two later that he couldn't urinate.
00:42:33
Speaker
So these skills, this this pelvic splint, checking vitals, checking, you know, mucous membrane, all that kind of stuff – These aren't skills that are taught in a normal senior first aid course.
00:42:47
Speaker
This is really taking it up to the next level. What would you say to people if they're considering, if they're you know outdoorsy types, if they're thinking, oh, yeah, just got to go get my first aid certificate? Yeah.
00:42:58
Speaker
What would you say to them? Definitely doing like a wilderness first aid or a remote area first aid is a lot more meaningful. And you'd probably be surprised how many stories you hear about broken pelvises in canyons.
00:43:10
Speaker
And in any kind of rocky terrain, people can fall off cliffs and break their pelvis. And it is one of those injuries that can kill people quite fast. So if you do one of those courses and they don't cover pelvic splinting, then maybe you just ask the first aider to teach you.
00:43:28
Speaker
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00:43:39
Speaker
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00:43:53
Speaker
Number four, you could buy my book, How to Navigate. Yes, the link is in the show notes. Or five, you could even leave a donation towards the costs of the podcast over at Ko-fi.
00:44:04
Speaker
That's kind of like ko-fi.com, but Ko-fi, yeah. Anyway, there's a link to that in the show notes too. So thanks, everyone. I really appreciate your support. Now, back to the story.
Awaiting Rescue
00:44:16
Speaker
So you said you'd set the beacon off as one ah one of the first things that you'd done. And you've had all you've been busy doing all of these work. Bram's just lying back on his rock, um hugging his water bottle, enjoying the fire.
00:44:30
Speaker
and push ah but you start saying, you know, 7 was something that I heard you mention there. That sounds like a long time after. So what's what's happening during the day? what Are you hearing? Is rescue coming? what What happens?
00:44:47
Speaker
Yeah, so at about 12 o'clock, we had sort of finished the initial first aid. um We had gotten him to a point where he was stable, he was warm, we had enough firewood and we had enough supplies around him too to get get him through the night.
00:45:02
Speaker
And we needed to to figure out how we could raise help. We were unsure if the PLB was. had been received. They're one-way communication device. So all we knew was that we had sent a signal out. We didn't know if it had been received. So you had Maddie's PLB yeah, like you say, one way and no way of knowing that the message has been received.
00:45:25
Speaker
So at this point, everything everything is stable. ah Maddie and I come up with a game plan that I was going to... ah attempt to walk out this adjacent spur.
00:45:37
Speaker
um So we had marked the spur in our planning as a potential exit. So as our um number one exit on the walk we were able to get a good look at it and we decided it wasn't going to be passable.
00:45:49
Speaker
um It looked very cliffy, very steep and just wasn't a viable option. But that's the point we're at. So I packed a small bag with some water, some food and my mobile phone.
00:46:03
Speaker
And I attempted to walk out, but realized that It was too risky and I didn't want to become the casualty myself. Yeah. um Which is something we discussed before I left is, you know, number one is make sure I stay safe at all times. So good.
00:46:20
Speaker
I, yeah. After sort of discovering that I was cliffed out and there wasn't any way to continue up this this sir ah spur, I descended back down to regroup with Maddie and Bram and come up with a separate game plan. What time of days? Where are we at now? and I started walking up at 11 a.m.
00:46:38
Speaker
like And I came back at two o'clock. So you're back down at the at the river. You're with Bram and Maddy. how do you Where do you decide to go from there in terms of, you know, the group deciding what are your next options?
00:46:53
Speaker
We realised that to raise help, we needed to get out of the canyon. We looked, obviously, the spur wasn't a viable option. And we looked at the map and the next available exit point or potential exit point.
00:47:06
Speaker
was about six kilometres downstream. Wow. And six kilometres in a canyon is a long- That's a really long way. Between between us, we decided that Maddy would take the canyon equipment. So a rope, anchor material, drill, and um other canyoning supplies and push on.
00:47:25
Speaker
for the next exit. Maddy and I sort of walked off to the next drop, which was only 100 metres downstream or so, walked walk down to the next drop to scope it out and see what the terrain would be like.
