Colorado Search and Rescue Association

In the summer of 2024, a group of 15 colleagues were hiking Mount Shavano as part of a corporate retreat fundraising hike. They left at sunrise and successfully summited the 14,230’ peak, but they made an almost fatal mistake. As the clouds came in, the main group descended from the summit, passing one of their slower colleagues who was left to make the final summit push alon...

Many Colorado BSAR organizations are large teams of 50 to 80 well-trained volunteers. But some of the more remote counties have very small teams and struggle to find the members they need to respond to calls.

Saguache County, for example, has a search and rescue coordinator but only a few responders. They are often assisted by surrounding counties when they have a ...

By Ben Wilson, former Education Program manager and 2025/26 CSAR president

Early in my now 24-year-old rescue career, it became important to me to look beyond a single incident or a single rescue subject or even a single BSAR team. Maybe it was the first MRA test I was a part of, or the first interagency mutual aid call I responded to, but I recognized a di...

It was a beautiful Saturday morning in Crested Butte, and a group of speed fliers were preparing to launch from Baldy Mountain. Speed flying is a sport similar to paragliding using a smaller wing designed for descent rather than ascent.

The first pilot launched and was flying close to the ground when disaster struck. His speed wing dipped and struck a tree, sending ...

At 7:30 one October morning, Western Mountain Rescue Team (WMRT) received a call about a hunter who had injured his leg when he fell crossing a stream. He was in a steep-walled valley at the intersection of the Beaver Creek trail and the Little Mill Creek trail and could not walk. The team had recently done another rescue in the area, and WMRT’s mission coordinator, McKenzie ...