An unidentified 52-year-old man who was hiking on the Kinsman Ridge Trail in the New Hampshire White Mountains has died after being rescued from a medical emergency while on the trail.
The incident occurred on August 6, according to the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. Rescue workers got a call about a middle-aged man having an unspecified medical emergency, and a Black Hawk helicopter was dispatched to retrieve him from the wilderness. He was located between two mountain peaks, about four miles from the closest trail access point, which responders said made reaching him particularly difficult.
Because the man was so far from civilization, sending a helicopter was the only practical way to reach him. It was piloted by the New Hampshire Army National Guard, and it reached the man just before four o’clock in the afternoon.
Once there, rescuers offered what are only vaguely described as “life-saving measures,” continuing what other hikers had been doing to try to help the man before professional help arrived. But the man “succumbed to his medical emergency,” and the body was taken eventually to a funeral home in Littleton, New Hampshire.
Officials have not released the man’s name, saying they have to contact his next of kin first. It is known that he was from Topsfield, Massachusetts.
Closer to the west coast, the Grand Canyon is seeing a high number of recent hiker and tourist deaths. The National Park Service (NPS) said rescue workers recently recovered the body of a 20-year-old woman from the Grand Canyon, which was the third death in the park in just one week.
Leticia Castillo, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, took a trip to the Grand Canyon but went missing on August 3. Her body was later discovered about 150 feet below the Twin Overlooks scenic spot after days of search efforts.
Castillo’s death was the 11th for the Grand Canyon so far in 2024.
