Search and Rescue having a light summer

But Lance Armstrong makes a call from the backcountry…

While it certainly appears that there are plenty of people visiting the valley this summer, those numbers aren’t translating to people getting hurt or becoming lost in the backcountry. What is normally the busiest time for the Crested Butte Search and Rescue team has been pretty quiet.

“Up until last week we hadn’t gone on a real mission pretty much all summer,” confirmed Nicholas Kempin, Crested Butte Search and Rescue president. “In fact, our 2012 overall has not been super-busy. Then we got called on a couple of missions in the last two weeks that involved dirt bikes.”
Kempin said in the summer, having the team respond to a couple of missions each month is the norm.
“Just looking around, it seems that the people are here. It is very busy,” said Kempin. “Maybe they’re all staying on Elk Avenue. We figured that perhaps the down economy was playing a role and people weren’t playing on their toys as much. In talking to other teams around the state, their call volumes have been down as well. It’s good in terms of people not getting hurt. It probably has a negative impact on us from a readiness standpoint.”
But the team was ready on Monday, July 23 when they got a call from, of all people, Lance Armstrong. The seven-time Tour de France winner, who has a home in Aspen, was calling from near Star Pass where one of the dirt bikers in his group of five had crashed and broken a leg.
“That mission probably took four hours,” said Kempin. “We had a team member who was able to respond on a motorcycle. We also had our burly four-wheel-drive Ford Excursion. We packaged the patient and transferred him to a waiting ambulance at the Brush Creek trailhead.
“The second mission also involved a backcountry motorcycle crash,” continued Kempin. “It was the same sort of call, only near Schofield Park before the Punchbowl. That rider had leg and arm injuries and we transported him to a town clinic.”
The local SAR team is comprised of 40 volunteers on the roster, with about 15 active members. Kempin said ATVs are generally the main cause of missions and they are out and about in the summer and into the fall. “Hunting season is traditionally a busy time for us as well, but last fall was pretty quiet,” Kempin said.
“The people are here but the missions aren’t,” summed up Kempin. “But we are ready and waiting.”