04/13/2026
**Edited Post**
On the afternoon of April 10, a family of four consisting of 2 parents and 2 kids, parked their off highway vehicles (OHV) consisting of two motorcycles and a side-by-side (SxS) near Pritchett Arch in Pritchett Canyon. Two had been in the SxS and two on motorcycles.
Visiting Moab for Spring Break, they had made the ride into Pritchett Canyon and had stopped to walk around.
The place they stopped is only about 5 miles, as the crow flies, from Moab but this trail is so rough that driving here can take as long as 3 hours, one way.
From where they parked their OHVs, the group hiked up to get a better look at Cummings Arch, a smaller arch high in the cliffs compared to the larger Pritchett Arch situated closer to the canyon bottom.
During the hike the group of four split in half, with one of the parents and one of the kids hiking faster than the other two. At some point during the hike one of the adults, going slower than the other, got too close to the edge and fell.
No one else in the group saw the fall but one of the kids heard the screaming and rushed down the hiking route to alert the other parent that something had happened.
The adult who fell was hurt badly. The other adult as able to summon help via the satellite function on their iPhone and sent a text to 911.
Grand County SAR and EMS (GCSAR and GCEMS) were paged to respond. Hearing the description of the injuries, open fractures and possible internal injuries, a medical helicopter was also requested.
Intermountain Health’s Moab asset, callsign Intermountain-20, was able to lift and was over the incident site in about 5 minutes. The helicopter was able to land within about 150 yards from the patient.
From the air, the scene was described to ground rescuers in Moab as in steep and sloping terrain with a short section of vertical terrain; technical rope rescue assets would be needed to assist in this rescue.
From the landing zone (LZ), medical and rescue personnel would have to cross a shallow wash and then scramble up to where the patient was lodged in a sloping sandstone gully. The gully was situated above an 8-10 foot dry fall just above the floor of the dry wash. The estimated distance of the fall was 70-80 feet followed by a 50 foot bouncing tumble, all on slickrock. Many hands would be needed for this rescue.
GCSAR requested that Intermountain-20 drop off the aeromedical crew and return to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to ferry SAR personnel and equipment to the scene.
The air medical crew grabbed all the gear that would be needed out of the helicopter. They would need nearly everything, and multiple trips would have to be made to get the medical gear to the patient before patient care could begin.
Being only about a 5 minute flight from the EOC, Intermountain 20 made several trips to ferry in personnel and technical rope rescue equipment. More oxygen was also requested.
Two of the SAR personnel, also providers for GCEMS, were able to assist the aeromedical crew in providing patient care and assist in patient movement. The patient’s badly broken body would have to be packaged in a rescue litter to be moved.
The other SAR members constructed a lowering system to move the patient. Even though the distance needed to move the patient was relatively short, the same equipment needed for a longer technical rope rescue had to be used. Ropes, webbing, carabiners, anchoring bolts, and descent devices all had to be brought to the LZ and carried to the scene.
Holes were drilled into rock to construct an anchoring system needed to support the patient and rescuers.
The technical rope rescue team, well practiced in these kinds of operations, quickly made the system ready and the patient, now packaged in the litter for both steep and high angle operations, was carefully lowered to the floor of the wash.
Following the short technical rescue, the patient was carried up to the LZ where they were loaded into Intermountain 20 and flown to the closest trauma center. The patient was in critical condition.
From the time of the accident until the patient left the scene, the rescue operation took just under 3 hours.
During the airlift of people and gear, GCSAR also requested a helicopter from the Department of Public Safety (DPS) respond. The DPS ship, based in Salt Lake City, was able to arrive at the EOC as Intermountain 20 was lifting from the scene en route to the hospital.
DPS would be used to retrieve SAR personnel and equipment from the scene and bring them back to the EOC.
Lessons/Takeaways
This was a difficult rescue. Many modern tools were used to pull off this operation.
For starters, the use of helicopters in such a coordinated way put resources on scene in a fraction of the time it would have taken to drive GCSAR’s OHVs to the area.
Using the DPS ship to retrieve assets saved the same amount of time at the end of the operation. Without the use of the helicopters, this rescue could have taken 10-12 hours—and that’s if no trouble befell the rescuers traveling to and from the scene on the difficult Pritchett Canyon trail.
Communications were challenging. Repeater and line of sight radio operations worked very well from the flight level of the helicopters. From on the ground at the scene back to Moab, radio communications were spotty at best. Early in the operation, an iPhone satellite message was used by a rescuer to give a partial scene size up and ask the EOC for technical rope rescue resources.
On one of the air sorties, a mobile Starlink unit was brought out to use and communications improved dramatically.
Having a well-practiced technical rope rescue team along with additional capable medical providers were force multipliers that helped this operation move quickly and safely.
As for the reason for the rescue, no one saw the patient fall.
The cliff edges in many places around Moab are deceptive. They slope gently from the top at first and quickly progress to vertical. It is not known what led up to the accident or what/if anything could have prevented it.
So many of us enjoy the wilderness that surrounds the Moab area. The ubiquitous advice to “Be Careful” is sound and sometimes bad things happen to good people.
GCSAR wishes the family the best of luck moving forward.
Grand County Search and Rescue is so grateful to Intermountain Health, the Department of Public Safety, and especially to its talented and dedicated members who all came together to perform this difficult rescue.
** GCSAR and our first responder partners were able to get the patient loaded into the helicopter; however, we later learned that the patient had passed away. Our condolences go out to the patient and their family.**