FEATURE
There’s no room for error on the Vicente Flat Trail.
In some places, slipping off the narrow path means tumbling hundreds of feet down into the canyon surrounding Hare Creek in southern Big Sur.
About 5 miles in and 1,800 feet up, the Vicente Flat Campground sprawls out under a redwood grove next to the creek. As the sun was beginning its descent one evening a couple of years ago, a man chopping wood there made a mistake he felt instantly: He swung the ax right into his foot.
An emergency call went out.
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“The patient really needed to get off the hill,” Big Sur Fire Chief Matt Harris said.
The rescue team arrived on foot about an hour after sunset. It was too dark to call in the helicopter for a hoist rescue, so Harris made the decision to strap the patient into the rescue litter—a flat basket that a body can fit into with a single wheel at its balancing point—and wheel him out of the backcountry to Highway 1.
“Hiking out at night with a person’s life in your hands is extremely challenging and stressful,” he said. “It was maybe half a mile an hour.”
in Big Sur California on Monday August 12, 2025. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) Credit: PHOTO COURTESY OF BIG SUR FIRE
Two people at a time manned the litter in 15- to 20-minute increments, one on each end maneuvering it along a trail studded with rocks and roots, fallen trees, and the occasional rockslide with steep drop-offs on one side. Because of the potential blood loss, the team was also constantly monitoring the patient’s vital signs.
“The mental strain on the rescuers,” Harris said.
Responders experience physical fatigue, too, mixed with a little bit of fear, a sense of urgency, a need to collaborate well with the others, and the demand to push through, to keep going until the patient lands in an ambulance or a medevac. Which is exactly what happened as the sun came up.
“The euphoria that the team feels when they accomplish something like that, having gone through what they did, it’s hard to describe,” Harris said. “You definitely don’t want to do it again tomorrow, but the calls keep coming in.”
During the summer season, rescues like that happen multiple times a month in between other emergency and fire calls. In 2024, 18 of the 230 calls Big Sur Fire responded to along the coast between Pacific Coast Highway post mile marker 58.3 and the San Luis Obispo County line were rescues.
But it’s not the only agency that responds when someone is lost or injured in the coastal wilderness. Sometimes 15 to 20 responders are needed—from Big Sur Fire, Monterey County Search & Rescue, Monterey County Urban Search & Rescue, State Parks, the California Highway Patrol, and the U.S. Forest Service—depending on where the emergency situation is located. They all need to be ready to go and on the same page.
“Whoever is on duty, what team you assemble is sort of a roulette, a roll of the dice,” Harris said. “It’s a leadership challenge for me or for whoever is running the incident.”
Training together
Big Sur Fire Lt. Martin Palafox looks up into the CHP’s H-70 helicopter on May 27. He holds onto the landing skids with both hands and hangs from the hoist hook connected to the harness at his waist.
CHP Helicopter Pilot Kevin Barter holds the bird steady above the small crowd gathered on the airstrip below as Palafox gets lowered to the ground—knees up to prevent spinning—and unhooks himself.
Barter circles before heading back to pick up another trainee.
There are nine Big Sur firefighters at the Paso Robles Airport that day and three California State Parks rangers, all on the hook to help in the future. If CHP’s Coastal Air Operations Division gets called to Big Sur to hoist someone out of a precarious situation, these 12 will be trained enough to signal to the helicopter, ride the hoist up and down, and package the patient.
They will essentially act as the third CHP H-70 crew member in a rescue situation, as the helicopters are staffed with two officers—a pilot and a hoist operator who’s also a paramedic.
Trainings like this are an important piece of being prepared for anything. The CHP Coastal Division conducts hoist trainings with members of allied agencies throughout Monterey and SLO counties.
Big Sur’s volunteer crew of firefighters trains three to four times a month, varying the topics from refreshing medical skills to technical rescues on the cliffs to structure and wildland fires. Often the agencies train jointly, as they did on May 27.
“We all work together,” Palafox said, adding that it takes multiple rescuers in any given situation.
He’s been a volunteer with Big Sur Fire for 15 years and was completing the last part of his hoist training, 40 hours that began in a classroom. The fieldwork part was “really fun,” he said.
“When you’re up there, it didn’t seem so high to me, which is surprising. It’s loud underneath the propellers, but not as loud as you might think,” he said. “That adrenaline rush kind of keeps you in that state of mind so you can focus.”
The adrenaline rush does fade a little with practice, CHP Flight Officer and Medic Tony Ramage said. He’s been doing the job since 2011.
The day before the training, Ramage was part of a crew that responded to an ankle sprain about 2 1/2 miles up the Boronda Trail.
The terrain was too steep for the helicopter to land near the injured hiker, so they landed elsewhere, hiked over to her, helped her hike out to the helicopter, and flew her to the Post Ranch Inn, which is accessible to both ambulances and medevacs.
Usually, though, there isn’t space for the helicopter to land in Big Sur, Ramage said.
