A tourist plunged 120 feet while trying to get a better view of the water at a Montana national park – and remarkably survived with the help of a good Samaritan.
Ken Nurse, a 60-year-old Montana native now living in North Carolina, fell into a creek during a trip to Glacier National Park last Thursday while with his wife, Renae, and their family.
He had taken pictures of McDonald Falls but edged forward to get a better view — just for the ground to give way, plunging him 120 feet down the cliff and into a creek, his family said in a fundraiser.
Bystander Josh Seppelt, a Navy electrician from Pierz, Minnesota, heard the fall and managed to bring him to a shallower part of the creek.
“The gentleman’s daughter said, ‘Dad, there’s somebody in the water.’ And the guy was able to pull Ken out by his foot and get into the shallows,” Nurse’s wife Renae told KTMF.
“And he realized he wasn’t breathing, and he started CPR. And it just so happened there was a ranger that was real close by, and he was able to radio in for an extraction,’” said the injured man’s wife, who had been back in their car at the time of the fall.
Renae had been in their car at the time and raced back to see what was happening.
The good Samaritan “told me he gave CPR. And that’s when I really panicked,” she said. “Because I’m a nurse by profession. So, I knew it was a really bad then.”
The injured dad was airlifted to a local hospital by search and rescue team and was on a ventilator for two days with several cracked ribs, a compound elbow fracture and fluid in his lungs.
He was moved out of intensive care on Sunday, but still expects more surgery.
“I’m doing pretty good considering,” Nurse told KTMF. “It’s just one step at a time, but I shouldn’t be here and I’m going to do whatever I can to deserve this.”
His wife, meanwhile, jokes about the near-disaster now that she knows her husband is safe.
Saying that she loves the area because “it is so peaceful and it is so beautiful and it just takes your breath away every time. Here, it actually took my husband’s breath this time but they gave it back.”
Singling out Seppelt’s heroism, she said he “courageously jumped in and saved Ken’s life.”
“I am beyond grateful that he [Ken] will be flying home with me tomorrow,” Renae said. “I can’t imagine doing this life without him.”
