Ryan Hyman keeps enough outdoor gear in his covered pick-up truck bed to set up an outfitters store: ropes, webbing, carabiners, harnesses, wetsuit, lifejacket, helmet, whistle, headlamp, water purification drops, compass and reams of topo maps — the majority corralled in a jumbo duffle bag.

Hyman’s gear stash isn’t in case the mood strikes to tackle a rapid or rockface on the spur of the moment. Hyman is an expert in high-ropes rescue and swiftwater rescue in the Pisgah National Forest and has to be ready to roll when a call comes in.

Last August for instance, Hyman, 21, and his brother were surveying the post-flood rapids one evening outside Rosman for a next-day kayaking trip when an emergency call went out. A hiker had fallen from Twin Falls, a 110-foot waterfall on Avery Creek not far from where Hyman was.

Hyman, deputy chief with the Transylvania County Rescue Squad, rifled through his duffle bag, pulled out equipment he might need for the rescue — including the right topo map for the district — threw it all into a smaller backpack and took off for the trailhead closest to Twin Falls.

A young couple had attempted to scramble over boulders and ledges along the waterfall’s edge to reach the top. The woman was 90 feet up when she slipped. Instead of tumbling to a certain death, however, she landed on a small, narrow ledge only 20 feet below, breaking her ankle.

Her boyfriend climbed down from the waterfall and ran to a backcountry campsite where he’d seen a large group of campers.

Landing on the small ledge turned out to be just the first stroke of luck for the couple. The group of campers was an Outward Bound class on a three-week backpacking trip. The instructor had a satellite phone, facilitating a 911 call from a district void of regular cell phone reception.

The woman stranded on the ledge couldn’t stand up — or even crawl — and would have to be placed in a stokes basket. As Hyman and other rescuers descended on Twin Falls, a quick assessment of the waterfall’s steep face marked by a few narrow ledges revealed that getting a litter down to the woman by foot would be possible. Hyman and the other mountain rescue experts crafted a plan that involved rappelling off the top of the waterfall to reach the woman’s ledge, tying her up in the basket and rappelling down with it.

“The belay team would belay us down with the patient to a certain point, set up another anchor point, lower us down to the next belay station, and so on all the way down,” Hyman said. It took two and a half hours to lower the woman to the base of the falls, 70 feet below the ledge where she’d landed. The entire operation took 12 to 13 hours, most of it in the dark, as it was 7 p.m. before the 911 call was placed over the satellite phone.

Hyman grew up in Brevard but lives part time in Waynesville and attends school at Haywood Community College in the forestry program. Hyman joined the rescue squad when he was 15. Pagers and beepers — the most common way volunteers are dispatched in an emergency — were banned at his high school, but he snuck one to class in his backpack anyway.

Hyman likes to whitewater kayak, rock climb and mountain bike. He also loves to participate in the more benign outdoor activities of hiking and camping.

Stuck on Looking Glass

Another of Hyman’s high-ropes rescues involved two rock climbers from Indiana who got stranded at more than 600 feet on the side of Looking Glass Rock on a January night when temperatures dipped below freezing. The climbers were attempting “Glass Menagerie” after reading about the route in a climbing book. (Much like hikers on trails, rock climbers also follow set routes.)

The men embarked on the climb about 2 p.m. As it got dark, the men began climbing by headlamp. The lead climber strayed from the set route somewhere in the fifth pitch — some 600 feet up. Instead of hitting the next anchor point, the lead climber also ran into a sheet of ice on the rock face.

“He reached a point where he couldn’t climb up or down. Meanwhile, his buddy one pitch below had climbed into his climbing bag to stay warm,” Hyman said.

One of the them had a cell phone and were high enough up that they got a signal. They called 911 and said they were stranded on the north face of Looking Glass. The timing was highly ironic.

“We were all at the station that night and I had just finished teaching a two-hour ropes and knots course covering rigging and anchor systems,” Hyman said.

The rescue squad took a foot trail up the backside of Looking Glass Rock. They fanned out on the north side of the plateau, blowing their whistles over the edge and listening for the stranded climbers to respond. By the time the rescuers reached the climbers, hypothermia had begun to set in. It was so cold that night the rescuers camelbacks froze, Hyman said.

Not just the tourists

Hyman avoids passing judgment on the people his team rescues, but he will say that in his experience most people’s emergency predicaments are a result of poor decisions. Like setting out on an unfamiliar 600-foot climb at 2 p.m. in the middle of January when the sun sets at 5 p.m. and the temperature is bound to drop. But to the person embarking on the adventure, the decision somehow makes sense at the time.

“People get in accidents. I’m not going to sit here and say it’s not going to happen to me because it has,” Hyman said.

Hyman has nearly as many stories recounting his own wilderness mishaps — mostly mountain bike wrecks — as he does rescue stories.

Hyman’s swiftwater rescue comes in handy when kyaking with his buddies. On a kayaking trip one cold Sunday two weeks ago, one of Hyman’s friends got lodged against a log that had fallen across the rapids near a dangerous undercut — a place where water pouring over a large rock can suck a kayaker under and pin them against the rock below the surface.

“If he got out of his kayak or rolled, there was a very good chance he could get caught in the undercut. We told him to stay where he was and try to stay stable,” Hyman said.

Hyman strapped on a life-jacket compatible harness that he carries in the hull of his kayak. His buddies anchored him on the shore and Hyman swam into the chilly, raging rapids. Hyman grabbed his friend’s boat, steadying it enough so his friend could leap out, clearing the fallen log and the rapid to land in a calmer pool below. Hyman secured a rope to the boat and swam back to shore where his buddies reeled the boat in.

“Everytime we get a call, I’m like ‘these durn tourists.’ We like to think it’s the tourists, but there’s a lot of locals, too,” Hyman said.