By: Mat Cloak
The Parsons Advocate
The joint efforts of two vacationers and local service personnel helped save a fallen man from what could have been a much more dire story.
At approximately 1 p.m. on Thursday, September 28, a 911 call was received from a man at the Table Rock overlook who found a fallen individual in a 30 to 40 foot crevice. The man who found the fallen individual was Michigan resident, Craig Winn. He and his wife were on their second annual visit to the area and had decided to hike the Table Rock trail. “My wife and I just came up here to take pictures. We might have been here five minutes when we heard a voice,” Winn said. With Winn and his wife there, the man worked his way to a higher location, 20 to 30 feet from the surface of the overlook.
The hurt individual was in luck. Winn is a firefighter with EMS certification at the Shelby Township Fire Department in Michigan. Winn and his wife called 911, and by 2:30 p.m., 1st. Sgt. Keplinger and individuals from Canaan Valley Volunteer Fire Department were the first local service personnel on the scene. By the time local personnel arrived, Winn had the situation assessed and the individual communicating and calm.
The Table Rock trail branches off Canaan Loop Road almost halfway between Blackwater State Park and Route 32. Accessing the trailhead takes at least 25 minutes from Route 32. The Table Rock trailhead via the state park is almost inaccessible by vehicle. The trail to the overlook is 1.2 miles.
Volunteers from the Canaan Valley, Parsons, and Davis fire companies split into two groups to attempt to access the individual from below and above. One group drove Forest Road 244 and hiked up to the base of the overlook, and the other group drove to the Table Rock trailhead and hiked in from the top.
By 3:30 p.m., a roped descent into the crevice was underway. Large, secure objects to use as an anchor point were absent on the rock outcropping, so the fireman was belayed with other firemen and Tucker County residents as the anchor point.
At 3:45 p.m., the individual was extricated from the crevice. First Sgt. Keplinger handed the individual a phone. On the other line was his family.
While the individual suffered a severe concussion and lacerations to his head and leg, everyone on the scene commented on his luck. Thursday’s low in Davis was near 35 degrees. A crevice in an exposed rock outcropping at a high elevation would have most likely been below freezing.
Winn and his wife’s luck is harder to assess. When they visited the area last fall, they assisted an elderly woman who dislocated her shoulder on the Lindy Point trail.
This incident is not the first of its kind at the Table Rock overlook. In 2014, an eight year old girl fell in a crevice.
