REGIONAL – Ray Pike, the Salisbury harbormaster for 16 years, was enjoying a scenic hike in the White Mountains last fall along a ridge high enough to see maybe as far as Canada when he stumbled and fell. He ended up in the hospital for weeks and for almost a year since the fall has been trying to regain the use of his arms and legs.
A lifelong hiker, Pike, his niece, Katie Menaugh, his wife, Wendy and his sister-in-law, Kathy Pike, began the hike from Franconia Notch on Oct. 10. As planned, Wendy and Kathy turned back after an hour, leaving Ray and Katie to continue along the arduous trail to Greenleaf Hut.
The following morning, Katie and Ray started early, climbing Mt. Garfield. By mid-afternoon they were headed downhill toward Galehead Hut.
“For the first part of our hike, we had gone right up to Mt. Lafayette summit, and then we stayed on the ridge for some time. The foliage views were gorgeous. It was worth the whole trip just to see the peak foliage from the top of the ridge. It looked like we could see Vermont, maybe even New York or Canada,” Pike wrote recently.
The physically fit Pike, although he said not as fit as he once was, was growing tired on the downhill trail when he stumbled on a rock and fell forward, ramming his head into a stout tree. The fall scraped his forehead and his hands and caused considerable damage to his spine. He never lost consciousness, but when his niece reached him, he could not move his arms or legs.
“Sorry kid, I got nothing,” he told her.
He remembers thinking, “Self, you’ve had a good life. Arms and legs, thank you for a good 77 years. I have no regrets, and I do have tons of gratitude for all the blessings and the good life you’ve given me.”
Pike, who grew up in an 18th Century home on Rings Island In Salisbury, has had a colorful career. He and his older brother climbed Mountain Washington in New Hampshire when they were in high school. He became a math teacher and football coach at La Jolla Country Day School before giving in to his natural wanderlust and taking a teaching and coaching position in Japan.
Years later, after studying in Paris, France and at the University of New Hampshire, he taught the engineers at GTE and General Dynamics in California and Virginia how to use computer software. From California, he sailed through the Panama Canal to Key West, FL, where he met and married Wendy.
That was all before he came home to serve as the Salisbury harbormaster.
Lying with his head downhill after hitting the tree, he said he did not grasp how hard life as a quadriplegic might be.
But then the miracles began, as Ray and Wendy described the fall last week.
The first miracle was that Pike’s niece is highly trained in search and rescue. Katie had been doing rescues for 10 years in Colorado and spent six months training in Antarctica. After cursing his fall, Katie went to work saving hm. She wrapped her uncle in her orange sleeping bag, which kept him “toasty,” he said. And she used a splint she carried to stabilize his neck.
She enlisted the help of a fellow hiker, Ian, a math teacher from Montreal, Canada, to help rotate the immobile Pike so his legs, not his head, were downhill. Ian also brought Kai, another hiker, who is a physician’s assistant from New York City, to help.
The next miracle was that Katie’s phone high in the mountains had service. She texted Emergency New Hampshire 911, and Heidi, a dispatcher, called her back. “When I think of hearing Heidi’s voice, tears come to my eyes still,” Pike wrote.
On the phone, Heidi offered to send a New Hampshire National Guard helicopter crew to fly Pike out. The helicopter arrived by 5 p.m., less than two hours after the fall, and dropped a National Guard medic to check Ray out. Katie, the medic and other hikers moved him onto a litter from the helicopter and carried him down the hill to a better opening in the tree canopy for the helicopter to lift him off the mountain. His only complaint about the helicopter ride was the crew had no ice cream.
That was remedied at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center where he arrived by 7 p.m. He was placed in intensive care and served him his beloved ice cream.
When Wendy arrived at the hospital, she was directed to her surprise to the intensive care unit. “That’s when I knew it was more than a broken foot,” Wendy said.
Ray had suffered cracked vertebras and a herniated disc, which caused his limbs to go numb. His right hand and arm were also swollen. Twenty-five hours after arriving at Dartmouth, the doctors fused two vertebrae. Slowly he began to regain the use of his arms, hands, legs and feet.
By Friday, after falling on Tuesday, Pike was able to stand for the first time, although even now he said his walk is wobbly. “I could never pass (a police) sobriety test,” he joked.
After numerous X-rays and MRIs, he was discharged to the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Boston, which was closer to Salisbury. He rehabilitated at Spaulding for a month.
Learning to walk again is complicated, Ray said last week. He now has a greater appreciation of what two-year-olds go through learning to walk.
Approaching a year after the fall, he estimates that his limbs have regained 70 to 80 percent of his ability to move.
For the future, Wendy said Ray still wants to go hiking, but now he plans to stay on a path that is flat and paved, like a rail trail.
Ray Pike Air Lift
