Grand County rescuers make rare call to end recovery mission on remote peak

Sneak Peek of the Week

Grand County rescuers agonized over call to end body recovery mission on Arikaree Peak as mountain runners set speed records traversing the remote summit

Colorado’s backcountry rescuers are internationally renowned for their dedication and determination. The state’s roughly 3,000 search-and-rescue volunteers on 50 teams spend more than 400,000 hours a year responding to 3,000-plus calls for help in Colorado’s remote and rugged wild lands.

And even when rescue missions become recoveries, the volunteers persevere and bring home bodies so families can have closure. Every once in a while, though, the risks outweigh the rewards of that closure.

Rescuers in Grand County agonized over their decision earlier this month to end recovery efforts for the body of a hiker who fell down the remote and dangerous Arikaree Peak in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.

“It’s extremely difficult to leave somebody on the mountain. It’s not what we want to ever do,” said Dale Atkins with the Alpine Rescue Team who worked with Grand County Search and Rescue on a plan to recover the hiker’s body on a steep talus field below the 13,164-foot Arikaree Peak.

Atkins has worked as a backcountry rescuer in Colorado since 1974. There have been rare instances when rescuers decide to leave a body on a mountain for a period of time before conditions improve and teams can reach the person.

“But this is the first one I’ve been involved in where, as rescuers, we had to say no,” he said.

As rescuers crafted a complicated and risky plan to reach the body of Vincent Pane, a 31-year-old adventurer, artist and scientist from Longmont, fast-and-light alpine runners scrambled across Arikaree Peak, setting fastest-known-time records on a route known as the L.A. Freeway, which stretches more than 35 miles along the Continental Divide across 19 named summits between Longs Peak and South Arapaho Peak in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.

In the weeks before Pane’s fall on Aug. 28, rescuers from Grand and Boulder counties had rescued one stranded peak runner and recovered the bodies of two light-and-quick runners below peaks on the L.A. Freeway route.

Pane and a running partner were not on the L.A. Freeway route when he fell several hundred feet down Arikaree Peak. Rescuers responded that day and spotted Pane below a steep couloir on a field of loose talus. A doctor on a helicopter concluded Pane did not survive the fall, and gusting winds, as well as the treacherous location, prevented rescuers from reaching the man’s body.

On Sept. 6, Grand County Search and Rescue and members of the Alpine Rescue Team planned a recovery mission with a crew flown to a high point near the peak and a team in a helicopter. The plan called for a technical team to climb down the peak about 800 feet to reach the body, package him for transport and move to a location where the helicopter could long-line the body off the mountain. The ground crew would then climb up the couloir and return to the ridge for helicopter pickup.

It was a complex and dangerous plan and the ground crew and the team in the helicopter had the ability to cancel the mission if risks spiked.

Atkins said the couloir below the peak was “exceptionally rugged” with “horrendously loose” rock.

“This mountain is just crisscrossed with deep couloirs with towering fins of rocks and pinnacles and it’s all wanting to fall down. There were a lot of very experienced rescuers who looked at this challenge and we all came away with the same feeling that, technically, it was doable,” Atkins said. “But the level of risk was exceptional; beyond what is reasonable for rescuers. And we as rescuers are risk-takers but we are not risk-seekers.”

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In Their Words

Hickenlooper, Bennet join 12 other senators urging Park Service, Forest Service to not ban fixed anchors in wilderness

Colorado’s U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper have joined 12 other senators in urging the National Park Service and Forest Service not to ban fixed climbing anchors in federal wilderness.

Federal land managers are considering an overhaul of climbing management policies in designated wilderness and the senators recently sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asking for a briefing on proposed changes before a final decision is made.

It’s the third letter Hickenlooper has sent Haaland since April 2023 advocating for protection of rock climbing on public lands. A letter sent to the heads of the Park Service and Forest Service in February was signed by four senators.

The latest missive from 14 senators — seven Democrats and seven Republicans — expresses concern that the proposed policy, which would prohibit new fixed anchors in wilderness unless they have been reviewed by local forest supervisors or park superintendents, will “unnecessarily burden” agencies with backlogs for deferred maintenance, hiring challenges and “already strained budgets.” The senators also said the proposal could “limit access to these special places and endanger climbers.” They specifically asked that fixed anchors in wilderness not be considered “permanent installations,” which are banned in federally designated wilderness.

The Park Service and Forest Service late last year issued draft guidance on the rock climbing proposals, calling for local land managers to inventory fixed anchors in wilderness. The draft guidance outlined a process for local managers to approve bolts and fixed anchors as “permanent installations,” which are expressly prohibited in the 1964 Wilderness Act. The proposal could effect more than 50,000 routes in wilderness areas across 28 states.

Meanwhile, the U.S. House in April unanimously approved the first-of-its-kind Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experience Act — or EXPLORE Act — which includes the Protect America’s Rock Climbing Act — or PARC Act — sponsored by Colorado’s U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse and Hickenlooper. The PARC Act directs the Forest Service and Park Service to create a uniform policy for all wilderness areas that allows climbers to place and maintain fixed anchors.

