【2025 Archives】

It's already bad enough being injured in the middle of a hot025 Archives dusty mountain.

So spare a thought or two for this hiker, whose bad day turned even worse when the helicopter basket she was rescued in started spinning uncontrollably.

The 74-year-old woman was airlifted from Piestewa Peak in Phoenix, Arizona on Tuesday morning, when the basket at first started to sway, then gradually built up speed as it continued to rotate. The poor woman.

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In a press conference, authorities said the woman was nauseous and dizzy after the somewhat calamitous rescue, but didn't suffer any additional ill effects after the spin.

"Sometimes when we bring the helicopter up from the ground, it will start to spin," Paul Apolinar, Phoenix Police's chief pilot said. "We have a line attached to the basket that's supposed to prevent that. Today it didn't."

That line which was intended to stop the spin eventually broke, authorities said, and the helicopter's team tried to stop the rotation by adjusting the height of the basket.

"They start to lower the load, it does actually start to stop," Derek Geisel, the pilot during the rescue, told reporters.

"And then we slowly brought it back up, it gets into the same downwash from the aircraft and it started to spin again ... They tried to stop some of the spin with the line that Paul was referring to, but that didn't work and it eventually broke."

Authorities said the spinning is a known phenomenon, and they train for it. In the last six years in which rescuers have hoisted people with the basket, the spinning has only occurred twice.

Not fun, but hey, at least she's OK.