The Sling Project

I am reaching out to the Gofundme community to turn my terrible tragedy into hope for other large animal lovers who find that they need to evacuate or remove their large animals from danger to safety……In the Northwest we have floods, fires and in my case, a freak accident off of a cliff.  My goal is to make sure that we purchase 4 slings (Large Animal Lift) designed by UC Davis and provide the training to make this critical piece of equipment available in 4 locations in Oregon which can be easily reached by the surrounding states, Washington and Idaho …….Here is my story…..

My heart is broken and my dream horse is gone, all in a split second.  What if I hadn’t gotten off to get a drink of water?  What if I had let someone else lead down the trail?  What if we had left on the ride one minute later?....On June 29 this year I was riding with friends on my beautiful horse, Chiqua, on the Pacific Crest Trail on our way to Little Crater Lake in Oregon, close to Mt. Hood.  30 minutes out we stopped (photo shows the exact location where it happened) so I could get some water and seconds later a runner rounded the corner on the trail and startled Chiqua.  She started backing up so quickly I could not stop her and like a horror movie I had to let go of her reins to save myself and watch her tumble backward over the car-size boulders down the 500 foot cliff.  I scrambled down the cliff to find her about 50 feet down lodged between the boulders.  She listened to me and stayed calm as I unhooked and removed her saddle and bridle and looked at all of her legs.  She had splint and bell boots on and her legs looked good.  Nothing was broken.  She had a couple of scratches and gashes, but nothing major.  My girlfriends went for help and within the hour I had 5 park employees with me on the cliff.  There is no cell service in the wilderness so I asked them to call various helicopter companies to bring a sling and lift her out……I would pay anything to save her and make this an amazing survival story.  While they were on their radios to a dispatcher who was making the calls, a member of the Search and Rescue team heard about the situation and left his family who was camping nearby to come help with his gear.  We needed a helicopter to lift her out….bottom line.  The Air National Guard turned us down because it didn’t involve human life, the two other helicopter companies didn’t have any helicopters available and another group didn’t have one big enough to lift her out….  I was desperate, I gave them phone numbers of influential people I knew in hopes one of them could find a helicopter that could save us.  Finally, one company said they would try it, but they didn’t have the proper sling or straps but perhaps what they had would work.  It took him an hour to get up the mountain and another hour to land and get the rigging ready with a 200 foot line to pluck her out.  By the time they reached us and our first attempt to strap her in I had already given her 2 tubes of Dormansen Gel and 2 doses of Ace to keep her calm, it was close to 7:00 pm. And the pilot told us we only had until 8:20 before he would have to leave because of the darkness.  We were frantic to get the sling around her but she was now lodged in so tightly and we couldn’t do it with the massive basket apparatus we had to work with.  They attempted to lift her on two occasions but we could all see that she would slide out and we didn’t want that to happen.  She was now slamming her head into the boulders and I tried to put my limbs between her beautiful face and the rocks but couldn’t all of the time.  At this point, we all knew we had to let the both the Helicopter and my beautiful Chiqua go.  There was no chance of getting her out and she had now bashed her head so many times I knew she had permanent damage.  I was helped up out of the cliff and away from view but nothing could keep my ears from hearing the gut-wrenching sounds………..3 shots from my own gun to put her out of her misery.  It was over….. I couldn’t save her……The men and I had spent 7 hours with her in the rocks and we all cried.  We are all still grieving for the loss and are trying to find some way to honor her by having a better outcome for someone else’s beloved horse.  She was my horse that morning, but now I share her with the men and women who worked so hard to save her that day.

What would have saved her?   The proper livestock sling…….A list of what organizations could have been contacted to respond……A faster response time…. This could have worked.  We want to make sure that next time it does.

Thank you, Mariann

P.S. One of the organizations involved received a call 2 days later that an agency had located the one and only sling in our area.  It was lost during a move of their materials room.

 P.P.S. The runner never slowed down or stopped.