A rescue team from Wyoming flew to Grand County this week to assist local rescuers in the recovery of the body of a hiker who fell in a hard-to-reach area of the remote Arikaree Peak in August.
The Jackson-based Teton County Search and Rescue team — well versed in technical rescues in the steep mountains of Grand Teton National Park popular with climbers — was able to deploy a very long line from a helicopter to reach the body of the fallen 31-year-old hiker from Boulder County.
Rescuers in Grand County previously made two attempts to reach the man’s body, but the retrieval proved too risky for rescuers. The hiker had fallen 400 feet off a ridge near the summit of the 13,164-foot Arikaree Park in the Indian Peaks Wilderness on Aug. 28. Rescuers spotted the man on the day he fell and a doctor aboard a rescue helicopter determined the man did not survive the fall.
On Sept. 6, a team from Grand County and Alpine Rescue Team attempted a technical recovery that required people on the ridge to descend to the body and move it to a location where a helicopter could pick it up. The risks proved too great for that ground crew.
“It’s extremely difficult to leave somebody on the mountain. It’s not what we want to ever do,” Dale Atkins, a 50-year search and rescue veteran with the Alpine Rescue Team, told The Colorado Sun in September. “This is the first one I’ve been involved in where, as rescuers, we had to say no.”
The Grand County and Teton County recovery mission Thursday included support from agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, the Colorado Army National Guard, Alpine Rescue Team, Rocky Mountain Rescue Group and Colorado Search and Rescue.
Grand County Sheriff Brett Schroetlin, in a statement, thanked the large group of agencies “for their diligence in safely recovering the decedent and returning him to his family while weighing the importance of rescuer and responder safety.”