Ken Smith/Turnagain Times
A rock climber fell from the cliffs at the Bird Creek parking lot on the Seward Highway around 3:20 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23. Dustin Crawford, a 20-year-old from Eagle River, fell about 30 feet to one of the cut-out ledges. He was free climbing without a helmet and rope. His cousin Benjamin Baker said Crawford was not an experienced climber, and he warned him about climbing the difficult nearly vertical cliffs at Bird. “I don’t know why he would climb here,” Baker said. “I wanted him to go somewhere else.” Crawford escaped serious injuries, suffering contusions on his wrist and ankle. Medical crews from the Girdwood Fire Department responded as well as Anchorage fire crew. An Anchorage ladder truck lifted rescuers to the second level of the cliff and Crawford was carried down on a stretcher. He was flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center in an Air National Guard UH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter.
A rock climber fell from the cliffs at the Bird Creek parking lot on the Seward Highway around 3:20 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23. Dustin Crawford, a 20-year-old from Eagle River, fell about 30 feet to one of the cut-out ledges. He was free climbing without a helmet and rope. His cousin Benjamin Baker said Crawford was not an experienced climber, and he warned him about climbing the difficult nearly vertical cliffs at Bird. “I don’t know why he would climb here,” Baker said. “I wanted him to go somewhere else.” Crawford escaped serious injuries, suffering contusions on his wrist and ankle. Medical crews from the Girdwood Fire Department responded as well as Anchorage fire crew. An Anchorage ladder truck lifted rescuers to the second level of the cliff and Crawford was carried down on a stretcher. He was flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center in an Air National Guard UH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter.