Pursuit of lawn chair lands man in hospital

PALMER — A quest to retrieve a wayward lawn chair earned a man a helicopter flight to a local hospital Monday evening with minor injuries, authorities said.

The 68-year-old man was walking along the riverbank when he spotted the lawn chair near the river’s edge at the bottom of a cliff just north of the Matanuska River Bridge, according to Palmer Fire Department assistant chief Todd Russell. The man was injured when a rope system he had rigged to retrieve the chair failed.

“He hooked up a rope system of his own, and the rope broke and he slipped and hurt his ankle,” according to deputy emergency services director Ken Barclay.

When the rope broke, the man fell to the bottom of the cliff, injuring his ankle or leg, Barclay said.

The man’s position proved something of a dilemma for rescuers, Russell said.

“We looked at ropes,” he said. “We had a team hike up over the hill and back through the trees to get by him. They reported it wasn’t going to be very easy to haul him at that way. The other options were roping up the cliff and calling the helicopter. We would have called the dive team if the helicopter was unavailable.”

A LifeMed helicopter eventually responded and transported the man to Mat-Su Regional Hospital, according to Russell.

The Palmer Fire Department doesn’t track the identities of the people they transport, Russell said.

Authorities also retrieved the lawn chair, and an ambulance dropped it off at the hospital, Russell said.

“He said he wanted the chair, and he was going to get it one way or another,” he said.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.