A fall injures a hiker. A youth plunges into an icy mountain lake. A horse throws its rider in the backcountry. A climber gets altitude sickness on a fourteener.
Those are some of the real-life calls that volunteer rescue teams answered during just the first week of August in the foothills and mountains west of Denver, but they exemplify the kind of difficult missions that these unpaid, and often unheralded, life-savers perform every season in Colorado.
The search teams that belong to the Colorado Search and Rescue Board (39 official members, 11 affiliates and two pending applicants) and the 23 local sheriffs’ departments with whom they work closely don’t charge for their efforts, although victims’ insurance companies may have to pay for medical helicopter transport.
Experts say that if the teams started charging, some victims or their families might never call and many more people would die in the mountains, an outcome that would be both inhumane and damaging to the state’s tourism business.
Still, demands for search and rescue services have risen along with Colorado’s population: In 2015, the teams performed 1,655 such missions, 400 more than the previous year.
Yet rural counties where many such incidents occur don’t have money to reimburse the rescue crews for their training or basic equipment such as ropes and helmets, both of which must be replaced frequently. The price tag adds up quickly: Nationwide, an “average garden variety search employing 20 or 30 searchers, and one or two helicopters” can cost $10,000 a day, reports Backpacker magazine.
Hunters and anglers support rescue teams through a small fee on their licenses, although just a fraction of all searches involve either hunters or anglers. Nor are tourists the only ones getting into trouble, as even a well-prepared mountain traveler can run into problems. But search teams worry their workload will rise, because the tens of thousands of new residents flocking to Colorado may not know they have to be off a mountain by noon to avoid summer lightning storms, or that avalanches can happen even on moderately steep slopes, or that Colorado seems to get all four seasons in a single day.
So, do you want the volunteer search team that comes to your aid to be properly trained and supplied with the right equipment? Then buy a Colorado Outdoor Recreation Search and Rescue Card for $3 a year. It’s not insurance, because the volunteers don’t charge. But $2 of the fee goes into a fund that the state distributes to search and rescue teams based on need. The other $1 goes to vendors that sell the cards, such as hunting and fishing shops or sporting goods retailers like REI.
Those especially motivated can always donate to the effort, either directly to the search and rescue team that serves their area, or to the statewide organization that then will distribute the funds. Either way, go to the Colorado Search and Rescue Board website to donate.
The least that folks who enjoy Colorado’s outdoors — but don’t volunteer for the risky and time-consuming search and rescue missions — can do is to help support the brave and kind-hearted souls who do. As Backpacker magazine says: “Everybody is a potential victim; not just the stupid.”
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