(no subject)
yesterday i saw a mountain rescue in the works, well... not upclose. two other wilderness rangers and i showed up at capital creek trailhead to do some trail crew work and we met a climber at the site around 8am. turns out that he and another climber were doing a technical climb (use of ropes, ice axes, crampons, etc) on the north face of capital peak, a difficult high peak in the aspen area. they were doing the climb the day before and about half way up the face, they decided to turn around for conditions were too sketchy that day and began rappelling (descending on ropes) down the face. on the very last rappel, the first climber to go down fell as his rope anchor had broken out from the face. luckily he was able to rappel most of his pitch down to the point where he had 10 feet to go above the ground before the rope anchors broke. however, since the rope anchors broke, down came the rope. so the other climber who did not rappel to begin with was stuck on the face with no rope to get down. the climber who had fell, camped out at a lake at the base of the mt that night and his climbing partner also had to sleep on the mountain face overnight as well. after camping out at the lake, the climber hiked out to the trailhead the next day where we met him and we had to radio out to the aspen mountain search and rescue for help. from that point on, we waited at the trailhead and watched the ground team arrive and prepare their rescue equipment. there was also a helicopter crew that we saw fly in, but its landing site was still miles away from mountain lake since there wasn't a safe or easy place to land near the mountain. but wow, the aspen mountain search and rescue crew are really hard core people. they are also actualy volunteers and they haul ass. period.