DENVER — Responses to Colorado's backcountry emergencies are complex, and often include a myriad of personnel and resources. And behind the scenes of many of them is a special group of experts — all volunteers — who make sure all the pieces are in place to have a successful mission.
In Colorado, search and rescue cases all start with the county sheriff's office and local teams. If an additional level of assistance is needed, they turn to the Colorado Search and Rescue (CSAR) Association's statewide coordinators, who are responsible for the organization that powers rescues in every corner of the state.
"If a county needs that extra help — more people, more resources for their rescue — they can literally make one phone call to the CSAR state coordinators," explained Kevin Harner, one of those coordinators. "We're on call 24/7, and we can get that help for them, bringing their neighboring teams, bringing other resources."
He is one of 16 people in that position and eight others are currently in training. CSAR draws from the most experienced mission leaders from roughly 50 local search and rescue groups to fill its statewide coordinator positions.
No other state in the U.S. uses highly experienced volunteers on a around-the-clock schedule to coordinate between responding jurisdictions.
Harner was previously a mission leader with Rocky Mountain Rescue Group in Boulder County, which he called "pretty demanding on family and home time" since he was responsible for responding in the field. Moving into a statewide coordinator position with CSAR about seven years ago let him work remotely and spend more time at home, while still contributing an "incredibly important" role to the process, he said.
"I'm still able to help and know that what we do as state coordinators is a vital piece to affecting rescues across the state," he said.
Because state coordinators are often on-call in pairs, he usually works alongside Keith Keesling, vice president for CSAR's Board of Directors who lives near the Four Corners region. Keesling, the emergency manager and IT manager in Dolores County, has been a captain with Dolores County Search and Rescue for a decade. Years ago, he told CSAR that he wanted to become a statewide coordinator because he "wanted to do more."
"We're just a bunch of search and rescue volunteers that (have) gone up the ladder to learn more and more as we get older, who then volunteer our time to handle the bigger search and rescue incidents in the state," Keesling said. "... There's a certain point where it's 'If not me, then who?'”
The on-call shifts for statewide coordinators generally last three days, Keesling said.
If an emergency arises across any of Colorado's 64 counties, by statute, the sheriff's office is the first point of contact. If the situation rises beyond local resources, CSAR's statewide coordinators get a phone call.
Their response is swift and efficient: They set up an incident-specific communication thread, load up mapping software to get a better lay of the land and start making phone calls to learn about the details of the situation, who is in danger, how fast crews can get to them and what resources are required. Do they need a crew on the ground? Crews dropped down from a helicopter? Dog teams? Drones?
"You develop a plan," Keesling said. "You develop the backup plan. And as I always say, (you develop a) 'backup-backup-oh-shoot plan.' And then if we need more help, we'll reach out to our surrounding counties, or directly call CSAR and say, 'Shoot, we got something big going on, and we need your help.'”
Coordinating all those resources can be carried out anywhere where there is Internet access, Harner said, adding that he feels lucky to have a flexible full-time job that allows him to address search and rescue requests.
In high-alpine rescues, CSAR often has to call in the Colorado Hoist Rescue Team (CHRT), which is made up of Colorado Army Aviation National Guard facilities and four mountain search and rescue groups. CSAR and CHRT work together frequently on the state's biggest peaks to rescue or recover somebody who has fallen in the rocky and typically inaccessible terrain. These cases can involve an Army Blackhawk helicopter, which carries search and rescue to the person in need and brings them to a waiting Air Ambulance, which then transports them to a ground ambulance or hospital.
Harner said it is a statewide coordinator's responsibility to determine which base those helicopters should launch from and which of the four teams should be called in. But that plan, like any rescue, needs to come together quickly.
"Time is of the essence for these patients with their injuries, many times," he said.
"Nobody ever calls us at 10 a.m. on a beautiful Saturday," Keesling added with a small smile. "It's always after dark with a storm coming in, and, you know, you're trying to get everything set up and arranged overnight and for first thing in the morning."
Rescues vary from a few hours to a few days, as recently seen in September when two hunters died of a lightning strike in the Conejos County backcountry.
"Several days into that search, that county asked, 'Can you all come, just help run the search for a day?'" Harner recalled. "And we did. A couple of state coordinators went down to Conejos County that day."
