The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
A team of professionals who all volunteer
By Mark Reaman
It should come as no surprise that the Crested Butte Mountain Rescue Team (CBMRT) is prepared for some interesting situations. It is part of the job description and it came in handy last week when a technical rope rescue was needed to rescue a cliffed-out party on the west face of Snowmass Mountain.
The initial call came in the afternoon of Sunday, August 13 when two hikers from Colorado’s front range activated their SOS function on their Garmin inReach tracking device. It sent out a call for help. That particular device allows for two-way text communication so emergency responders were able to communicate with the hikers.
CBMRT President Randy Felix said part of Snowmass Mountain lies in Gunnison County and while Mountain Rescue Aspen would often respond given easier access from their location, the west face call went to Crested Butte Mountain Rescue.
The two hikers who both had climbed many 14ers in the state, had apparently been climbing to the summit on the S-Ridge route when a storm with lightning came in. They wanted off the exposed ridge so they scrambled down a gully but got cliffed-out on the west face of the mountain that is notorious for gullies that end in 200 foot cliffs teeming with loose rock. This area has been the scene of several fatal accidents over the last decade.
“We were able to take a recon mission in the helicopter late Sunday evening,” Felix explained. “But it was pretty dark by then and we used night vision goggles to locate the party from the coordinates we were given. We got eyes on them, we knew they were not injured but they were tired, cold, and not psyched to be in the position they were in. Due to their location and terrain not seen in daylight, it was deemed too dangerous for a night mission, so we told them to hang tight and we would be back in the morning for the rescue.”
Felix said the team returned to Crested Butte and were at the cache until midnight devising the rescue plan for the next morning. The plan was to have a technical climbing team of four fly in to a landing zone high on the mountain and make contact with the stuck party and facilitate the rescue. A second ground team would leave early, drive to the trailhead up Lead King Basin and hike into Geneva Lake and stage for backup. Due to early morning rain and shift change, the helicopter picked up the team of four at 8:45 a.m.
The Montrose-based CareFlight Four helicopter transported the four CBMRT team members to a landing zone on Snowmass Mountain at 12,000 feet. “Huge thanks to CareFlight 4 for donating almost a full day of flight time towards the successful outcome of the mission,” Felix noted.
“The two guys were cold and wet from the early morning rain but not injured,” said Felix. “That whole west face of the mountain is not a great place to be. The team had to lead a 60-meter technical pitch up to 5.8 in difficulty to reach the trapped party. They were given food, water and warm jackets.
“We used the San Juan Pickoff technique to lower them off the cliff to the talus,” Felix continued. “It’s a small team companion rescue technique designed to be safe but utilizes minimal equipment. True high angle rescue is a high-risk, low frequency event and we were very well prepared for the job thanks to our training and highly skilled team members.“
Besides the backup ground team, CBMRT had the High Altitude Army National Guard (ARNG) Aviation Training Site on standby to facilitate a helicopter hoist rescue if the need arose. Due to the loose rock on the face, CBMRT felt a ground up rescue was the safer option.
Once the parties were safely out of the cliffs, they hiked down and were met by the ground team. They then went to their camp, broke down the tent, hiked to their car at the trailhead with the ground team and returned home to the front range and their loved ones.
“They made a good decision to stay put once they realized they were in the cliffs,” Felix said. “They had tried to climb down but it didn’t go well so they were smart, put ego aside and called for help. They spent a long cold night out on a small ledge with very little room to move around without risk of falling but it was the right call,” said Felix.
The CBMRT mission took about five hours door-to-door for the team who flew in the helicopter. The ground team put in almost 15 hours for the mission by the time they drove back to Crested Butte.
“Even though we’re an all-volunteer rescue team, the team is made up of professionals in both skill and character,” said Felix. “And our team relies almost solely on donations for our funding. “I would like to extend a huge thanks to all who had a hand in the successful outcome of this difficult mission,” Felix concluded.
