KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS NEWS To the Rescue MOST BACKCOUNTRY SAR MISSIONS START WITH CLIMBERS OFF-ROUTE AND IN TROUBLE. BY PENELOPE PURDY Just as the search team hoisted the lost hiker to safety, the boulder he’d been standing on tumbled down the crumbling cliff. The dra- matic rescue occurred this July after a storm forced a father-son duo off Mt. Shavano, a 14,000-foot peak near Salida. Unfortunately, the pair had sought shelter by descending McCoy Gulch, which splits Shavano from Tabeguache Peak. Guide books and trail signs warn against entering the gulch, which starts as a wide, gentle slope but narrows into a steep canyon with unstable terrain. The pair spent a cold night trapped on a cliff that they couldn’t climb or descend before the search and res- cue team pulled them to safety. “They came very close to death or serious injury, as many others before them have in McCoy,” says Chaffee SAR’s Facebook page. The episode was the 22nd SAR mission this summer — and that’s just for southern Chaffee County. In June, northern Chaffee County’s SAR 6 team rescued another fourteener hiker who knowingly left the established trail. The hiker later said he’d gotten tired on the long, high-altitude route linking Mt. Belford and Oxford Peak, but his “shortcut” got him lost; SAR found him 23 hours later. Such stories are common. In the sum- mer of 2017, two men on separate climbs of Capitol Peak near Aspen left the standard but challenging route in search of a (nonexistent) easier descent. From nearly the same spot, they each fell hundreds of feet. A 2019 U.S. National Park Service study found that people simply leaving established trails accounts for 41 percent of all SAR missions, far more than any other cause. Less than a quarter of lost hikers made it to safety on their own, while another 77 percent needed rescue. Another Park Service report determined that 42 percent of all SAR mis- sions involve missing day hikers. At fi rst, the August 3 rescue of a climber and body recovery of her fallen partner looks like a statistical outlier: The federal study said only about 1 percent of all SAR missions involve roped, “technical” climbs. But this pair, too, had gotten off-route on the expert-level traverse between Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. (Even the standard route on Crestone Needle ranks among Colorado’s most challenging fourteeners: In late August, the online group 14ers.com up- graded the Needle’s diffi culty to Class 4 — meaning lots of places to fall and some people might want to use ropes — rather than Class 3, which requires intermediate rock-scrambling skills.) Spend time in the great out- doors, as 90 percent of Colora- dans do, and you’ll eventually have a mishap. Still, Colorado’s fourteeners saw about 300,000 visits in 2021, and most peak bag- gers went up and down without problems. Troubles arise when hikers knowingly leave the trail — especially if they keep moving, making it harder for SAR teams to fi nd them. “It’s legal to walk off-trail in the national ‘You know there’s no charge for this,’ and I can see the immedi- ate relief on their face.” But high-altitude rescues come with other costs. In 2021, a rock slide injured three Pitkin County SAR volunteers who were recovering a body from Capitol. That same summer, rockfall injured another SAR volunteer on Blanca Peak in Custer County. Fragile ecosystems also Capitol Peak outside of Aspen looks lovely, but it can be deadly. forests, but in many places it’s just not smart,” says Lloyd Athern, executive director of the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. The nonprofi t group works closely with federal agencies and other experts to design and build well-marked and ecologically sustain- able trails on the state’s highest peaks. Experienced mountaineers sometimes ascend peaks, including Fourteeners, by new or challenging routes, Athern notes. Most of these experts thoroughly study the new route before they go, however, and take plenty of safety gear. So why do so many peak baggers — es- pecially day hikers — knowingly leave the trail? The answer is complicated, says Anna DeBattiste, spokesperson for the Colorado Search and Rescue Association. Like almost all Colorado SAR members, DeBattiste is an unpaid volunteer who risks her own safety to save others. The state’s fi fty volunteer SAR teams handle over 3,000 missions each year, requiring 80,000 hours of fi eld time and 400,000 hours in training and other commitments. As part of Summit County SAR, DeBattiste has helped rescue dozens of lost hikers on Quandary Peak, one of Colorado’s most-hiked fourteeners. The standard, well-marked and ecologically stable day-hiking route leads up Quandary’s east-facing ridge, yet scores of hik- ers instead try to descend the much steeper