But the shorter missions can be just as stressful, Keesling said, such as when crews have a small window amid dangerous weather to rescue a person who may not survive otherwise.
The wait is the most challenging part, Keesling said. It's not unusual for hours to go by with little new information on the mission as crews work to reach an injured person.
"And that's the worst, when you're just waiting for an update of 'Did what we do work?'" he said.
With more people moving to Colorado and a plethora of recreation yearround, the call volume for search and rescue in Colorado is "remarkable," Harner said. Incidents are estimated at 3,000 per year, including roughly 400,000 search and rescue volunteer hours. Summer is typically the busiest season.
"Think the most I did was six in one day," Keesling said. "And regularly, (we) will get sometimes three in a day. We've had as many as 13 to 14 in a week... We've had a call where we've had to do a whitewater rescue in the morning in our swim trunks, and then put on snow suits and rescue people up in the mountains on snowmobiles in the evening."
- Purchase a Colorado Outdoor Recreation Search and Rescue card (CORSAR), which helps reimburse Colorado SAR teams for costs during operations, plus required equipment and training. They are available for $5 for a year or $20 for five years.
- The Keep Colorado Wild Pass, which allows you to enter state parks and is available to buy along with a renewed car registration, partially supports Colorado SAR teams. It costs $29 for one year.
- CSAR accepts direct donations, as do the teams from each county.
When adding up the number of volunteer hours, and the cost of gasoline for travel and to get a helicopter in the air, it becomes apparent fairly quickly that mountain rescues are expensive.
But those who are rescued — or their families, if they did not survive — will never see a bill from search and rescue in Colorado.
"For the people being rescued, the rescue is always free in Colorado... The volunteer teams don't charge for rescue," Harner explained. "The National Guard does not charge for their rescues. That part is at no cost to the subject. The cost would start incurring as soon as any kind of medical care is being provided — a ground ambulance or an air ambulance — and then on your way to the hospital."
Local search and rescue teams can see some funding from their county government, but many also hold fundraisers to support the work. The state also offers a few streams of funding, which includes Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) hunting or fishing licenses, and boat or snowmobile registrations. And when you renew your vehicle registration and purchase a Keep Colorado Wild state parks pass, part of that $29 charge also funnels into a search and rescue bucket.
"And then the teams around the state can apply to that fund and get money for equipment and training and conferences and those sorts of things that really help out the local teams," Harner said.
But Keesling said while funding has increased, so has the number of calls for help, so continued donations are much appreciated.
"It is a lot to be all done by volunteers, so we'll take any help we can get," he said. "You can do that by contributing to your local team. You can do that by contributing to Colorado Search and Rescue Association."
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From an outsider's perspective, the role of a CSAR statewide coordinator may seem stressful. But both Harner and Keesling said they don't feel that way.
"The rest of the coordinators are frequently available if we have a question about something," Harner said. "... So not overly stressful. And there's a great training program that we have internally for CSAR amongst the coordinators, to help bring us up to speed for sort of all the different types of calls we do get."
"I think I've been lucky," Keesling said. "It doesn't seem to affect me quite as much as some... Because we all asked for this. We all wanted to be volunteers. We all wanted to do this."
"It's a great experience, but there's a certain type of — I don't know — mental preparedness you have," he continued. "Especially going out doing recoveries — those are always tough. The recovery is generally less trying for me than being at base with the families. But knowing that at least, at the bare minimum, we can give them closure and at least bring their loved one home is what we strive for."
They said the work fills their cup and they plan to continue it for years to come.
"I'll just keep doing it as long as I can, because I know that if it was me, I would be hoping that there's somebody like me coming up to get me," Keesling said. "(I'll) probably eventually just be some old guy sitting on a chair talking on a telephone, but I'll do it as long as I can, because, you know, I love doing it and I want to... It serves a need inside me, and we'll just keep doing it."
"Be it a rescue for somebody that's severely injured or the search for somebody that's missing, and you get to find them and reunite them with their family — great way to give back to the community," Harner said. "There's people that volunteer at schools, churches, youth clubs, whatever. This happens to be my passion and what I do. Help(ing) those folks on what's probably one of the worst days of their lives is very rewarding."
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