Injured hiker recalls falling in crevasse

The 36-year-old Los Angeles man who fell 40 feet into a crevasse on Glacier National Park’s Mount Jackson on Sept. 3 spent last week in a back brace at Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

Ted Porter says he feels fortunate his injuries weren’t much worse. One lumbar vertebra in his lower back was “totally crushed,” he said, and another was damaged. A doctor told him that his spinal cord was only a few millimeters away from being injured enough to cause partial or total paralysis of his legs.

A “huge mistake” on his part led to the accident, he said, but it wasn’t lack of experience. Porter first came to Glacier Park as a baby, and his family often returned. Both he and his father worked at the Many Glacier Hotel, and Porter attended the University of Montana in Missoula. Porter says he has considerable mountaineering and backcountry experience.

“So I’m definitely familiar with the Park, and I’m not just some Angeleno who rolled up here and didn’t know what was going on,” he said.

After hiking in the Park with his parents for about a week, Porter set out alone Sept. 3 to explore the Jackson Glacier. He hiked the 6.2 miles to Gunsight Lake and 1.8 miles up a boot trail to the toe of the glacier on Mount Jackson’s east side.

From there, he headed up toward a col between Mount Jackson and Blackfoot Mountain for a view of Harrison Glacier, on Mount Jackson’s south side. Rain began falling, making the rock ledges he was following slick and dangerous. By 4:30 p.m., he decided to head down.

Making his way down a different route, he encountered a large bergshrund — a type of crevasse formed when a glacier moves over an underlying rock outcropping. He found a way around the bergshrund but neglected to put his crampons back on or get out his ice ax.

“That proved to be a huge mistake,” he said. “I was just standing on the glacier, and my thought was I could just kind of ‘boot-ski’ out.”

Instead he slipped, gaining speed as he approached a large crevasse below.

“I just dropped right into the crevasse,” he said. “From what I remember, it was violent and fast. I hit the front side, the far wall, and bounced back, and I must have dropped straight down, and I ended up on my butt with a broken back. I just knew something was severely wrong. The pain was unbelievable.”

Porter began to look for a way to climb out of the crevasse. He also shot a 35 second “good-bye video” for his parents, who were back home in Kansas City.

“I said, ‘If I don’t see you again, I want you to know I love you very much,’” Porter said.

After strapping on his crampons, Porter crossed a small snow bridge to where one of the crevasse walls was less steep, providing a way out. He figures he was in the crevasse about 25 minutes.

Using his ice ax as a crutch, Porter struggled to make the three-mile hike to the Gunsight Lake backcountry campground, maneuvering around thick brush and across loose talus.

“I slipped and hit my hip really hard, which was terrible,” he said.

Porter credits all the people at the campground for their help. He said they gave him food, water and a makeshift shelter, and attempted to immobilize him to prevent further injuries. The ALERT helicopter was dispatched to the lake the next day to transport him to the hospital.

“It’s a miracle he’s alive,” his mother Cindy Porter said. “If he had broken his legs or his arms, he wouldn’t have been able to climb out, or if he had been knocked unconscious.”

Porter has established a Web site to raise money for his medical expenses at www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/vz03/ted-porter-friends-and-family-fund.