This past year, Summit County Rescue Group volunteers responded to avalanches, lost skiers, hikers sinking so deep into the snow that they lost their shoes, trailside ankle injuries and off-road drivers who got their vehicles stuck in the backcountry. There were overnight missions, tragic body recoveries and technical rescues in precarious terrain.

Overall, 2023 — the rescue group’s 50th anniversary —  remained a busy — albeit pretty typical — year for the team, according to rescue group member and spokesperson Anna DeBattiste. After a significant spike during the pandemic, DeBattiste said that call volumes have started to trend downward, but with more and more visitors in the county each year, the long term trend is still up.

“I think it is plateauing,” DeBattiste said. “But I think if you look at a 10- or 15-year trend, the trend is generally still upwards. We just had a (pandemic-spurred) spike that is kind of coming back down to a normal upward trend.”

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In the early 2010s, Summit County Rescue Group expected just over 100 calls per year, DeBattiste said. But for years that number ticked upwards: from 123 calls in 2018, to 155 in 2019, to 185 in 2020, to a peak of 217 calls in 2021.

The trend has only gone downward in the past two years, with 193 calls in 2022 and 184 in 2023. In the past year, the group fielded 96 responses, hosted 83 training sessions and recovered the bodies of a backcountry skier who died in an avalanche, a solo climber who died in a fall and a vacationer who was killed in an ATV accident, DeBattiste said. It was a far less deadly year than 2022, when the rescue group performed 10 body recoveries.

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The four helicopter hoists that Summit County Rescue Group called for in 2023 were notable among the statistics for the year, DeBattiste said. But rescue helicopters are not Ubers — and hoists are only called for in the most extreme circumstances, when life, limb or eyesight are in peril or when other means of rescue would put responders’ lives at risk.

“It was a fairly typical year,” DeBattiste said. “With the exception that four helicopter hoists in one year is not typical at all.”

Helicopter hoists

A 17-hour mission on the west side of Peak 4, a 12,866 foot peak in the Tenmile Range, stood out to Summit County Rescue Group mission coordinator Charles Pitman as one of the most involved rescues of 2023.

While call volumes may be leveling off after pandemic highs, the numbers remain nearly double what they were less than a decade ago, Pitman said. That steep, yearslong increase in calls for service has given rise to complex rescue missions, such as this mid-October helicopter hoist on Peak 4, with some regularity, he said.

“We’ve become very, very busy,” Pitman said. “And like all rescue teams, you have some that are fairly easy that I can resolve from my dinner table with a map. Then you have some that are very, very involved.”

This Oct. 16 mission was not one that could be resolved quickly from the dinner table. The call came in a little before 6 p.m., reporting two goat hunters who had become “cliffed out,” or stuck on a steep spot they did not feel comfortable climbing out of, Pitman said. 

The men had shot a goat and “being good hunters,” attempted to retrieve the animal after it slid down the mountainside, Pitman said. Only, it had snowed a few days earlier, and recent melt-freeze cycles had made the cliffside slick.

“Ultimately, part of the way down (the hunters) started sliding, and fortunately they stopped before they went over this cliff face,” Pitman said. “One sustained a shoulder injury, and they felt very uncomfortable where they were.”

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The hunters were reportedly on an almost 50-degree slope. Though the rescue group was able to pinpoint the hunters’ GPS coordinates, Pitman said rescuers faced a conundrum: There were no good anchors to drop ropes in from above the hikers, and bands of cliffs made the approach from below treacherous as well.

As Pitman assembled a six-member technical team, he was also in contact with Flight for Life and the Colorado Army National Guard to check on the availability of helicopters. Meanwhile, daylight was waning and winds were picking up, making the prospect of any rescue mission that night more dangerous, he said.

So, Pitman called the hunters back to see if they were prepared to spend the night on the cliffside.

“Ultimately, the decision was because of rescuer safety,” Pitman said. “I called these guys back and said ‘Are you prepared to spend the night?’ One thing about hunters is they tend to be better prepared than other people tromping around in the backcountry.”

Despite high winds and frigid conditions, the hunters hunkered through the night on the mountainside, Pitman said. When the rescue group contacted them around dawn the next morning, the two were OK but very cold, and rescuers had concerns hypothermia could be setting in, he said.

