CARRABASSETT VALLEY — A 71-year-old man from Falmouth was rescued Wednesday after he collapsed while hiking down a trail from the top of the 4,010-foot Mount Redington.
Maine game wardens, members of the Maine Forest Service and Carrabassett Valley and Eustis fire departments rescued Gerard Jalbert, Mark Latti, spokesman for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said.
Jalbert was hiking from the summit with a friend when he collapsed about 12:30 p.m. The friend was able to call 911, and emergency personnel got his exact location through the cellphone, Latti wrote.
Two teams consisting of game wardens and Eustis and Carrabassett Valley fire department personnel began hiking to the scene. One team hiked the Appalachian Trail up Crocker Mountain to access the Redington Trail, while the other team traveled by ATV on Caribou Pond Road to an old snowmobile trail and then to an intersection with the Redington Trail.
Both teams reached Jalbert about 3:15 p.m. A Maine Forest Service helicopter hoisted Jalbert out of the woods to a NorthStar EMS ambulance, which took him to the parking lot of the Sugarloaf Regional Airport where a LifeFlight of Maine helicopter was waiting, Carrabassett Valley Fire Chief Courtney Knapp said Thursday.
Jalbert was taken to Maine Medical Center in Portland where he remained in stable condition Thursday, Latti wrote.
“With the need to get Mr. Jalbert to the hospital quickly, state agencies and local emergency personnel were able to work together to rescue a man in a very remote area among some of Maine’s highest mountains,” Warden Sgt. Scott Thrasher said in the MDIFW news release.
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