Gorge Rescue Takes 2 Hours

Used by permission – Springfield Republican

By Rick Reiken, Staff Writer

CHESTERFIELD, MA – Wile making a climb on the cliffs of Chesterfield Gorge yesterday, a Northampton man fell 35 feet, injuring his left knee and requiring a two-hour rescue by local emergency personnel.

Charles Bixby, 41, was taken to the Cooley Dickenson Hospital where he was treated for a fractured left kneecap and released, according to hospital officials.

Rescuers, who found Bixby on rocks at the base of the cliff, said the Northampton resident was luck he didn’t sustain more serious injuries.

Thought climbing on the cliffs of the gorge is strictly prohibited, Bixby first hiked down for a swim in the Westfield River.  Afterwards, Bixby slipped while ascending the gorge’s rocky western slope, having almost reached the top, according to Williamsburg firefighter Peter Banister, the first of about 20 emergency personnel to arrive on the scene.

Bixby’s cousin John Monsprit, of Northampton, said he tried to dissuade Bixby from climbing, but that Bixby would not listen.

“He wanted me to come and I told him ‘No way,’ ” Monsprit said.

Fearing a lower back injury, rescuers took every precaution in moving Bixby.  EMT’s, firefighters and police officers from three Hilltowns – Chesterfield, Goshen and Williamsburg – and Northampton took part in the rescue.

After securing Bixby on a backboard, bracing his wounded leg, and strapping him onto a rubber raft secured with several tow-lines, rescuers floated him down the quarter-mile stretch of river that passes through Chesterfield gorge.

In the process, they had to bring the raft over two small waterfalls.  Working to keep Bixby stable, with his head above water, rescuers ferried him downriver to an embankment where a road runs and a Goshen ambulance waited.

Banister called the river rescue the “old way” of doing things.  Though the Hilltown Mountain Rescue squad gas the training and equipment to lift an accident victim out of the gorge straight up the cliff, that team was not able to reach the gorge in time to supervise such a lift, he said.

Lois Lafond, who serves as a caretaker for the gorge, which is owned by the Trustees of the Reservation, said that despite signs prohibiting climbing and swimming, people tend to go down into the gorge all the time.

“You can’t tell people anything.”  Lafond said.  “They get mad at you when you kick them out.  But people try all the time to swim.”

Lafond said that in recent months disgruntled would-be gorge swimmers have thrown toilet paper and picnic tables over the cliffs in resentment for being kicked out of the park.  She said that although she and her husband Chester Lafond patrol the gorge area, surveillance is not constant.

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