Many Colorado BSAR organizations are large teams of 50 to 80 well-trained volunteers. But some of the more remote counties have very small teams and struggle to find the members they need to respond to calls.
Saguache County, for example, has a search and rescue coordinator but only a few responders. They are often assisted by surrounding counties when they have a call, and due to their location, their calls often involve tough technical responses on Kit Carson and Challenger Point. In November of 2024, at 9:30 pm, SAR coordinator David Frees was notified of a 20-year-old solo backpacker who was hypothermic, frost-bitten and unable to walk. He was new to Colorado and had ventured out for a long hike to Willow Lake, at the base of Kit Carson, unprepared for the weather. Frees called REACH Air Medical Service but was told they couldn’t fly due to high winds Then he called the CSAR state coordinators for help requesting a helicopter hoist from the Colorado National Guard.
State coordinators work in pairs during their around-the-clock shifts, and are often assisted by off-duty coordinators when they need it. Deb Kelly and Greg Foley were on call that week and they stayed up all night helping to provide Frees with situational awareness, subject matter expertise, and coordinated communication between the Colorado National Guard air resource manager, the hoist rescue team, Flight For Life Colorado and REACH. The hoist rescue team at first turned down the request, due to the risk of flying at night, but agreed to be on standby and waited to see if another medevac helicopter service would be able to help.
Avalanche danger was a concern for the technical climbers Frees had dispatched on the ground from his own county and neighboring Alamosa Volunteer Search and Rescue. It had taken the subject ten hours to hike the 4.5 miles to his campsite, and rescuers would need to make that same hike. It was now 11:00 pm, and the subject had stopped responding to text messages from the coordinators. They hoped it was because he had fallen asleep.
Just before midnight, a REACH helicopter out of Alamosa, equipped with night vision googles, accepted an assignment to insert rescuers at a small landing zone about a half mile above the subject’s campsite. After the drop, however, the crew reported that the snow was deep enough to make liftoff dangerous and they would not be able to return for the patient. At 4:00 the next morning, the ground team reported they had reached the campsite and found the patient sleeping, exhausted but less cold, and showing signs of possible altitude sickness. They didn’t believe he could hike to a landing zone, an estimated hour away in steep technical terrain. State coordinators and the incident commanders from Saguache and Alamosa, who had now been working all night with no sleep, continued to look for resources. Flight for Life was unable to land due to the depth of snow, the National Guard and hoist rescue team remained on standby but was concerned about high winds, and the Colorado Department of Fire Protection was contacted for their helitack out of Montrose. Ground teams were requested from more rescue teams in the area to do a litter evacuation, a “plan B” effort that would take many hours – Custer County SAR, Western Mountain Rescue, Chaffee County SAR North and South, Crested Butte Mountain Rescue and Rio Grand County SAR were all paged. Some, not all, were able to send a few rescuers.
Just before 9:00 am, David Frees and the coordinators finally caught a break. The REACH helicopter from Alamosa accepted an assignment to return. The pilot lifted off an hour later and was able to find a landing zone just 200 feet from the campsite. The subject was flown out and lived to hike another day, no doubt a little wiser and better prepared for his next adventure.
