MADISON COUNTY, Va. — A hiker is recovering at UVA Medical Center after being airlifted from Old Rag Mountain on Sunday.
Around 10 a.m., a man hiking about five feet behind the woman said she began to wobble, sat down and immediately passed out. He helped by taking off his outer layers and creating a small emergency fire to warm her.
Once the group found cell service, they called a park ranger. The National Park Service then called for Med-Flight-1. a team stationed in Chesterfield County.
Firefighter-Paramedic Michael Burnette described the challenging weather conditions during the rescue.
"We come in for the approach to lower Anja down to go get the injured hiker and put her in the device when we realized the winds that we were fighting at that particular hoist height was creating extreme difficulty to get her spot on where she needed to be," Burnette said.
Burnette said pilot Andrew Wood made a new game plan to approach and eventually got Anja Hamilton down to the hiker.
"So she was just very scared at that point and she was complaining of a headache and hypothermia but overall, she was well enough to be in that seat. We give her a big hug basically too, you know, we just try to protect them," Hamilton said.
The entire operation, from takeoff to landing, took one hour and 20 minutes. It took 40 minutes to reach the scene, 17 minutes to rescue the woman, and a 20-minute trip to UVA Medical Center.
"In order to go up the mountain with the mountain rescue, get to the patient and actually stabilize them and carry them back down the mountain is going to take hours. That's where us dropping down, making a quick grab, getting them back up to the aircraft as we did the other day and then immediately jumping into patient care," Burnette said.
This type of rescue is rare, with only five or six calls made for Med-Flight-1's hoist rescue in 2025. Med-Flight-1 is the only helicopter in Central Virginia that offers the service.
The team is a partnership between Virginia State Police and Chesterfield County Fire and EMS, offering the rescue at no cost to the patient.
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