ST. GEORGE — The Washington County Search and Rescue Team responded to the call of a hiker stuck on a ledge in Padre Canyon near the Tuacahn Amphitheater complex on Friday afternoon.
The county’s search and rescue team was sent to the area shortly after the call came in around 4 p.m., Washington County Sheriff’s Sgt. Darrell Cashin said.
The hiker reportedly told responders he had been walking to into the area from the Red Mountain trailhead when he slipped off the trail and found himself stuck on a ledge with no means of escape. At that point he called 911, and the search and rescue responding accordingly.
The search and rescue team set up a command post in the parking lot of the Tuacahn Amphitheater and two teams were sent out to find the hiker, Cashin said. One team attempted to locate him from the bottom of the canyon while the other team searched for him from the top.
The team searching from the top of the canyon eventually found the hiker stuck about 100 feet below the top of the canyon. This also placed him about 700 feet from the bottom, Cashin said.
The hiker was soon retrieved from the ledge through a rope-rescue operation.
A drone was also used to help search for the hiker. The drone located the hiker around the same time the canyon-top searchers did, Cashin said.
Though the hiker appeared to be uninjured, Cashin confirmed that the hiker was flown from the location on the canyon top to the command post by Intermountain’s Life Flight helicopter due to exhaustion.
The operation was wrapped up by 8 p.m.
The rescue of the hiker marks an estimated 83 incidents the search and rescue team has responded to so far this year, Cashin said.
Prior to the call in Padre Canyon, the search and rescue team had responded to three back-to-back calls the previous evening, he said.
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