Inyo Mountain Hiker Pinned Under Boulder: ‘I’m Going to Die Up Here’

The sun slipped behind the mountains and darkness fell as Kevin DePaolo lay in the freezing sand, a boulder weighing as much as 10,000 pounds bearing down on his right leg in the California mountains.

As the hours stretched on, he oscillated between a Zen-like calm and a seizing terror that rescue would never come.

At his lowest, he asked his friend, who was by his side, to call his mother and tell her: “This is it. I’m going to die up here. There’s no way I’m going to make it through.”

But his friend refused.

Help eventually arrived, in the form of Inyo County Search and Rescue, which led a daring operation, freeing Mr. DePaolo after he had spent about 10 hours trapped beneath the boulder.

In his first interview since the accident, which happened on Dec. 5, Mr. DePaolo said he felt as if he had been “given a second chance at life.”

That day, Mr. DePaolo and his friend, Josh Nelson, had hiked to a spot near the Santa Rita Flat, in the Inyo Mountains in California, to look for “cool rocks.”

He was digging in the sand of the steep hillside, about a foot below the boulder, when it dislodged and rolled down, ramming straight into him.

The boulder, which he estimated to be the size of a grand piano and several times heavier, knocked him flat, Mr. DePaolo said.

“It felt like getting hit by a fridge,” he said.

Mr. DePaolo, 26, and Mr. Nelson, 38, pushed and managed to shift the boulder enough to get it off his chest and free his left leg. But his right leg was trapped, and trying to extricate it only made the boulder bear down on it harder.

“I could feel the weight of the boulder coming down harder and harder on my leg. I was screaming, in agonizing pain and freaking out,” said Mr. DePaolo, adding that the boulder pinned him by his ankle and knee.

Just as concerning was his left leg, which had taken the brunt of the impact when the boulder smashed into him and was “fully ripped open.”

“I could see all this weird stuff in my leg you’re not supposed to see,” he said.

Mr. Nelson called 911, prompting a multiagency rescue operation led by Inyo County Search and Rescue.

As they waited for rescuers to locate them in the miles of remote wilderness, Mr. Nelson — who said that as a rock climber, he’d been in a few “pretty devastating accidents” before and had some experience keeping his wits about him — looked after Mr. DePaolo and tried to keep him calm.

He tied his sweater around Mr. DePaolo’s bleeding left leg, built a fire and piled warm clothing on him.

At about 10 p.m., lights cut through the darkness, heralding the arrival of the rescue team, Mr. DePaolo said.

Two rescuers were dropped in by helicopter, while seven more followed in vehicles, navigating a network of four-wheel-drive roads, Inyo County Search and Rescue said in a statement.

To shift the boulder off Mr. DePaolo’s leg, rescuers rigged a complicated system of ropes and pulleys. The precarious operation used a pulley system anchored to a rock lower on the hillside to shift the boulder away, while a jack lifted it in increments, Mr. Nelson said.

“If any point in the connection between the jack and the boulder had failed or something happened, the thing would have just slammed right back down on top of him,” Mr. Nelson said. “It was a very delicate balance.”

A Navy medic rappelled from a helicopter from the U.S. Naval Air Station Lemoore and hoisted Mr. DePaolo, who was flown to a hospital in Fresno where he immediately underwent surgery.

Mr. DePaolo cracked his pelvis in two places, severed the femoral artery in his left leg and had his “femur smashed into my pelvis on my left side.” He didn’t break any bones in his legs — something that he attributes to having been on sand, rather than on rock.

Although he’s recovered well enough to be able to leave the hospital soon, he has not regained feeling in his right foot and fears he might have serious nerve damage.

But he did not lose his leg — something he did not even realize he had been on the verge of until a doctor told him several days into his recovery. When he heard that, “I just broke down crying,” he said.

He was thankful for everyone’s involvement in the rescue.

“I’m just extremely grateful to be alive,” he said. “It made me realize that life is so precious.”