Mountain Rescue Crews Gearing Up For Busy Winter

EVERGREEN, Colo. (CBS4)- The Evergreen-based Alpine Rescue Team is gearing up for what they think will be another busy winter. So far in 2019, the team has already responded to 113 missions. The record was set in 2016 with 145 missions.

"It's a discussion we have quite a bit, just how to sustain that, or is it sustainable with the number of missions we run. It increases every year and typically we break our record in missions," said Alpine Rescue member Mike Everist.

To help respond to calls, members of the team have teamed up with the Colorado National Guard. On Wednesday they were out at Buckley Air Force Base practicing hoist operations from a helicopter. Crews simulated responding to three people who were stuck on a rock face, two of them with injuries.

"A lot of times it's difficult to access a subject and a hoist will help that. And sometimes there's a time factor involved and that's crucial to us," Everist told CBS4.

This training comes as The Alpine Rescue Team turns 60 years old. Since 1959, Alpine has responded to around 3,300 missions. Team members say when they started they'd average around 20-30 missions per year.

They now average over 100 per year. They say Colorado's population boom and the increase in cellphones has led to the rise in calls for help.

"Adding the helicopters, the well trained pilots, and the hoist operators with our training... we're confident we can do most anything we need to do in a safe manner," said team member Tom Loebach.

The team currently has 67 people that respond to missions and total of 90 members. Every single member is a volunteer and the team has never charged for any of our missions or educational programs. They say that's something that will never change.

"It's a great organization, it's helped a lot of people over the years," said team member Tom Loebach.