A 20-year-old woman fell roughly 100 feet from a mountainside in the Red Hollow area near Cedar City early Thursday morning, leaving her conscious but confused with a head injury as rescuers scrambled to reach her on treacherous terrain. Iron County sheriff's deputies responded to the scene along SR-14 at around 6:50 a.m., according to officials.
Deputies arriving at the scene found the hiker conscious but struggling with confusion, a sign of the head injury she had sustained in the fall, as reported by abc4.com. Because of the steep, unstable ground surrounding her, the Iron County Ropes Team and Search and Rescue personnel were deployed to physically reach her, the outlet reported. Those crews worked to stabilize the young woman and bring her down from the mountainside before she could be handed off for medical transport.
Intermountain Life Flight ultimately landed near a temporarily closed stretch of SR-14 and flew the hiker to a hospital for treatment, per the same account. The seed report from KUTV confirms that search and rescue teams helped the hiker off the mountain before she was flown out for care. Her current condition afterward has not been disclosed.
A Sunrise Draw With Hidden Dangers
Red Hollow has become something of a magnet for sunrise seekers, drawing students and other visitors hoping to catch the view, the Iron County Sheriff's Office has noted. But that popularity comes with real risk: the area is lined with steep terrain and sheer drop-offs that can turn a scenic outing into a life-threatening emergency, especially for anyone venturing near the edges before full daylight.
Iron County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Cassie Meredith said visitors should use extreme caution, stick to established and safe routes, and avoid hiking near steep drop-offs in darkness or low visibility, according to the department's statement relayed by the station. It's a warning that echoes earlier incidents in the same stretch of terrain — in one prior case, a 16-year-old became stranded on a cliff near the Red Hollow Trail and had to be located by an SUU aviation helicopter before a high-angle ropes team could bring him down, as detailed by Iron County Today.
Part of a Busier Season for Rescue Crews
Thursday's fall adds to what has been a demanding stretch for Iron County's rescue teams. In August, more than 30 emergency responders took part in a complicated rope rescue of an injured hiker on the Valentine Peak Trail east of Parowan, according to Gephardt Daily. That operation involved a 39-year-old woman with a likely broken leg, and crews used a Stokes basket, a wheel and a vacuum splinting system to get her off a trail choked with steep sections, trees and heavy brush.
That rescue drew on Iron County Sheriff Search and Rescue volunteers, members of the Iron County Sheriff Ropes Team, Parowan City Police Department officers and sheriff's deputies working together, Gephardt Daily reported. The uptick isn't isolated to a single incident, either — Iron County Today previously reported that crews responded to eight search-and-rescue calls over just a few weeks, double what the agency saw during the same period a year earlier, with a SAR coordinator pointing to warmer weather bringing more hikers outdoors as one factor.
The strain isn't unique to southern Utah. Statewide, search and rescue teams launched 582 missions in 2019 alone, according to data cited by visitutah.com, and Zion National Park alone logged more than 130 rescue operations in 2021. In Salt Lake County, one longtime search-and-rescue volunteer told the outlet that annual call volume has more than doubled over the past 15 years, a trend that mirrors what Iron County crews have described seeing on the ground.
