Climber Rescued After 40-Foot Fall
A 17-year-old was hospitalized after he fell from a cliff after a day of rock climbing with friends Saturday in Newbury Park.
Brian Cressler of Newbury Park and two friends were leaving a rock climbing spot at the north end of Ventu Park Road about 3 p.m. when Cressler fell off a 40-foot cliff.
“He lost his footing or grip or something, and he tumbled five or six times down the cliff,” said Cressler’s 14-year-old girlfriend, Katie Berryhill, of Newbury Park.
Berryhill went to the road and flagged down a sheriff’s deputy. Cressler lay at the bottom of the rocky barranca for more than two hours before rescue crews could reach him.
Bruce Kedrowski, a supervisor with MedTrans Ambulance, said the steep and rocky terrain made it difficult to get Cressler out.
They reached him about 5 p.m. “He was cold so we put a blanket on him,” Kedrowski said. Emergency personnel put Cressler on a stretcher before hiking out with him.
It took paramedics, county fire personnel and members of the Sheriff’s Department search and rescue team about 30 minutes to pull the teenager from the base of the cliff.
Cressler was transported by ambulance to Columbia Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks for treatment of cuts to his head and a sore left ankle.
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