The curious incident of the elk on the climbing wall

In Public by Anna Debattiste

By Rebecca Young, Lake County Search and Rescue

“I don’t know if we’re climbing today; there’s a bull elk on the walk off.” I thought Chris was joking as I sipped coffee. My husband and I had ventured down to Lake City Ice Climbs along with a friend, also named Chris, for a weekend of climbing. We gathered in the parking lot and stared dumbly across frozen Henson Creek to where the elk stood squarely on the steepest part of the climber’s trail to the top of the ice wall. Even from this distant vantage point, we could clearly see the fixed line that climbers used as a handline on the exposed cliff edge was wrapped multiple times around an antler. The recent snow had been churned to dirt under his feet as he’d futilely worked to free himself. 

All three of us are Lake County Search & Rescue members, all on the technical rescue specialty team, so rope techniques and SAR shop talk was a common topic, but this was a new one, even among our combined thirty years of experience. After a few phone calls, Lukas Martin from Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) arrived and quickly determined that sedation and extraction was the only option. Lucas frowned at the unfriendly terrain. “We’re going to need a lot of hands,” he said. At this, both Chris’s jumped in – We can help – whatever is needed! 

Soon additional CPW staff arrived – seasonal technician Paul Rivera, biologist Alyssa Meier, and elk survival technician Anna Markey. They could sedate him and cut him free, but in his precarious position on the cliff edge, he was likely to sustain injuries in the ensuing fall once freed. The now odd trio, Chris Chris & Becky, we stood jangling our proverbial pitons behind the growing elk rescue team. Do you guys know how to….lower stuff? came the question from the planning circle. Our answer came swiftly, we sure do! For in every rope technician’s heart, there lies the secret hope that someone will come along quite out-of-the-blue and ask them this very question. In my experience, rescuers are always rescuers, no matter the environment, and rope techs can’t help but tech. Gather any amount of us together in rough, vertical, or generally crap terrain and inevitably a spark will come into our eyes and someone will utter, voice quivering with mounting excitement, we could put a rope system here. 

As I racked up my climbing harness with all the extra rope equipment I always bring on climbing trips and never use, I felt a sweet justification for all my years of dutiful gear schlepping. Over the years, my habit of overpacking rescue gear had earned me the nickname among friends “Triple S” – Supreme Safety Squirrel. Utterly giddy at the prospect of rope work, I may have muttered to myself, who’s the squirrel now? I’m The Squirrel. In addition to being the Triple S, it turns out I’m also a dork. Sure enough, as the tranquilizers took effect, the elk came to rest at the end of his tether precariously on the cliff’s edge, and everyone got to work. 

All three of us paused as we approached the slumbering elk, momentarily awed by his size and the strangeness of being so close to this wild animal. BSAR exists to help those who love wilderness; that these and so many other animals are out there among us cannot be discounted as a part of this love. As I stepped gingerly over the elk, his immense ribcage rising and falling, I hoped deeply that we’d get him clear of this mess and that he’d disappear into that wilderness where he belonged. In medicine, the concept of patient dignity means we respect the decency and grace of patients even in the most obscene situations. To my mind, this elk was no less deserving of dignified care. Even drugged and blindfolded, he was awe-some and wild. 

Husband Chris defaulted to master elk rigger because teammate Chris and I scrambled to the obviously bomber tree anchor above before he could get there in an inferred game of rope-rescue-not-it! Turns out, even among elk survival technicians, there is no standard way to rig ungulates, but CPW assured us that the antlers were structurally sound to take the elk’s weight over the cliff. Always seeking redundancy, a webbing harness was also strung around the elk’s girth just behind the front legs. Wrapping an unconscious bull elk with webbing is as difficult as you would imagine. 

Once rigging solutions were in place, the operation itself was simple. We set up a basic haul system to lift his weight while we tensioned the system, and then with my call, “elk on belay! Ready to lower!” The tangled fixed line was cut and he was on his way to flatter ground. Everyone was smiling as we untied the ropes and smoothed his bristled coat where the webbing had been. One of the CPW folks called “last chance!” just before administering the reversal medications, and I hurried over to rest a bare hand on the elk’s massive flank. 

All of us once again gathered on the far side of the creek to watch the elk wake and bound away. When he rose to his feet, we whispered words of celebration, and then in another breath he was gone, disappeared into the thick brush of the canyon. CPW departed after words of thanks and modest handshakes, and we the odd trio were once again loitering in the parking lot. 

“Didn’t have that on my bingo card,” my husband Chris said, and teammate Chris agreed, adding, “our lives are weird.” 

“Yeah, but I got to pet an elk!” I said, remembering the feeling of the rough guard hair concealing warmth under my hands. 

I agree; the lives of volunteers are often weird. They’re also occasionally extraordinary.