Southwest Colorado’s hazardous terrain entices outdoor enthusiasts from all over the world – but adds an obstacle for search-and-rescue teams tasked with ensuring their safety.
However, equipment newly acquired by the Mesa Verde Helitack crew could help in the most remote locations.
This year, regional search-and-rescue crews for the first time will have a “short haul” system at their disposal.
It is simple but effective. Essentially, a static rescue rope is suspended from a helicopter to lower emergency personnel to a patient in a tight spot. On the ground, rescuers can attach the patient to the rope to be lifted to the helicopter and transported to where they can get further care.
Ropes generally reach down 250 feet, but that can be doubled if needed. Helicopters have about an 8,000-foot elevation ceiling, but can go up to 10,000-feet in some circumstances. The aircraft carry fuel for about two hours.
The system is used throughout isolated areas of National Parks and other wilderness areas.
A week ago an aviation team made a short-haul rescue of two hikers stranded along the shoreline of Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. One hiker had hypothermia, and the other was injured from falling 250 feet. The two, hiking in an off-limits area, were taken to a hospital.
“The National Park Service has used short haul in the Grand Canyon, Teton, Zion, Crater Lake, Canyonlands, all over,” said Mesa Verde Helitack manager Michael Spink. “And now, we have one at Mesa Verde.”
Mesa Verde’s Helitack team consists of three pilots and eight crew members, who are stationed at the Old Fort campus off La Plata Highway (Colorado Highway 140) for the summer months.
Though Mesa Verde National Park, about an hour’s drive west of Durango, is not known for its expansive wilderness that lures hikers into disarray, that doesn’t mean the short-haul system will go unused.
“Not too many people get lost in Mesa Verde, it’s just not that kind of park,” Spink said. “The plan is to use the system nationally or in local search-and-rescue efforts.”
Butch Knowlton, director of La Plata County Office of Emergency Management, said the county had more than 30 rescue missions last year, most in deep, remote locations in the San Juan Mountains.
The county has contracts with medical flight teams such as Flight for Life and AirCare, but getting a patient to a spot those aircrafts can access is where the short haul should come in handy.
“There’s all kinds of outdoor enthusiasts – horseback riders, mountain bikers, climbers, hikers – and from time to time those people in the backcountry get in trouble,” Knowlton said. “And sometimes it takes a long time to carry people to a landing zone where we can get medical aircraft in. This aircraft certainly could be a resource if available.”
Spink said the details of a partnership between the local entities is currently in the works.
The Mesa Verde crew, like all teams in the National Park Service, also is part of a “national resource,” which means it can be called to fight fires all over the country.
“So if a firefighter is injured in a place where it takes a long time to get out, with the short haul, we’ll be able to medevac them out of rough terrain to a place where they can get the next appropriate care,” said Jordan Van Allen, a crew member who drove 1,500 miles from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to fight fires in the West this summer. “It’s the shortest possible way to an ambulance, hospital or another helicopter.”
Brock Ottenbacher, a short-haul rescuer, said during training Thursday that the most important part of the mission is communication with the pilot above, making sure to convey winds, weight and other hazards.
“It was great,” he said of his go-around in the air. “It’s actually a pretty comfortable ride. Your back is to the wind, and your feet and the bag act as a stabilizer.”
This week, search-and-rescue crews are kicking into gear as summer settles in on Southwest Colorado. Last week, the Forest Service hosted a safety-training day for backcountry emergency response situations, including wildland fire, at the Durango-La Plata County Airport.
“We’re definitely getting started,” said Knowlton. “You bet.”
jromeo@durangoherald.com
