A 41-year-old Michigan man is recovering from a shattered leg suffered in an ice-climbing accident last week.

The climber fell from the upper pitch of the Kerkeslin Falls climb on Friday afternoon (December 30), landing between two sections of ice. Park wardens were able to sling him off the mountain only moments before night fell, said Jasper National Park public safety manager Rupert Wedgewood.

“It was fortunate that we were able to get the helicopter in and sling him off,” said Wedgewood, who assisted the climber personally before transferring him to an ambulance waiting near the goat lick on Highway 93 south of Jasper.

“What saved our bacon was that Dave McDowell from Freewheel Cycle had been on the same climb and saw the fall,” Wedgewood said, adding that if the wardens had received the call even twenty minutes later, it would have been too dark to attempt a helicopter rescue.

Wedgewood had decided to send a ground rescue crew just in case the position of the fallen climber proved too difficult for a sling operation. The crew would have had to approach the situation in much the same way they will a special demonstration that is scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, January 15 as part of the Jasper Welcomes Winter festival.

In that exercise, about half a dozen wardens will help to extricate another warden from the icy bottom of Maligne Canyon, an area where winter accidents have happened in the past, Wedgewood said.

“It’s a good opportunity for refreshment on evacuating someone out of steep terrain.”

The rescue on Kerkeslin, meanwhile, was the first of its kind for Jasper wardens this winter. The victim, who was climbing with a 45-year-old woman also from Michigan, was an experienced climber, according to Wedgewood.

“He’d claimed to have been ice climbing for ten years,” he said. “Ice climbing is a serious activity ... it requires knowledge of the terrain and it’s also highly technical. You’re lead climbing, you’re having to build your own anchors and then you have to be able to get down off the climb.”

The Kerkeslin Falls climb is rated a three on a scale of seven and is fairly accessible.

“It’s a reasonable place to go and it’s a very popular route. It’s fairly user friendly,” Wedgewood said.

The man broke his lower left leg, an injury not altogether uncommon in ice climbing falls.

“You fall off even a small distance in crampons and if you hit a piece of ice, they’re going to stop moving and your body carries on ... something’s got to give and it’s usually your legs.”