He was between a rock and a hard place.
A Brooklyn man exploring an upstate New York cave with his pals ended up so firmly jammed in a crevice that it took six hours in the dark and cold to get him freed — thanks to heroic state park rangers.
Rangers got word of the harrowing situation inside Merlin’s Cave in the town of Canaan around 6:30 p.m. on May 17, state Department of Environmental Conservation officials said on Facebook last Friday.
It wasn’t until 9 p.m. that a rescue team was able to get to the site, and what they found was frightening — by then, the temperature dropped to 50 degrees with 100% humidity, DEC Forest Ranger Lt. John Gullen said.
“There’s still three of his buddies, who were still with him and they’re trying to get him out,” Gullen said. “At this point, they’ve been in the cave for many hours, so they are all hypothermic.”
It took the ranger 20 minutes to crawl 400 feet in the cramped cave to get to the trapped man, who was not identified other than as a Brooklyn resident in a report by The Independent.
“He was really jammed in there, more than I had expected,” Gullen said. “It’s like his full body was stuck in a crevice that was basically designed the exact shape of him.”
When the crew couldn’t budge the man, the ranger stayed with him while other rescuers left to retrieve a rock drill — telling jokes to keep the man from panicking over the ordeal 140 miles from his home.
Once armed with the drill, Gullen said it took less than a half-hour to free the man, who was not injured.
“Once we were ere able to get to a point where we could high-five, we were high-fiving,” he said. “It’s a feeling that I wish everyone could experience, ’cause there’s nothing like it.”
