CANMORE – Well-known Canmore resident and dedicated conservationist Karsten Heuer is lucky to be alive after falling about 25 feet from a tree while bow hunting in the Bow Valley last week.
Alberta EMS was called to a staging area near Grotto Canyon Trail shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday afternoon (Oct. 24) to rendezvous with Kananaskis Country Public Safety specialists who had found Heuer in the woods badly injured on the ground below a tree stand.
STARS air ambulance then flew him to Foothills Hospital in Calgary where he underwent surgery on Saturday and is recovering.
“He is super lucky,” said Michael Olsthoorn, a public safety specialist with Kananaskis Country, noting he believes Heuer was lying on the ground for about an hour to an hour-and-a-half after falling 20 to 25 feet and was unconscious for an unknown period of time.
“We don’t know the circumstances of what happened, but he was in pretty rough shape.”
Leanne Allison, Heuer's wife, said that he has serious injuries from the fall, but a full recovery is expected in the coming months.
"No doubt Karsten will put 110 per cent effort into his recovery," she said.
Allison said they are so thankful for the incredibly quick response by the Kananaskis Country rescue team and STARS ambulance service, adding Heuer is also receiving excellent care at Foothills Hospital.
"He and his family are well supported by a close community of friends and colleagues," said Allison.
Canmore Mayor Sean Krausert said Heuer is a valued member of this community, as well as a friend.
“Our thanks to STARS for their quick launch and I am happy to hear Karsten is on the road to recovery,” he said.
“Of course, our thoughts are with him and his family as he heals.”
Colleen Campbell, a long-time friend and board member of Bow Valley Naturalists – an organization of which Heuer has long supported – said the community is sending Heuer love, well wishes and hopes for a strong recovery.
“We are all relieved that Karsten has such amazing medical care and will be back in the community doing the things he loves,” she said.
A dedicated conservationist and wildlife warrior, Heuer is best known for his epic 3,200-kilometre journey in 1998 and 1999 walking and skiing from Yellowstone to the Yukon to highlight a proposal for a system of wildlife corridors and core reserves – the Y2Y Conservation Initiative.
He set off again on skis and by foot on a five-month journey in 2003, this time with Allison, a documentary filmmaker, to follow the Porcupine caribou herd from its Yukon winter range to its endangered Alaskan calving grounds and back.
The goal was to raise awareness of the threats to the caribou’s survival, including to the herd’s delicate habitat threatened by oil and gas development in their calving grounds in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
In last Sunday’s hunting incident, Heuer was able to raise the alarm with family via his cell phone, spelling out the coordinates of his location so that Kananaskis Country Public Safety could mount a search and rescue mission.
Olsthoorn and other public safety specialists Jeremy Mackenzie and Darren Vonk were flown by Alpine Helicopters directly to the location, quickly spotting the tree stand from above. Heuer was located on a piece of land between the Bow River and Lac Des Arcs.
“Any large fall like that, it’s something we react to quickly, especially with the fact that we couldn’t get hold of him,” said Olsthoorn.
“We saw something at the bottom of the stand; we could see his foot moving a little bit to indicate it was him,” he added.
“We were pretty fortunate we were able to land within 50 feet of him and then we went straight to him and did First Aid and assessed the situation.”
The rescuers delicately moved Heuer to a vacuum mattress and did their best to keep him in a position that would prevent him from moving.
Alpine Helicopters flew him a short distance to a staging area off Highway 1A near Grotto Canyon trailhead to a waiting ambulance. However, due to the seriousness of his injuries, STARS air ambulance was called and he was flown to Calgary.
“Paramedics assessed, treated and stabilized an adult male suffering from serious, but non-life-threatening injuries,” said Adam Loria, registered advanced care paramedic and public education officer with Alberta EMS. “He was considered stable.”
This was the second incident of this nature in as many weeks involving a hunter falling from a tree stand, which is a platform secured to trees in order to elevate the hunter and give them a better vantage point. It is one of the most reported hunting accidents in Canada each year.
Kananaskis Country Public Safety recommends hunters rope up and let someone know the exact coordinates of their hunting tree stand.
Carrying a cell phone is also important so hunters can call for help.
“This particular hunter had his cell phone on him, which I thought was superb,” said Olsthoorn.
“If it was left in his pack, which was at the top, nobody would have known for a long time that he had fallen and hurt himself.”
A 25-year resident of the Bow Valley, Heuer has worked as a wildlife biologist for years, including as the current project manager for Parks Canada’s bison reintroduction program in the backcountry of Banff National Park. He also had a stint as president of Y2Y.
Heuer’s two major conservation adventures have been chronicled in his first book, Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to Yukon on the Grizzly Bear's Trail in 2002, and his second publication Being Caribou in 2005.
