Jonathan Lytton was just climbing along last August on Dan’s Delight in Banff National Park, Alberta, and then he wasn’t: A rock fell from above, smashing his helmet and sending him from the sharp end of the rope into a leader fall. His first piece of protection pulled out and by the time he was caught by his partner and belayer, he’d plummeted 66 feet. The fall broke his ankle and some ribs, dislocated his shoulder, and left him unconscious for five minutes with head injuries.

Though severely injured, a number of things went in Lytton’s favor: His partner was able to lower him to a ledge, he had a cell phone signal, and it was a flawless summer day for a rescue helicopter to pluck him from the cliff. The search and rescue crews of Parks Canada respond to 300-some incidents each year in the Canadian Rockies parks (Banff, Jasper, Yoho, Kootenay, Waterton, Glacier), and recently they’ve begun wearing GoPro helmetcams on their missions. In this case, the rescue was conducted and captured by Steve Holeczi and his partner Aaron Beardmore, who are so calm and professional it sounds like a day at the beach.

“The message in this video is that it can happen to anyone,” Holeczi told CTV News. “It was a nice day, these guys were on a climb that was well within their abilities and they had an accident, but they had a cell phone, our emergency dispatch number, they knew how to signal us on the cliff. Had they not done that — not been able to initiate a rescue right away — then the outcome might have been quite different.”

Or, as the official analysis of the accident put it, “Given that the party was sufficiently experienced for the undertaking it can only be said that sometimes, ‘things happen’. Loose rock is a fact of life in the Mountain National Parks, and sometimes it can come loose and knock climbers off their stance.”

This Parks Canada image shows Lytton’s high point and stopping level.

Tagged as: accident, aerial, canada, climbing, search+rescue