Treacherous Road to Rescue : Paramedics Brave Fog, Cold in 12-Hour Ordeal for Biker

After losing a front wheel Wednesday night along a steep mountain trail and landing on his head with an impact that split his helmet, mountain biker Brian Bullen might have found himself paralyzed today.

Instead, doctors at the trauma center at the Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo said Thursday they expect him to fully recover, thanks to the efforts of 20 Orange County fire fighters and paramedics who worked through the night to bring him to safety.

The effort to rescue the 24-year-old biker, who suffered a shattered vertebra, took a harrowing 12 hours. It was complicated by nightfall, rain, heavy fog, the treacherous terrain and the victim’s size. Bullen is 6 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs 230 pounds, making it even more difficult for his rescuers to maneuver him down a narrow, slippery trail.

Firefighters said Bullen’s disabled bicycle crashed at about 7:30 p.m. halfway down the 12-mile-long San Juan Trail, at a point about 3 1/2 miles west of Ortega Highway and three miles north of San Juan Hot Springs.

Bullen said he followed two of his friends down the steep slope of the meandering, rocky path that he had ridden once before with no trouble.

“We were going down the trail, and there was a rise we used as a jump, and the front wheel came off,” Bullen said Thursday from his bed in Mission’s intensive care unit. He said he blames himself for not tightening the wheel, which had come off in the same fashion when he was riding just a few days before.

“I was hurled 10 to 15 feet and landed on my head,” Bullen said, adding that on impact “it felt like an electrical shock in my back.” He said one of his biking buddies, Mark Karganis, rode down the trail and to the San Juan Forest Service station, a distance of about six miles, to find a telephone to call for help.

The other biker, Joe Kulakowski, who is Bullen’s roommate, stayed with Bullen and talked to him to keep his mind off his predicament.

Bullen waited for six hours before two teams of 10 rescuers, one walking from the top of the trail and one from the bottom, reached him. For a while, he said, he worried that Karganis might have also crashed and no help was coming.

Fire Department Battalion Chief Stan Matthews commanded the rescue from the San Juan Forest Service station.

Matthews said his initial plan was to airlift Bullen out of the forest using a search and rescue helicopter from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. But the helicopter had to retreat because of fog that made flying hazardous. So at 11:30 p.m., he said, rescuers were sent on foot.

To assist in the rescue, firefighting units were summoned from San Juan Capistrano, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel and Mission Viejo, firefighters said.

Meanwhile, the cold and fog rolled in.

“Toward the end, before they showed up, I felt I was almost going into shock or hypothermia,” said Bullen, who had gone biking in only a T-shirt and shorts. He said Kulakowski took off his own T-shirt to cover him.

Jeff Williams, a 12-year veteran of the Orange County Fire Department who was treated for a sprained knee he suffered in the rescue operation, said that the hike to find Bullen was a challenge.

“It was pitch-black and foggy, and a light rain was falling,” Williams said. He said that because the rescuers wore helmet lights that allowed them to see straight ahead for 30 feet, “it was kind of like working in a tunnel.”

The rescuers found Bullen about 2:30 a.m.

“He was in severe pain,” said David W. Boyd, a paramedic who was the first to reach Bullen. Boyd said the paramedics put Bullen in a warm sleeping bag, started administering fluids intravenously and immobilized his back with the use of a board and cervical collar.

Next the rescuers faced the task of moving Bullen and the rescue basket, which together weighed 300 pounds.

“We had to be very slow in descent not to slip and fall,” Boyd said. The rescuers lifting Bullen found their work so exhausting, Boyd said, that frequently they had to carefully put down their load and recruit fresh manpower.

Bullen said that every jolt in the descent was painful but that he received continued encouragement from the rescuers.

“They kept telling me to hang in there, and the only thing I said to them was ‘ouch,’ ” said Bullen, displaying a keen sense of humor that he believes assisted him through the ordeal.

“We walked close to two hours and got about a mile and a half,” Boyd said.

About 4 a.m., he said, the rescuers noted that the next stretch of trail was even more dangerous, so they decided to set Bullen down in a clearing and wait for the fog to clear to enable a helicopter rescue.

At 7:31 a.m. Bullen was hoisted into the Marine helicopter from El Toro.

Thursday afternoon, Bullen’s parents and 20-year-old sister, Debra, who had driven frantically to the hospital from their San Diego home after learning about the accident, hugged and thanked some of the paramedics and firefighters.

Tears filled the eyes of Bullen’s father, Richard, 47, after he learned that although his son was scheduled for back surgery this morning that would require a bone graft and insertion of rods, he did not have any neurological damage. The only other injuries he had sustained were a couple of broken teeth and a bruised hand.

“They are tears of relief,” said Richard Bullen. He said his son is an outdoorsman like himself who loves active sports and had been riding mountain bikes for about six months.

Officials from the U.S. Forest Service and Orange County Fire Department said that mountain bike casualties are relatively rare.

Matthews said there are only about three or four bikers injured each year in the three most popular mountain biking parks in the county: Crystal Cove State Park, Caspers Regional Park and the Cleveland National Forest.

“There are not many mountain bike accidents, and they (bikers) usually aren’t hurt because they are in good physical shape. Mountain bike people are people who exercise all the time,” said Gary Glotfelty, an official with the Forest Service’s Trabuco district who cooperated with the county Fire Department in Bullen’s rescue.

Boyd told Bullen’s mother, Barb, that if Bullen had crashed earlier in the day, he could have been rescued in just an hour and a half.

“We chewed him out and told him not to ride that late,” Boyd said.

Dr. Stephen DeSantis, Bullen’s attending physician in the hospital’s trauma unit, said the paramedics “did a hell of a job.” He said Bullen arrived with a normal body temperature and without any injury that might have occurred if the rescuers had lost their footing.

“If they had fallen, it would have been a disaster for him,” DeSantis said.

Bullen, who is employed as a soils technician on construction sites for Leighton & Associates, said that while he is recuperating he may take the opportunity to take college classes.

Bullen said that, ironically, he had been considering a new career as a paramedic and Wednesday night’s experience has made the idea even more attractive.

“I’m thankful I’m here and that a bunch of guys thought I was worth the effort to drag down the hill,” he said.