Denver woman rescued from 13,000-foot mountain
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, 22 February 2011 15:16
- Written by Nathan
SUMMIT DAILY NEWS
Editor's note: Annie Halpin of Park County Search & Rescue sent this dispatch detailing a rescue that occurred over the weekend.
Five Colorado mountain rescue teams joined forces Saturday night in a grueling 11-hour effort to reach and extricate a seriously injured Denver woman who was stranded in a winter storm on an exposed flank of Rosalie Peak in the Mount Evans Wilderness Area.
The 28-year-old marathon runner had summited the 13,575 foot mountain mid-day with a hiking partner and her dog before suffering a femur fracture while descending approximately 600 feet below the peak. Her disabling injury prevented the hikers from moving off the mountainside as a snowstorm approached, but their cell phone luckily captured a signal, enabling them to call for help from their precarious perch above timberline.
Park County Search and Rescue was paged at 2:14 p.m., and established a command post at the Tanglewood Creek trailhead northwest of Bailey as their first teams set off for the 4-mile ascent through rapidly accumulating snow. A Flight for Life helicopter attempted to rescue the hikers at 3:40 p.m. but could not land close enough to retrieve them before fierce weather forced the flight crew to leave moments after landing.
Park County's rescuers were joined by the Alpine Rescue Team of Evergreen, followed by Summit County Rescue Group, El Paso Search and Rescue from Colorado Springs, Boulder's Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, and a member of Douglas County Search and Rescue who had been training rescue dogs with a Park County member when they were paged.
Photos: El Paso Search and Rescue in training
Near midnight, Alpine Rescue's “hasty team” found the injured hiker in a white-out blizzard with 40 mph sustained winds. They lowered her to timberline, where rescuers from combined teams secured her in a litter and began the laborious trek downhill, accompanied by the injured woman's stalwart partner and dog.
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