By Khalida Sarwari
A girl who was injured during a hiking expedition in the Santa Cruz Mountains on Thursday is recovering today from a broken femur, a Cal Fire chief said.
Cal Fire responded about 3:20 p.m. to a report of a 10 or 11-year-old girl injured in a ravine off of Eureka Canyon Road in the community of Corralitos, Chief Rob Sherman said.
The girl was hiking with a group called the Koinonia Camp, Sherman said. She was coming down a steep embankment when a large rock came down and crushed her femur, he said.
A rescue crew found the girl about 300 feet up from a creek bottom.
To rescue her, the crew walked about 1.5 miles into the mountains and established two separate rope systems, one to get her down to the creek and another to get her up from the creek to the other side of the trail, Sherman said.
Sherman said he requested a helicopter to rescue the girl, but that it couldn’t be used because there were too many tall trees in the area.
At about 6:30 p.m., the girl was rescued and transported via ambulance to Watsonville Community Hospital with a broken femur, Sherman said.
He said it was the most technical rescue he and some of the other fire chiefs had done in 25 years.
“We all train together so it’s nice when things like that pay off,” Sherman said. “This could have been worse.”
The Central Fire Protection District of Santa Cruz County, as well as the Watsonville, Pajaro Valley and Aptos fire departments assisted in the rescue.