S&R gets two callouts Saturday
Michael A Rodriguez, Chaffee County Times Jun 1, 2022 Chaffee County Search and Rescue-North responded to two calls for aid Memorial Day weekend. One call came at 3:45 p.m., Saturday, May 28 from a hiker who was separated from his hiking partner and was suffering from altitude sickness while hiking Mt. Princeton, according to a post on CCSAR-N’s Facebook page. Four members each from Chaffee County Search and Rescue-North and -South took to the field and met the man at 13,500 feet. There they assessed his condition, administered oxygen and helped him hike down the mountain. The group arrived safely back at base at 9 p.m. that night. The second call came earlier that day at 9:45 a.m. from a solo climber cliffed-out below the ridge between the summit of Missouri Mountain and Elkhead Pass. He said he slid 400 feet and was unable to ascend or descend. The climber was able to send out an emergency distress call from his personal locator beacon and CCSAR-N immediately responded. Unable to send a team in via helicopter due to strong winds, CCSAR-N had a team of seven climbers hike to the site via the Missouri Gulch Trailhead. From there CCSAR-N had two of the climbers ascend to a coulior west of the stranded climber’s position and traverse over to his location. Upon reaching the stranded climber, the team was able to lower them down to a snow field and then rappelled down the cliff themselves. From there Search and Rescue-North escorted the climber out to the Missouri Gulch Trailhead. The team left the site at 7:30 p.m., the operation taking...Snowmobile accident fatal at Cottonwood Pass
Special to The Chaffee County Times, 9-feb-22 A fatal snowmobile accident on Cottonwood Pass left one person dead Tuesday. The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office received a distress signal at 11:09 a.m., Feb. 8, from a backcountry traveler advising of a snowmobile accident and an unconscious male in the Cottonwood Pass area, Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze said in a press release. Chaffee County Search and Rescue and Chaffee EMS initially responded to a location near the summit of Cottonwood Pass and contacted parties who were snowmobiling in the area. A male was unconscious after being pinned beneath his snowmobile. Several people in the area at the time of the accident attempted CPR, however the victim was pronounced dead at the scene, Spezze said. The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office responded and the investigation determined Robert E. Welland, 68 of Jefferson, was riding his snowmobile with a group of people and went out of sight from the group. When a group member went back to find Welland, he found his machine overturned and resting on top of the victim. The other rider pulled the machine off of the victim and CPR was started until EMS arrived. The victim was transported out of the area and the Chaffee County Coroner transported the victim to the coroner’s office in...Nighttime cliff rescue: Tech teams use drones on ‘spicy’ mission to aid cliffed-out hiker
Douglas P. Marsh, Chaffee County Times reporter, Sept 15, 2021 Members of the Chaffee County SAR-North’s drone team prepare to deploy their unmanned remote aircraft in a search for a stranded hiker on the Chalk Cliffs Chaffee County Search and Rescue-North capped off the high season with a daring night rescue at Chalk Cliffs on Sept. 7. The group was also activated the following morning to respond to a medical distress call from the Three Apostles basin west of Mount Harvard. Both rescues were successful. SAR-North representatives said that this season was a bit calmer than last. “We have had a little lower call volume so far in 2021 then we have in the previous few years,” said CCSAR-North’s president, Josh Schwenzfeier. “This is not due to a reduction in the amount of people in our backcountry areas.” Schwenzfeier attributed the reduction in calls to education programs and peer support due to increased numbers of hikers and climbers. “We haven’t been bored by any stretch,” said Beth Helmke, public information officer. “There have still been some spicy ones.” The Chalk Cliffs extraction was one such mission. According to SAR-North’s after-action report on Facebook, the call came in a little after 7 p.m. that a hiker without any gear had become cliffed out roughly 1,500 feet high and darkness was falling. “Tuesday’s mission was a great use of our CCSAR-N Drone and Technical Rescue Teams. The Chalk Cliffs is a tough spot to respond to due to the loose rock in the area,” said Schwenzfeier. “The Drone Team mobilized almost immediately after the page was sent out. They were...Search & Rescue escorts hikers out of Browns Canyon
Max R. Smith, Chaffee County Times, Feb 17, 2021 As temperatures dipped rapidly Saturday evening, Chaffee County Search & Rescue-North and a Chaffee County Sheriff’s deputy were called to Browns Canyon National Monument to escort a group of hikers back to the trailhead. According to Search & Rescue’s Facebook page, rescue volunteers were paged out to Browns Canyon at 5:50 p.m. Saturday for a report of a group of hikers who had become disoriented and could not find their way back to the trailhead. A sheriff’s deputy was able to escort part of the group out, and a Search & Rescue-North hasty team met the remaining hikers who had become separated from the main group. All parties were safely out of the field by 7:45 p.m. “With single-digit temperatures and a winter storm rolling in, we are thankful for a short and successful mission,” the post...Hiker spots boy, 11, missing along Arkansas River
Max R. Smith, Chaffee County Times reporter, Jan 14, 2021 A search for a missing 11-year-old boy along the banks of the Arkansas River east of Buena Vista yesterday afternoon ended when a hiker spotted the boy walking safely along the river. “There was a family visiting from Texas, so they were out of town, and he had left about 12:30 p.m., and about an hour had gone by and he hadn’t come back,” said Buena Vista Police chief Dean Morgan. The boy, Josiah Carter, likes to explore, but being absent for that amount of time in an unfamiliar town led his family to contact the police. The call came in at around 1:30 p.m., and Morgan estimates that around 2:30, Carter was found by a Chaffee County Fire Protection District searcher following a tip from a woman walking along the river. “Usually when we start a search like that we throw out a quick dragnet, check some areas he might be, and when that didn’t reveal anything we decided pretty quickly to get some more resources involved,” Morgan said. Chaffee County Search & Rescue-North, Chaffee County Fire Protection District, Buena Vista Fire Department and Chaffee County Sheriff’s deputies were called in to assist, and an incident command post was established at BVPD. “We canvassed the neighborhoods in South Main, which was the area he was last seen, and got the word out to a lot of the businesses and used social media as well to get his picture and everything out there,” Morgan said. In addition, Morgan said that Colorado State Patrol were on the lookout for the boy,...Donate to CCSARN
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