{"id":338464,"date":"2024-12-22T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=338464"},"modified":"2024-12-24T12:38:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-24T12:38:37","slug":"new-hampshire-national-guard-rescues-hypothermic-hiker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=338464","title":{"rendered":"New Hampshire National Guard Rescues Hypothermic Hiker"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Sgt. 1st Class Ethan Major, a flight medic with the New Army National Guard, secures an air rescue vest on stricken hiker Patrick Bittman during a rescue on Little Haystack mountain in Franconia Range Dec. 19, 2024. Major and Bittman were hoisted into a Black Hawk helicopter hovering 70 feet overhead. Looking on are members of the Pemi Valley Search and Rescue Team.
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CONCORD, N.H. – A momentary break in cloud cover gave a New Hampshire Army National Guard medevac crew just enough time to save a stricken hiker in the White Mountains Dec. 19.<\/p>\n

Patrick Bittman, 28, of Portland, Maine, was hospitalized overnight after a solo hike on Franconia Ridge turned into a near-death struggle against severe weather, according to Lt. James Kneeland of New Hampshire Fish and Game, which led the search and rescue effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtreme luck\u201d is how Kneeland characterized the sequence of events that led to Bittman\u2019s recovery seven hours after he called 911. He was just below the summit of Little Haystack, a thousand feet from Falling Water Trail at an elevation of 4,300 feet in an area known as Dry Brook drainage.<\/p>\n

Bittman had set out the previous evening hoping to watch the sunrise from Mount Lafayette. \u201cDeep, blowing snow\u201d compelled him to retreat, but he lost sight of the trail. He told the dispatcher \u201chis limbs were frozen, he was hypothermic and could no longer move through several feet of snow,\u201d Kneeland said. He had no shelter.
Temperatures were in the 20s with winds above 30 miles an hour.<\/p>\n

Conservation officers from Fish and Game and volunteers with Pemi Valley Search and Rescue Team were en route up Falling Water by 10 a.m. Flying from Concord, the medevac crew reached Franconia Notch 45 minutes later, but poor visibility forced them to land their Black Hawk at the nearby Cannon Mountain Ski Area.<\/p>\n

It took more than an hour for the ground rescuers to cover the thousand feet from the trail, Kneeland said.<\/p>\n

\u201cVegetation was extremely thick and the terrain was steep,\u201c he said. \u201cSnowshoes were a must once rescuers left the trail.\u201d<\/p>\n

They reached the hiker at 1 p.m. At this point. Bittman \u201cwas extremely hypothermic,\u201d Kneeland said. Rescuers stabilized Bittman in a lightweight emergency shelter known as a Bothy Bag and gave him dry clothing and warm fluids.<\/p>\n

At 3 p.m., the clouds lifted enough for the medevac crew to attempt a hoist from a hover of 70 feet. They had waited four hours and were about to depart for Concord.<\/p>\n

As soon as Bittman was secured in the helicopter, the cloud cover returned, Kneeland said. \u201cThe actual hoist took less than a minute and 30 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would have taken several more hours to remove Bittman by ground, time Bittman couldn\u2019t afford, Kneeland said. \u201cHe was going downhill fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bittman was transported to Littleton Regional Healthcare just before 3:30 p.m. It was the eighth search and rescue mission for NHARNG aviators this year, and the sixth patient transported to a medical care facility.<\/p>\n

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Sgt. 1st Class Ethan Major, a flight medic with the New Army National Guard, secures an air rescue vest on stricken hiker Patrick Bittman during a rescue on Little Haystack mountain in Franconia Range Dec. 19, 2024. Major and Bittman were hoisted into a Black Hawk helicopter hovering 70 feet overhead. Looking on are members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338466,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=338464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338467,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338464\/revisions\/338467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/338466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=338464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=338464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=338464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}