“That’s probably our primary area for doing hoist rescues,” he said, adding that about 90 percent of CHP’s hoist rescues are in the Big Sur area. “Most of the time, it’s in huge 100-foot trees.”
Razor’s edge
Hovering between trees with a hoist stretched out to its limit puts the helicopter on the very edge of its capabilities, CHP Pilot Shayne Dickson said. He’s been with the CHP for 19 years, 13 of those in air operations.
With 165 feet of cable at its max, a helicopter may need to nestle between trees, ensuring that there’s enough motor clearance to stay safe. Sometimes the trees are too dense and it’s all about picking the right-sized hole to hover in.
“If the rotors hit anything it’s game over,” he said.
On any given day, Dickson and his shift partner could respond to a trio of events: rescues, suspect searches, and pursuits.
“There are days where we run all three scenarios,” he said.
If the CHP gets called to a rescue, allied agencies are likely already on their way as well, Dickson said. If it’s very remote without a lot of places to land, the hoist gets used.
But weather, time of day, and altitude all play into the H-70’s performance abilities and whether the hoist can even be deployed. It’s challenging, he added, but that’s one of the things he likes about the work.
“These people are having literally the worst day of their lives, and we show up and get them out of there, get them the medical attention they need, get them out of a bad way,” Dickson said.
Pilots like Dickson and Barter, Ramage joked, are like “highly skilled taxi drivers.”
“No rescue is ever the same. The terrain’s always different, the condition of the patient,” Ramage said. “You’re figuring it out as you go.”
The day after Memorial Day, Barter flew out to a rescue at Lopez Lake, he said. A woman stuck on the side of a steep hill had broken her ankle and was in so much pain, she was vomiting.
Members from SLO County’s Urban Search & Rescue team (made up of firefighters from various local departments) were already there, as was Cal Fire, county park rangers, San Luis Ambulance, and the county Sheriff’s Office, Cal Fire Capt. and Public Information Officer Eva Grady said.
Rescuers had already hiked to the patient to determine how injured she was and the best way to get her out of the situation.
“There was a hiker and she fell down this steep terrain, she hit her head, she hurt her leg, she couldn’t walk,” Grady said. “It would be better to hoist her out rather than hike her out of that steep terrain.”
A firefighter from the Five Cities Fire Authority was dropped off at the spot by the CHP helicopter via the hoist. He packaged her up in a screamer suit—which you sit in with all the connections at your naval. The H-70 flew her down to the road, dropped her off next to the ambulance, then went back and picked up the firefighter while the rest of the responders hiked out.
“It’s such a team effort, just the way we respond,” Grady said. “What’s really important is being on the same channel, practicing these calls before we get them.”
Resource heavy
The helicopter is a luxury that’s not always available, Big Sur Fire Chief Harris said. On a nice sunny day, the CHP Air Operations Division can often respond to help. But when it’s dark, stormy, and/or windy, the H-70 can’t respond.
“It’s been proven to us that these rescues don’t happen on these perfect days,” he said. “It could be somebody who wasn’t well suited to be out in the backcountry either physically or mentally, and they end up putting the whole team at risk.”
Harris said that it takes 300-plus hours of training to become a firefighter with the technical resource component needed to participate in these kinds of rescues. The backcountry is unforgiving. One of the biggest risks, Harris said, is that a rescuer may also need rescue.
“We like to rescue people, it’s challenging,” he said. “We do it out of a labor of love. The camaraderie, and the feeling of helping people, that’s just kind of an addictive thing.”
Every person who needs rescue has a cost associated with them for the responding agencies. Harris with Big Sur Fire estimates that responding to them could cost between $10,000 and $20,000 worth of resources per call.
Depending on the nature of the call, it’s a public service. But if someone is trespassing and needs a rescue—saw the signs on State Parks property, for instance, and ignored them—they could get a bill. Or if a private company’s air ambulance gets dispatched, a patient will get charged.
“Typically, there is no cost to the individual. They just get rescued, and it’s a service we provide,” Harris said. “A service that basically the public expects.”
While responding agencies like the CHP and Cal Fire are publicly funded with tax dollars, Big Sur Fire is a 501c3 nonprofit. It’s staffed with volunteer firefighters and responds to every emergency call along that stretch of coastline.
Big Sur’s terrain—like that of Yosemite or the Santa Barbara front country—is challenging. Some of the trails are poorly maintained. Sometimes people get into trouble more than 10 miles in.
Even a fairly simple rescue takes a team of people. If they have to deploy the rescue litter, it takes a minimum of 15 people from several agencies who all have to carry the equipment in on their backs, as well as their food, water, and appropriate clothing.
“We’re talking 12-hour-plus-long rescues. That’s just the extraction. It can take four to six hours to get into where the patient is, and to get the patient out can take twice if not three times as long,” he said.
He remembers one rescue, where a person was 12 miles up the Pine Ridge Trail at Sykes Hot Springs. A leg injury prevented the 300-pound man from being able to walk. It was a full 24-hour ordeal, he said, and it included a shift change.