Star Henwood admits she likes to take risks.
Her thrill-seeking tendencies landed her in trouble — and the hospital — last week when she plunged about 100 feet down a hillside in Harrison Hills Park, leading to a two-hour effort by first responders to hoist her back to safety.
She was attempting to make a “controlled slide” into a tree below, emboldened by her hiking experience in Colorado and Utah.
“This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me,” Henwood, 18, a St. Joseph High School senior from Middlesex Township, remembers thinking. “It never goes bad.”
But it did, which is an example of what can happen when people leave the marked trails in parks, officials say.
“We advise anyone in our parks and using our trails to follow the warnings and signage, use caution, be aware of your surroundings and stick to the trails,” said Abigail Gardner, Allegheny County spokeswoman. Harrison Hills is a county park overlooking the Allegheny River in Harrison.
It has been the scene of numerous tumbles down the steep hillside near where Henwood fell.
Falls became common enough that the county erected fences, especially along the popular Overlook Trail, and posted signs warning of hazardous terrain. Hikers are advised to “use extreme caution” as they navigate the woods, and if the message isn’t clear enough, there are signs depicting a stick figure teetering on a cliff.
In 2009, four children were injured when they fell down a hillside at Harrison Hills. That incident led the county to reroute part of the trail as well as install a short fence and the aforementioned signs near Watts Overlook, though Henwood fell in an area without a barrier.
A Greensburg man slid at least 75 feet down a steep slope the following year. More recently, crews have been called to rescue a dog and a biker who slipped while dismounting.
The rescues can be tricky for first responders, too.
Citizens Hose performs one or two rescues in the park each year. It conducts rope rescue training with the Harrison Hills and Hilltop Hose volunteer fire departments every other month for just these types of mishaps.
Crews arrived just before 3 p.m. last Wednesday, when Henwood fell, and geared up for a complex hillside extrication.
Authorities had no direct, flat path to where Henwood ended up.
They briefly considered lowering her down to the train tracks, where she could be loaded onto an ambulance, but ultimately decided to hoist her up in a rescue basket using a system of ropes and pulleys, according to Matt Barch, deputy chief of Citizens Hose.
At least 25 police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel were on the scene.
“(Henwood’s rescue) was definitely a more complicated one,” Barch said. “There are some rescues where it’s a very simple process, where the Stokes (rescue) basket can be used, and we don’t even have to use a rope system. Sometimes, these rescues are as simple as getting someone on the ATV to get them off the trail.”
Henwood wasn’t that lucky. At one point, she was left dangling perpendicular to the ground while crews figured out how to lift the basket over a 5- or 6-foot ledge.
“I was just thinking, ‘They’re going to drop me,’” she said.
Before that, Henwood was left alone as her friend guided emergency responders to the site.
“I’d yell her name so they could find me,” she said.
In the meantime, she dulled the pain by keeping her leg submerged in the cold creek water.
By about 5 p.m., she was boarding a medical helicopter headed to UPMC Presbyterian hospital.
She suffered a broken ankle and lumbar compression fracture, both of which are expected to heal without surgery.
She hopes to be in a walking boot by graduation in late May, and fully healed for her upcoming semester at Duquesne University.
The fall was a blur, she said. At the time, it felt like only a 10-foot drop.
About halfway down, Henwood slammed into a rocky ledge and broke her foot. She then slid down another steep slope and landed near a creek, leading to the back fracture. She knew she was hurt right away and yelled for a classmate who was with her on the hike to call 911 — and her parents.
“It really is a miracle that she came up,” said her mother, Brenda. “She is a risk-taker, which drives her mother crazy.”
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Brenda Henwood found out about her daughter’s fall by accident. In the process of calling 911, the classmate inadvertently dialed the mother’s number while handling two phones (Star Henwood handed over her phone earlier in the hike, not wanting it to get wet). Brenda Henwood learned her daughter was in danger by overhearing the friend’s conversation with an emergency dispatcher.
Incidents at the park tend to be sporadic in timing, location and cause, according to Gardner. The county owns the roughly 500-acre, hilly area along the Allegheny River in Harrison, which contains the easternmost end of the 45-mile Rachel Carson Trail.
There are no immediate plans to make additional safety improvements, Gardner said.
Barch said it comes down to personal responsibility, noting the park’s trails “are not inherently dangerous, but you can put yourself pretty quickly in a position where it becomes dangerous.”
Rescues most commonly arise “when people walk off the trail,” noted Harrison police Sgt. Chris Cottone.