A hiker from New York said he is lucky to be alive after he got pinned for more than seven hours under a five-ton boulder — leaving him so convinced he would die, he got his buddy to call his mom so he could say goodbye.
Kevin DePaolo, 28, was hiking in the California mountains of Sierra Nevada with his friend Joshua Nelson, 38, on Dec. 5 when the massive boulder dislodged and landed on him, KRNV reported.
“I was kind of digging under this big boulder, and I had thought it was leaned up against this other boulder,” he told the outlet. “I didn’t know that it was actually on this loose sand.”
The rock fell on top of DePaolo’s legs and chest, crushing him in the hole he had been digging in in a rocky area of the Inyo National Forest.
“It felt like getting hit by a fridge,” he told The New York Times of the rock estimated to weigh around 10,000 pounds.
“I could see all this weird stuff in my leg you’re not supposed to see,” he added.
“I was able to rip my pant leg off, grab my numb leg that I couldn’t feel at all, pull it out from under the boulder, and maneuver my body so that if the boulder kept coming down the hill it wouldn’t have crushed my entire body,” he told KRNV.
“It would have just rolled over my whole legs,” added DePaolo, who is originally from New York but lives out of his van and travels across the US in search of adventure.
“I actually told my buddy Josh Nelson to call my mom I’m going to tell her I’m going to die up here,” he said. “There’s no way I’m making it out of here.”
Nelson spent more than six hours on the phone with 911 as Inyo Search and Rescue workers headed to the accident site.
“They started approaching me from down the hill, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, I might actually make it out of this alive,’” DePaolo told KRNV.
He was eventually located below Santa Rita Flat near Independence, the agency said on Facebook.
“With the help of California Highway patrol Central Division Air Operations helicopter H40, two rescue team members were inserted via helicopter to Santa Rita Flat, while seven other team members followed in vehicles navigating a network for four-wheel drive roads,” it said.
Rescuers found “the hiker in great pain with his left leg pinned beneath a large boulder on a steep hillside. Team members estimated the boulder to weigh between 6,000 and 10,000 pounds.”
Read Related Also: Marion Jones Has Had Quite The Transformation
The teams used ropes and pulleys to shift the boulder enough to allow DePaolo to be freed.
“Due to the seriousness of the hiker’s injuries and the difficulty of the terrain, it was decided to extricate the hiker despite the darkness using a helicopter from US Naval Air Station Lemoore,” Inyo Search and Rescue said.
But no suitable landing sites were in the vicinity so a US Navy medic rappelled from the chopper to pluck DePaolo from the scene and rush him to a hospital in Fresno, according to the agency.
“It was absolutely so amazing and so impressive,” DePaolo told KRNV about the rescue. “I felt like I was in such good hands and I was finally actually safe for once.”
His pelvis was cracked in two places and the femoral artery in his left leg was severed. He may have nerve damage, but he did not break any bones in his legs and doctors were able to save his leg. In a few months, he will be able to walk again, he told the San Francisco Chronicle.
DePaolo told the Chronicle that he can already sit upright and is expected to walk again in a few months.
“I’m extremely grateful to be alive,” he told KRNV. “I go hiking every single day, no matter what. I go climbing every single day, and my legs are crucial parts of my life, and it would never be the same if I had lost my legs.”
DePaolo is still in need of extensive plastic surgery and intensive physical therapy.
A GoFundMe page created by DePaolo’s close friend Carson Ray said the hiker was out “doing what he loves most—exploring the great outdoors of North America—up in California’s Inyo Mountains with no clue that he was in the midst of a life-threatening encounter.
“This behemoth of a boulder shifted, pinning Kev down for nearly 7 hours of excruciating physical anguish,” he wrote.
“But thanks to the heroic efforts of a superbly coordinated incident response between Inyo County Sherriff’s Office, Inyo County Search and Rescue, and the U.S. Navy, Kev was freed as rescuers implemented a system of ropes, pulleys, leverage, and sheer determination,” Ray continued.
“Surviving against such odds is nothing short of a miracle (and clearly lots of training hours and courage on the part of the rescuers), which goes to show that when it’s not your time to go, it’s not your time to go,” he added.
“The road to recovery stretches far ahead, and medical bills loom large as he lacks medical insurance,” Ray said. The account raised about $8,370 as of Tuesday morning.
