Helena man survives compound fracture in wilderness thanks to rescuers who wouldn't quit

When his leg snapped below the knee and turned his foot around backwards, Trevor Johnson didn’t feel any pain. But that would change in time.

Perhaps, the 26-year-old Helena man would come to believe, this was how it might end — bleeding to death on a mountainside, falling prey to a wild animal, or succumbing to the elements.

“My foot got stuck between two rocks and all the weight I was carrying came down on top of me and exploded those bones,” said Johnson. “This is six miles from anything. My dad and I are savvy in the outdoors, but at the same time, we hadn’t ever been placed in a situation like that.”

Darkness moved across the Montana prairie, creeping toward the Scapegoat Wilderness. A late September chill had already settled into the mountain valleys and the sun was sinking fast.

As sure as it was fall, Johnson knew, the bears would be out looking for food and preparing for winter. The cut of elk strapped to his back wouldn’t help matters, not in the wild where hunger and survival are a way of life.

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It happened in the final days of September, when Johnson and his father, Kit, drew a permit for a backcountry rifle hunt in the Scapegoat Wilderness. The elk were rutting and Johnson, high in the mountains, held a bugling match with a bull.

The effort worked, drawing the bull to within 20 yards. Johnson admired the majestic animal before making a clean shot. He returned with Kit the following day to bring out the meat.

Strapped with 100 pounds of meat and a prized elk rack, Johnson made his way down the mountain. The slate-covered slope was steep. But he and his father had done this before. There wasn’t any reason to think they couldn’t do it again.

Suddenly, Johnson’s right leg slipped and his foot wedged between two rocks. The weight pressed down upon him. The meat, his pack, the elk rack — it turned his leg just enough, compressing, then snapping, the bones below the knee.

“You heard it — POW!” Johnson said. “My leg just crumbled underneath me. When it first happened, there was no pain. My dad ran down the trail and went to lift me up. That’s when my knee was going left and my foot was going 180 degrees in the other direction.”

Johnson had snapped his tibia and fibula, the bones protruding from the skin. At first, shock helped deaden the pain, but the anesthetic wouldn’t last. Not knowing if he’d severed a vein, Johnson asked his father to set the bones.

It was nearly 5 p.m. and their cell phones couldn’t find a signal. Getting help wouldn’t be as easy as picking up the phone. Kit would have to get help the old-fashioned way. He’d have to run and fetch it, leaving his son bleeding and crippled on the mountain.

Even then, it would take Kit hours to reach the car. It sat down the trail, two hours by foot. He’d need another 45 minutes driving to Lincoln for help.

But what other choice did they have?

With his father gone for help, Johnson sat alone in the deep and empty silence that surrounded him. It’s all he remembers — the impenetrable silence of nothing, both profound and haunting.

Above, the new moon was really no moon at all. Soon, the cool September night would become as black as a lampless cave. The wilderness would grow as dark as it ever did.

“The people who get through these things are the people who stay strong,” Johnson said. “I kept positive and just surrounded myself with good memories of people. Being in nature, it was a great place to be in a situation like that.”

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The odds were against him, or so Johnson thought. Alone, unable to move, he began playing with his cell phone to pass the time. He tried 911 again, then again.

Still there was nothing.

Then, inexplicably, he got a signal. The call went through, reaching the Lewis and Clark County dispatch center 60 miles south. How long would the spotty connection last, Johnson wondered? How would he explain where he was before the service cut out?

Johnson rushed to give his basic location — somewhere up that wild drainage on a mountainside, several miles from the nearest road. He didn’t have a GPS and it was getting dark, the light shifting, the shadows growing long.

“I gave them a general description of what basin I was in,” Johnson said. “There’s no way to get horses or 4-wheelers in. I pretty much broke up right away and lost them after that. It had been a couple hours already.”

However short that call, however spotty the service, it worked to serve a purpose. Johnson’s digital cry for help raced through the airwaves, passing his father out on the trail.

