Rescue of hypothermic hiker stranded in avalanche chute may win SAR team award in Colorado

Chaffee County Search and Rescue North (CCSAR-N) has been nominated for the Colorado Mountain Club Valor Award for a rescue that took place in November 2023.

The rescue consisted of a cold all-nighter in an avalanche chute. CCSAR-N responded around 7 p.m. to a hiker in distress who had been hiking a 13'er earlier in the day. Inclement weather and darkness approached, and the hiker was out of water and food and was only wearing a cotton hoodie. The hiker decided to bail down an avalanche chute to get to a road.

Although the subject had a phone, SAR could only pin down their location to an avalanche chute east of Cottonwood Lake and advised the hiker to keep moving downward.

SAR members searched several avalanche chutes. At about 12:42 a.m., they finally found footprints in a gully in six to eight inches of fresh snow and followed them to the subject sitting covered in snow and very hypothermic. Rescuers then spent about three hours warming the hiker before performing an extraction at 5 a.m. The subject eventually walked out with assistance and was in an ambulance by 7 a.m.

The award winner will be announced at the 15th annual Colorado Search and Rescue Conference, held on September 28 and 29.

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