| Name | Age | Sex | Injuries | Injured areas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albers, Kent | Not recorded | Not recorded | Not recorded | Not recorded |
In the Summer of 1984 three cavers visited Spanish Cave in the Colorado Rockies at an altitude of 11,500 feet. The cave has an upper and a middle entrance with a vertical extent of some 700 feet. It is wet and cold (35 degrees). A hike of several hours is required to reach the cave.
This group entered via the middle entrance, proceeded through a crawlway and traversed around the pit leading to the lower cave. This was made easy by a snow bank partly blocking the pit opening. They then chimneyed along in a meandering, wet, narrow canyon, doing several climb-ups along the way.
At the Seven Pool Room the leader did a ten foot climb up a small, trickling waterfall. This is short but difficult in that the climber starts under the overhang of the falls in a three to five foot wide chimney and after ascending a few feet must lean out, get handholds on the sides of the two foot wide passage above the lip of the falls and pull himself up. Kent Albers was at the point of getting over the falls when he suffered a dislocation of his left shoulder. He yelled and the caver at the top pulled him the rest of the way up.
The arm was immobilized by tying it to the victim's body with one inch webbing. A harness was made from the webbing and put on Albers. The victim was then escorted from the cave using excess webbing to lower him down the several short drops. In this way they made it back to the middle entrance. Once out of the cave, the victim was unable to continue because of shock. A companion hiked out, secured the use of a horse and returned with this to complete the evacuation.
The author makes several observations. 1) The party could not be split after the accident so that hypothermia gear could be brought in from camp because of the inexperience of one caver. He feels that four might have been a better party size. 2) If Albers had not been able to make it out, they would have had insufficient exposure gear to help him until more could be brought in from camp. This could have been critical, since the evacuation of an incapacitated caver would have taken considerable time. That is, if hypothermia is allowed to set in, from initial lack of equipment, the victim might not survive the evacuation.
In alpine caves the margin for survival after an accident is much less than in warmer caves. The above is a good example of survival by self-rescue.
Kent Albers dislocated his shoulder while climbing in Spanish Cave and had to be assisted out and evacuated by horse due to shock.