By the time Kit reached the trailhead, in fact, the Lincoln ambulance was pulling up.

And a helicopter was on its way.

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One thousand feet up the mountain, Johnson sat alone, watching the last glimmer of daylight drain from the sky. Then something shattered the silence, giving him hope for the first time in hours.

A helicopter! It rumbled in the distance, softly at first. Johnson turned an ear. The blades grew louder, echoing off the valley.

There was no mistaking it now. He watched the machine come into view and waved his shirt in wild ribbons, hoping to gain the pilot’s attention. The helicopter circled above, then hovered before setting down in a small, wet clearing.

It was an elk wallow, but it hardly mattered. From his vantage point, Johnson watched four members of the Lewis and Clark County Search and Rescue team debark with their gear.

Later identified as deputy Jason Grimmis, Steve McGee, Mike Hayes and Twyla York, the four rescuers wasted no time in climbing toward Johnson. The distance they’d need to cover was great and Johnson could see them coming, navigating the slope, moving up the incline.

At the same time, he watched the helicopter fly away. The pilot wasn’t certified to fly after dark, so Johnson and the rescuers would have to sit tight and wait for help.

“In all honesty, it was the most life-changing experience of my life,” Johnson said, recalling the moment rescuers finally reached him. “I just started bawling. It was uncontrollable. One rescuer, (York) came up and hugged me for about five minutes to calm me down.”

The team loaded Johnson on a stretcher. They tethered themselves to it, then made their way down the game trail cutting the slope. For Johnson, these were painful, clumsy steps. No morphine to numb the pain, he gritted his teeth to bear it.

Surely, he thought, another helicopter would soon arrive to fly him out. When he and the rescuers reached the clearing below, their wait began. Finally, a second helicopter sounded in the distance, this one from Benefis Hospital in Great Falls.

The rescue crew prepared Johnson for the medivac flight and waited for the machine to land. They waved it down, but the pilot only circled and, very soon, the lights faded back into night. The sound of the engine slipped away, just as it had come.

Just like that, the air ambulance was gone.

“That left us on the mountain with no helicopter,” Johnson said. “It was probably three or four minutes of dead silence after that. It was spooky.”

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Inside the wilderness, the rescue team was making plans to spend the night.

Out at the trailhead, however, where Kit now sat with the ambulance crew and a sheriff’s deputy listening to radio communications, law enforcement officials were searching for a helicopter pilot willing and able to complete the dangerous rescue flight.

Their options were running out. Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton phoned St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula hoping it could help.

“I asked Mercy Flight when I called if they were night-vision qualified,” said Dutton. “The reason there wasn’t any quit in us — you don’t know the level of severity of the injury you’re dealing with, and (Johnson) wasn’t really dressed for the elements, so quitting wasn’t an option to consider.”

Mercy Flight agreed to do the medivac. The helicopter — the third one that night — arrived shortly after Dutton secured its service. The pilot landed without a problem, delivering the morphine Johnson sorely needed to deaden the pain.

A shot of morphine can do a lot. It was then Johnson knew he’d make it to the hospital after all. He doubted he would ever walk again, at least without a distinct limp. He considered it a small price to pay for staying alive.

But 10 days would pass before doctors could even consider surgery. Johnson spent the time couch ridden, drugged by painkillers. When the swelling subsided, surgeons drilled out the center of his leg bones and connected them with titanium rods.

Now, he’s healing slowly and thinking about his next hunt. Perhaps, he said, he’ll do things a little different next time.

“At first, I thought, maybe it was a sign from God that I needed to slow down,” Johnson said. “Since I’ve been getting through it, I’m thinking about it more positively. I was placed in a horrible situation and I made it through.”

As for the elk that changed his life? Johnson laughed, saying it got its revenge.

“But we didn’t lose one drop of meat,” he added. “We’ve been eating him and he tastes delicious.”

Reporter Martin Kidston: mkidston@helenair.com or 447-4086