Soon, the Summit County Sheriff’s Office was able to fly a drone that got a visual of the two. 

After showing the video to the Colorado Search & Rescue Association and the Colorado Army National Guard, Pitman said it was determined a helicopter hoist would be necessary to rescue the freezing men from the precarious spot.

At about 8:45 a.m., a helicopter from the High-Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site was ready to go, Pitman said. After stopping to pick up a hoist team, the helicopter arrived sometime after 10 a.m. to hoist the two men, dropping them safely in Copper Mountain’s Alpine Lot just before 11 a.m., he said.

“I don’t like using air assets unless I need to,” Pitman said, noting that this — and the other three hoist rescues in 2023 — represent some of the most severe backcountry predicaments the rescue group responds to. Summit County Rescue Group doesn’t charge the people it rescues, but hoist rescues are expensive operations that require significant federal resources to perform, he said.

Earlier in 2023, the Summit County rescue group called for a helicopter hoist in May when a hiker became cliffed out between Peak 2 and Peak 3 in icy conditions that would’ve put rescuer safety at risk.

Then in July, a hoist was called when a hiker in McCullough Gulch pulled loose a rock that crushed his hand, putting him at risk of losing the limb — or worse. Finally, a hoist was also called in September for a hunter who was deep in the Eagles Nest Wilderness on Red Mountain when he suffered a potentially life-threatening affliction, possibly a stroke.

As he recalled 2023 during an interview this week, Pitman read a letter that one thankful rescue subject sent to Summit County Rescue Group to express his gratitude.

“It was a good year,” he said. “We had a lot of lives saved.”

50 Years of Saving Lives

Summit County Rescue Group is among the busiest and highest performing backcountry rescue groups in the country. While the all-volunteer group has grown since its founding in 1973, it continues to conduct backcountry rescues free of charge.

Recreation remained popular in Summit County in 2023 as the rescue group celebrated its 50th anniversary, DeBattiste said. Quandary Peak, a 14,000-foot mountain near Breckenridge, continued to be a hotspot for rescues, and several other yearslong trends were apparent as well, she said.

“The thing that did make this year stand out was obviously our 50th anniversary,” DeBattiste said. “We were hugely focused on that all year.”

Last spring, as snow softened in the mountains, there was a flurry of calls for unprepared hikers postholing — or sinking into the snow past the knees, to the point where it becomes difficult to move — so deep that some lost shoes.

Then, in the warmer months the rescue group responded to seven ankle injuries, a typical summertime trend, DeBattiste said. She suggested wearing high-cut, supportive shoes and paying close attention to the trail to avoid these injuries.

All season long, the rescue group also responded to drivers whose vehicles became stuck in the backcountry. Between January and March, there were 10 calls for stuck snowmobilers as well as multiple calls for stuck ATVs, UTVs and 4x4s between August and November, DeBattiste said, noting that the rescue group only helps people out of the backcountry, not vehicles.

Still, amid constant calls from the backcountry, the all-volunteer rescue group found time to celebrate a half-century of service. In July, the Dillon Amphitheater hosted the return of the rescue group’s annual Rock for Rescue event for the first time since the pandemic.

Summit County Rescue Group also collaborated with Rocky Mountain Underground to create a commemorative 50th Anniversary backcountry ski and backpack and with Breckenridge Distillery to produce a commemorative reserve whiskey. 

Toward the end of the year, there was a party, where rescue group members and alumni as well as local partners and donors gathered, DeBattiste said. But perhaps most exciting of all was the start of construction of the rescue group’s new headquarters, she said.

After operating out of an old garage since its founding, Summit County Rescue Group expects construction of a new headquarters early next year. The headquarters will include ample space for all equipment and vehicles, a command room, a large training center and a training wall to practice technical rope rescues. 

Pitman noted that headed into 2024, completion of the headquarters will centralize Summit County Rescue Group operations and provide an area to train 365 days of the year. With a diverse group of about 75 volunteers on the team — and close collaboration with the sheriff’s office, local fire districts and state and federal agencies — the rescue group is well prepared for the future, he said.

“We truly are a premier rescue team,” Pitman said. “And we’re very proud of that fact.”