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Breaking Trail

X Games returns to Aspen for 2025, alongside Grand Prix and The Snow League

Aspen Snowmass this week announced it will be hosting one of the biggest two weeks ever for halfpipe and slopestyle skiing and snowboarding.

A three-day Winter X Games will return to Aspen’s Buttermilk ski area Jan. 23-25. This will be the 24th year Aspen Snowmass has hosted the Winter X Games. That continuation was in question when the contract between X Games owner MSP Sports Capital and Aspen Skiing expired after the 2024 event.

The second stop of the U.S. Grand Prix — the longest running winter action sports tour — will run Jan. 27-Feb. 2, followed by a big air contest Feb. 3-6. The FIS Freeski World Cup contests at Buttermilk mark the first time in the 21-year history of World Cup freeskiing and snowboarding that one resort has hosted international halfpipe, slopestyle and big air contests in the same week.

Aspen Skiing and U.S. Ski and Snowboard, the national governing body for Olympic skiing and snowboarding, have a three-year deal to host the Grand Prix and the 2026 contest will be part of qualifying for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The FIS earlier this month said the pipe, slopestyle and big air contests at Buttermilk “is shaping up to be the biggest week in FIS Park & Pipe World Cup history.”

Shaun White’s launch of The Snow League lands at Buttermilk on March 7-8, the first announced location for the snowboarding legend’s inaugural, four-stop international tour.

“We’ve had some monster event years in the past, but this one might just top them all,” said Aspen Skiing Co.’s John Rigney in a statement. “Never before have we seen this level of competition in our pipes and parks.”

Copper Mountain will host the first U.S. Grand Prix of the 2024-25 season Dec. 18-21. As part of a new partnership between the X Games and U.S. Ski and Snowboard, winners of the Grand Prix at Copper Mountain will be invited to compete in the X Games at Buttermilk.

The Playground

Three top executives retiring from Aspen Skiing Co.

Speaking of Aspen Skiing Co., changes are afoot for the ski area operator that is one of three under the banner of newly formed Aspen One.

In an internal memo this week, Aspen Skiing announced the pending retirement of Jim Laing, who started working for the ski company in 1995 and serves as the head of human resources for Aspen One’s ski operation, its Aspen Hospitality brand and the AspenX retail brand. Senior Vice President of Operations Katie Ertl has been with Aspen Skiing for 37 years, starting as a ski instructor and is now one of the highest-ranked women in the U.S. resort industry, in charge of all four of the company’s Roaring Fork ski areas. Laing and Ertl will transition to advisors heading into the 2024-25 ski season.

Jeff Hanle, who has been with Aspen Skiing for more than 25 years and serves as head of communications for Aspen One, also will be retiring, but closer to the end of the 2024-25 season.

The retirements were expected and are not part of a larger shake-up of the Aspen One organization. Aspen One formed in July 2023, shortly after the death of Jim Crown in a car crash, whose Crown family has owned Aspen Skiing Co. since the early 1990s.

“We are a growing and evolving organization and with that comes natural change and transition. The recent internal transition announcement of three valued teammates has been planned for years and are part of that natural change cycle,” Hanle said in an emailed statement. “We are deeply grateful for their many years of dedication and service. While they will be missed, these changes provide an opportunity for Aspen One to build upon their legacy, continue to evolve, and continue to raise the bar in serving our guests, employees and communities.”

Never underestimate a small town filled with people who love their place

Colorado’s mountain towns can fight above their weight class. At least two international conglomerates have learned that in the past few weeks.

Crested Butte late last month inked a deal that ends a nearly 50-year battle with a mining giant that planned to blast molybdenum from a beloved peak above town. Since the discovery of that precious mineral deep in Mount Emmons in 1977, locals have relentlessly fought the idea of an industrial mine on the peak they call their Red Lady.

On Aug. 29, locals led by High Country Conservation Advocates signed a deal with the Mt. Emmons Mining Co., which is owned by international mining giant Freeport-McMoRan, that permanently ends the prospect of any type of mining in the watershed above town.

And last week, the 1,100-resident town of Minturn settled a lawsuit with an international developer that gives the town land worth more than $47 million, ending a long legal battle. Minturn voters agreed to annex more than 5,000 acres in 2008 in exchange for all sorts of benefits and perks from a developer who dreamed of private golf courses and ski lifts above town. That developer and his dream crashed, but Minturn never gave up on those promises.

The developer’s lender once offered the town $150,000 and some acreage to make the old deal go away. Minturn sued the lender-turned-developer — Lubert Adler, which has $25 billion in office, home and hotel assets across the country — and this week settled the lawsuit in a deal that gives Minturn $47.6 million in land and Lubert Adler gets its remaining land on the edge of town rezoned for 250 homes.

“This town is filled with amazing people who really want to live here and they love their town,” said Minturn Councilwoman Lynn Feiger, a nationally acclaimed attorney who spearheaded the legal battle with Lubert Adler. “Minturn is just a fantastic place to live. I thank my lucky stars every morning when I wake up in this amazing place.”

— j

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