HOLYOKE — A 20-year-old man hiking on Mount Tom was airlifted to Baystate Trauma Center on Saturday after suffering a head injury.
According to the city’s Fire Department, emergency workers were called to Mount Tom about 1 p.m. after the unnamed man, hiking on the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail, fell down an embankment and was knocked unconscious.
A fellow hiker called for help via his cellphone.
Firefighters spent over an hour hiking to the scene, rendering emergency medical care, securing the injured man in a “stokes” basket stretcher, and carrying and lowering the basket over steep terrain using technical rope and pulley systems.
Easthampton police and paramedics with Action Ambulance assisted in the rescue, and members of the Western Mass Technical Rescue Team were also on the scene.
According to rescue officials, a Life Star helicopter from Hartford, Connecticut was summoned to Mount Tom, landing on the ballfield by the Mount Tom Reservation visitor center and then flying the patient to Baystate in Springfield.
— STEVE PFARRER