Early July has been hectic for the members of Park County Search and Rescue. Within the span of just a few days, the volunteers were summoned to help a young Powell man bitten by a rattlesnake on Heart Mountain, an older Cody man thrown from a horse, a Powell physician stuck in the backcountry and a 72-year-old man who fell down a waterfall in the Beartooth Mountains.

It was part of a weeklong stretch around the Fourth of July that saw 666 calls for service come into the Park County Sheriff’s Office dispatch center in Cody, Monte McClain, a spokesman for the Park County Sheriff’s Office, said Wednesday. Between the Powell and Cody centers, he said there were 102 emergency medical calls.

“It just blows me away the call volume that we’re getting,” McClain said.

The search and rescue calls were among the most high profile and significant incidents.

On the evening of July 8, authorities received a report that a 19-year-old Powell man had been bitten by a rattlesnake about 3.5 miles up the Heart Mountain trail, the sheriff’s office said in a release.

Personnel from Powell Valley Healthcare EMS, Powell Fire Department, search and rescue and First Flight of Wyoming all responded, and the young man was ultimately flown from the mountain to Cody Regional Health for antivenom treatment.

The day before, on July 7, a 60-year-old local resident, Steve Rickard, was seriously injured after being thrown from a mule while riding in the Jim Mountain area on the North Fork.

Another rider ran a mile to get cell service and call for help. Search and rescue ground teams, Cody Regional Health’s EMS Wilderness Team and Guardian Flight all responded, stabilizing Rickard and flying him to a Billings hospital.

There is now a GoFundMe campaign to help at least cover the cost of the medical helicopter.

“Although he [Rickard] is out of the ICU, he is suffering from major internal injuries, broken ribs, a broken scapula, and a dislocated shoulder," Gera Feist wrote on the GoFundMe page last week. “His spleen was extremely damaged, he has a collapsed lung, and a lacerated liver. He is tough, but these injuries will have him out of work for six to eight weeks.”

The fundraiser for Rickard is online at https://gofund.me/f47ced47.

A mule was also involved in a July 6 incident in the area of the Dead Indian Trail off Wyo. Highway 296.

First responders were summoned for an SOS signal from a Garmin device, with indications that a man had possibly been thrown from a mule.

When the Guardian crew arrived on site, they found the 65-year-old Powell man was uninjured, but his mule was stuck in a bog.

The flight crew attempted to free the mule, but couldn’t. First Flight then flew in a search and rescue ground team and flew the man and his dog back to the trailhead, “as he was too exhausted to walk out,” the sheriff’s office said.

The man and his dog were OK, but the mule ultimately died from the stress, according to the release.

At the time of the incident, First Flight was just returning from shuttling a 72-year-old man to Billings following an incident in the Beartooth Mountains.

Perhaps due to a medical incident, the man fell about 20 feet down a waterfall near Lake Creek Falls, above Lookout Bridge, McClain said.

“There were lots of people there to help him out, thank God,” McClain said.

The man — who suffered head, neck and rib injuries — was driven to a spot where a First Flight helicopter could land and then flown on to a Billings hospital. The fall took place just before 1 p.m. on July 6, which turned out to be only about two hours before the report of the stuck mule on Chief Joseph.

It was all part of a string of five search and rescue calls within a four-day span. The calls started on July 5, with a report of a stranded boat at the Buffalo Bill Reservoir. That wound up being the least eventful, with personnel helping all six occupants safely make it back to shore.

The search and rescue calls were also far from the only emergencies during that time period. As just one example, a woman in Wapiti was injured after being thrown from a horse in Wapiti, McClain said.

“We’re just going nonstop,” he said, and “it’s on the rise.”

(CJ Baker and Zac Taylor contributed reporting.)