Rescue crews aid hiker who survives 200-foot slide in Koolaus
HFD Air 1 flew above the treetops of the Koolau Mountains behind the Hawaii Kai Retirement Home on Tuesday.
Diana Velez says she’s through hiking.
The 20-year-old Schofield Barracks soldier was on Puu Mana-mana Trail on Sunday afternoon with her best friend, also a Schofield Barracks soldier, when he fell, then slid hundreds of feet down the mountain above the Crouching Lion Inn in Kaaawa.
Velez, a former New Jersey resident, said the ordeal began about three hours into the hike, considered one of the most dangerous on Oahu. Two other friends turned back, but her soldier friend, 25, had done the hike before and she continued with him to the ridge.
On the way back, he took off his backpack to help her down a steep rock and placed it next to the trail.
The bag fell.
Velez said her friend decided to try to retrieve the bag because it contained his car keys and he had driven them to the trail.
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Her friend took one of the ropes already there on the trail for hikers, tied it to something below an outcropping and lowered himself down.
Shortly he started screaming for help, Velez said.
"I felt really bad because I could hear him calling my name, but I couldn’t see him," she said.
Malia Hulleman heard the calls for help and could see the man standing on the mountainside, holding onto something to steady himself.
"His mouth was all bloody," she said.
Gregor Ulmer of Germany, who was hiking with friends, heard Velez screaming and called 911.
Firefighters arrived with a helicopter, plucked the man from the mountainside, took him to Swanzy Beach Park and transferred him to paramedics, said Hono-lulu Fire Capt. David Jen-kins. He was taken to a hospital in serious condition with unspecified injuries.
Paramedics said the man fell 20 feet from a ledge and slid another 200 feet down the side of the mountain.
"It’s a sketchy hike," said Peter Heims, a Kaaawa resident who saw the rescue.
In June 2013, Elizabeth Tarpey, 23, died after falling 300 feet while hiking Puu Mana-mana Trail.
Velez hiked about an hour back to the trailhead after her friend was rescued and went to visit him at the hospital.
She said he never retrieved his bag.
