He climbed a mountain with no gear to reach him

Matthew Clark, 24, has been awarded a Carnegie Medal for climbing a British Columbia mountain without any gear to reach an injured hang-glider pilot. Clark had just finished his own flight over Mount Prevost, in the Cowichan Valley, when he heard on the radio that 75-year-old Stephen Parson had crashed into a tree and was hanging in his harness about 200 feet below the summit. Parson was semiconscious, with a concussion and a serious leg wound, and beginning to suffer suspension trauma. Rescue teams could not reach him. Clark, a rock climber with four years of free-soloing experience, went up anyway, bracing his body against the walls of a slippery gully. He cut Parson from the harness with a knife, treated the wound and kept him warm for about three hours until a helicopter arrived. "I was comfortable and in my element and I went for it," Clark said. Parson spent eight days in hospital, then made a full recovery.