Hiker up, walking after waterfall tumble; Marysville teen calls his survival a miracle
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MARYSVILLE - He walked less than a week after he fell 200 feet.
Chris Gillard remembers that Sunday, standing on a rock in the icy stream in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest near Granite Falls. The next thing he knew, he was trying to brace himself with his hands and feet as frigid waters swept him over the edge of a waterfall.
"I was petrified," he recalled.
The last thing he registered while falling was hitting the rock near the top of the falls that broke his back.
The 16-year-old tumbled the equivalent of 20 stories down Twin Falls over Memorial Day weekend, a drop that easily could have killed him. But he survived with relatively minor injuries that amazed his doctors, said his mother, Mary Gillard.
With the help of a walker, a few days after the fall and back surgery, Chris Gillard shuffled down a hallway at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, climbing some stairs as well.
A little more than a month after the accident, Gillard walks without support, moving slowly but easily.
There are no visible signs of the injuries or the four screws in his spine, except a ramrod-straight back forced into place by a plastic body brace hidden underneath his T-shirt.
He is gaining back the 15 pounds he lost from his 135-pound frame after the accident. He takes painkillers twice a day.
The home-schooled teenager tires easily and can't sit long without discomfort. Gillard whiles away his time in bed with television shows and a Sony PlayStation, leaving the house only when his mother takes him on errands.
He can't go to a summer concert at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Grant County, tinker with his car or go hiking. He probably will never wrestle with his brother Matt or play contact sports such as football.
But he does not dwell on the accident.
"It's disappointing, but it doesn't really upset me," he said.
Gillard considers the lack of additional injuries from his fall miraculous. It could have been much worse
"I knew it was because of God that I'm not dead," he said.
Gillard was on a camping trip with friends from the Marysville First Assembly of God church when he and others decided to hike to the top of Twin Falls. He climbed up the side of the waterfall with Scott and Joel Faries.
The brothers saw Gillard slip and fall, and ran down the trail to help their friend. They saw Gillard hit his head on the rock that probably saved his life; the impact flipped him away from the treacherous rocks at the base of the waterfall.
The friends both leapt into the icy water of Ashland Lake to rescue Gillard, who had fallen flat on his back into the lake. Scott Faries pulled Gillard on his back and swam him to rocks near the base of the waterfall.
Gillard remembered lying on his side on a rock, covered in sleeping bags as Jon Sommers, an emergency-medical technician on the trip, tried to stabilize him. It took six hours before an Army helicopter airlifted Gillard to Harborview near midnight, his mother said.
While the fall crushed Gillard's vertebrae almost to the point of paralysis, the only visible injuries were a gash on his hip, a small bruise near his eye and a bump on his lower back, his mother said.
One doctor examined him several times, positive he must have internal injuries, she said. He didn't.
Although Gillard recently has felt like his old self, he had occasional scares during the past few weeks of treatment and recovery.
Once while he was being fitted for his body brace, a new pain medication caused his heart to beat fast and caused him to hallucinate, his mother said. More recently, he returned to the emergency room because he thought a bone in his back was out of place. He found out it was a pulled muscle.
Once his spine has healed, Gillard will begin nine months of rehabilitation to strengthen his back muscles, starting in September.
He says he's eager to go hiking again as soon as he physically can. He's not afraid of waterfalls nor of going back to the site of the accident and looking at the Twin Falls.
"I'd love to go back," he said. "(But) I wouldn't go back up to the top. Just in case."
Nicole Tsong can be reached at 206-464-2793 or at ntsong@seattletimes.com.