Boy, 7, Survives Fall Down Embankment

EVERETT - An Everett-area boy yesterday survived a 60-foot fall down a steep, rocky embankment into the Stillaguamish River.

Iain Hamal, 7, a Madison Elementary School student, was treated in the emergency room of Providence General Medical Center's Colby Campus in Everett yesterday and released with a shoulder injury and a head cut.

After Iain fell, his mother, Wendy Hamal-Redding, pulled him from the water while his father got a cellular phone from another hiker and called 911, Snohomish County sheriff's spokeswoman Jan Jorgensen said.

Jorgensen said it took rescue workers five hours to pluck the boy and his mother from the bank of the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River, where he had fallen around 2 p.m.

Rescue workers rappelled down the embankment, carried oxygen and medical equipment to the boy, and pulled him up in a litter, she said. A sheriff's helicopter carried the boy to Providence at about 7 p.m.

The family had gone for a hike yesterday on the old Monte Cristo railroad trail in the Robe Canyon area, off Mountain Loop Highway near Granite Falls, when they stopped for a picnic, said the boy's father, Tracy Redding. Redding said his son ran ahead of the family and was making his way across a rock-slide area when he slid down the embankment.