00:47:38
Speaker
we We had a look and by the time we had reached the next abseil, it was 2.30. um Sunset is, I think it was about 6.30.
00:47:49
Speaker
We realized that it was not going to be doable in in in the time that we had. We regrouped and decided that, okay, this is not going to be possible today.
00:48:01
Speaker
We need to spend the night and get a very early start try it and try again in the morning. With that in mind, what we actually did was Maddie descended the next drop and bolted the the next abseil just in an effort to speed up the next morning.
00:48:15
Speaker
By the time Maddie had ascended out and we'd we'd regrouped, it was about three o'clock. Were you pretty much you know settling in for for a night then, to spend the night? That's exactly right. And so how did you prepare for that?
00:48:28
Speaker
We just kind of made sure everything was really safe. So I grabbed a whole bunch of like green leaves that we could chuck on the fire if we did hear a helicopter kind of coming over so we could like send a smoke signal. We had like a big...
00:48:40
Speaker
bright orange boffy bag and a big foil blanket kind of sitting on a rock in the middle of the opening. So if we heard something, could go and wave them around. and We tied up that dead tree that was sitting precariously above his head. It was just sitting on this little lip about 10 metres above his head and there was probably about five centimetres holding onto the lip and I thought, if that helicopter comes over...
00:49:04
Speaker
And that wind is definitely going to blow that off a cliff. So we just got Jason to tie that back to a tree up above. and and aside from that, we just collected a lot of firewood, just kept making sure like Bram's vitals were stable, making sure he had hot water bottles at all times, making sure he had food and water and pain relief.
00:49:23
Speaker
Pain relief. but Bram, can I throw to you for that? Yeah, yeah. It was, it was the pills were nice, uh, but there were not many pills. So we also knew that we had to be careful with them and not just throw them all in the mouth, which I really wanted to.
00:49:39
Speaker
We had ibuprofen and paracetamol. And that's it. Yeah. That is it. That's it. Yeah. it To be fair, or the moment that they were gone together downstream the canyon, I was kind of scared. Not not the first 10 minutes, not the first 20 minutes, but for my feeling, because I was alone on the rock, I was a little bit scared, but then they came back and I was happy again. And I think that was the moment that i really needed to pee, or maybe just before they left.
00:50:04
Speaker
But yeah, I really needed to pee, and I was laying on the rock and I couldn't move. The bottles that Maddie had were... Nalgene. Yeah, the Nalgene was going to be... One of them was going to be a potty for a while.
00:50:14
Speaker
um So they cut me open completely and I tried to pee and that is when we actually found out that I couldn't pee anymore as well because the uretra was broken. So you had the urge that you really wanted to pee, but you couldn't. Yeah, you might my bladder felled up normally, of course. um So you get the feeling of needing to pee, but then at the moment that you want to release yourself, there's no way of releasing yourself. There's just a blockage somewhere.
00:50:40
Speaker
So yeah, there's no no release of nothing. And we tried it a couple of times. We thought maybe if we wait two hours and you need to pee even more, maybe you can pee then. But yeah, there was there was no peeing possible um for this whole time being.
00:50:55
Speaker
There's so much more to this story. It's not a straightforward pack-and-send case of helicopter, paramedics and hospital.
Acknowledgments and Credits
00:51:03
Speaker
Their reliance on each other, their skills and a solid sense of humour is put to the test in part two when one of them is removed from the picture and it's not Bram. Bram.
00:51:16
Speaker
If you've enjoyed this powerful story or one of the many others from my super generous guests, you can help more people connect and hear these valuable lessons simply by leaving a five-star review. And why not even click that little bitty share button on your podcast app and help your outdoorsy mates find it too.
00:51:36
Speaker
The Rescued podcast is produced on the unceded lands of the Gondungara people of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. I pay my respects to the elders past and present and acknowledge their enduring connection to and care for country.
00:51:52
Speaker
Special thanks to our sponsors, Paddy Pallon. This has been Lots of Fresh Air production.