Injured ice climber expresses gratitude to rescuers

Posted 2/13/20

A Billings man who fell and broke several bones while ice climbing on the South Fork is offering a big thank you to the first responders and recreationists who helped get him to safety on Saturday.

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Injured ice climber expresses gratitude to rescuers

Posted

A Billings man who fell and broke several bones while ice climbing on the South Fork is offering a big thank you to the first responders and recreationists who helped get him to safety on Saturday.

Rick Dvorak fell about 30 feet as he approached the top of the Broken Heart ice flow, about 38 miles southwest of Cody.

Dvorak said he fractured his pelvis (in three places), sacrum and L1 vertebra while also breaking a rib. However, he said no surgeries are needed and that, if all goes well, he should make a full recovery within three months.

A large group of people — including members of the Park and Big Horn County Search and Rescue teams, Cody Regional Health’s Wilderness Medical Team, other ice climbers in the area and Dvorak’s friends — assisted with the rescue. The group spent all Saturday afternoon and evening bringing him down the ice flow, getting him to Cody Regional Health around 8 p.m.; he was later transported to Billings Clinic.

“There were a lot of faces I did not recognize putting efforts forth on my behalf. To faces I knew and those I did not, I thank you with all my heart for helping me in my helpless state,” Dvorak wrote in a comment on the Park County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page. “Even though I spent much of the lower evacuation in a severely dazed state, much of my real emotion was feeling overwhelmed by the drive humans have to give so much to join in a massive collective effort to help somebody out who they may not even know out of a life-threatening environment to safety.”

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