west, south or north sides, which all lead to rocky, icy and “technical” terrain. Even from Interstate 70, it’s obvious that the peak’s east ridge is much gentler than its other fl anks. But after trudging up the long slope, tired hikers want an easier way down. Instead, they need to stop, think, and check their map or GPS: All will show that the standard trail is the easiest. “Hikers need to research the route before they go,” DeBattiste says. “Lots of times, it really comes down to a lack of critical thinking skills,” she adds, not- ing that hunger, cold, thirst, fatigue, altitude sickness, fear or inattention can diminish a person’s ability to think clearly. For instance, many Coloradans aren’t thinking clearly when they get chased off mountains by notorious summer thunder- storms, like the pair on Mt. Shavano this July. Could they have dropped off the ridge just far enough to avoid the storm, without descending McCoy Gulch? People can often mistake the easy way out. Capitol’s standard route requires lots of rock scrambling, most infamously along the Knife Edge, a 150-foot-long rock rib so narrow that you can straddle it like a horse. Capitol’s toughest scrambling lies between the Knife Edge’s far end and the summit, which could terrify novice peak baggers. Yet the Edge really is the easiest way up and down the mountain, as Capitol is much steeper in all other directions. In the summer of 2017, fi ve people died on Capitol, with another six perishing on other Colorado fourteeners. No matter the situation, SAR teams won’t shame or scold anyone they help, DeBattiste says. If fact, SAR doesn’t even charge lost hikers for rescues and won’t bill families of the deceased. If they did, she explains, hikers and their families would wait too long to call for help, wasting the fi rst few crucial hours that determine the difference between a live rescue and a body recovery. Lost hikers only need to pay for an ambulance or helicopter if needed, along with their subsequent, per- sonal medical bills. “If we get the call at 3 p.m., then we can search during the daylight and probably fi nd the person alive, and maybe the SAR team members can even go home for dinner,” she says. “But if people wait and we get the call at 3 a.m. instead, then we’re heading out into the cold and the dark, and the patient may have gotten worse or even started to bleed out. Everything is so much worse when people don’t call us soon enough,” she explains. On some missions, rescuers reach the lost hikers “and I can see in their faces that they’re terrifi ed,” DeBattiste says. “Then I tell them, suffer. Just fi ve human foot- prints can kill tundra fl owers, notes CFI’s Athern. “The real problem arises when we have a sustainable trail on a highly traffi cked mountain, and people choose to do something else. That can cause a lot of dam- age. And if someone gets lost and a SAR team has to search for them, then we can have twenty or thirty people traipsing around fragile terrain just to fi nd them. That kind of off-trail use is not without consequences.” Dollars add up, too. A 2021 Colorado Parks and Wildlife report pegs the value of direct costs and SAR volunteer time at $21 million annually. While wealthy jurisdictions such as Pitkin County can well-equip their SAR teams, poor counties can’t. Custer County, for example, is among the state’s poorest, but it encompasses exceptionally rugged terrain, including the Crestones. This July, Custer County SAR recovered the body of a climber who’d fallen while traversing from Kit Carson Peak and Challenger Point, both diffi cult fourteeners. The Colorado Legislature addressed some SAR concerns this past session with laws to help improve volunteers’ mental health (such as helping with PTSD) and to search for new SAR funding. Now, Colora- do’s SAR Association hopes lawmakers plug a gap in volunteers’ medical coverage. Each county’s workers’ compensation insurance pays SAR volunteers’ medical bills, but some policies only cover them in their own county. As a result, sometimes SAR teams can’t help with rescues or training in another county even if they have needed expertise or equip- ment. The association wants the legislature to make SAR insurance “portable,” so that rescuers have medical coverage whenever they’re working or training. Any outdoorsy type could need SAR, so if you’re headed for the hills this Labor Day weekend, here’s some advice: Tell someone at home or work where you’re going, when you’ll return, and who to contact if you don’t. Stick to the trail, and if you get lost, fi nd a relatively safe place and stay there: It’s hard for SAR to fi nd moving targets. Remember, there’s no charge for thinking clearly. Email the author at [email protected]. SEPTEMBER 1-7, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com ORIEN RICHMOND/USFWS
