River Barry, the woman who rescued a badly injured BASE jumper in November of 2022, was one of 17 Americans honored by the Carnegie Hero Fund for “saving others from peril.”
“All the men and women recognized today, in acts of extraordinary heroism, risked serious injury or death to save others. This is the Hero Fund’s first award announcement for 2024. Each individual will receive the Carnegie Medal for Heroism, North America’s highest honor for civilian heroism,” reads the statement from Carnegie Hero Fund.
Barry’s actions on Nov. 26, 2022, certainly met the criteria.
Here’s what Carnegie wrote about Barry: A 39-year-old BASE jumper hung by his parachute 70 feet above the ground on Nov. 26, 2022, in Moab, Utah. He had jumped from the top of the 400-foot cliff, but his parachute deployed in the wrong direction, slammed him into the cliff face, and then got caught on an outcropping, leaving him badly injured and dangling.
Thirty-year-old River Barry, who was in the area to go mountain biking, was flagged down by the man’s friend asking if anyone had climbing gear. Barry, a mental health therapist of Millcreek, Utah, went to the scene and used her own climbing gear and recreational experience to ascend a crack that ran up the side of the cliff directly below the injured man. No one had climbed the crack before and locals referred to the sandstone on the cliff as “slick rock” for its slippery conditions.
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