Colorado Search & Rescue Shake-Up: CSAR Signals It Won’t Bid to Keep Coordinating Rescues

A state handoff takes effect Aug. 1. Now the volunteer association that has connected counties to helicopters and out-of-county teams for 53 years says it won't compete for the new coordination contract — leaving an open question over who fills that role at the height of summer.

Peak rescue season is arriving in Colorado's high country, and the behind-the-scenes system that pulls in helicopters and out-of-county teams when a rescue outgrows a single county is in the middle of a handoff — with a new wrinkle. The volunteer-run Colorado Search and Rescue Association (CSAR), which has coordinated large multi-county missions for more than five decades, has now signaled it does not plan to compete to keep that role.

On Aug. 1, the coordination of large backcountry rescues that exceed a single county's resources formally shifts into a state interagency structure led by Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW). For months, the working assumption — including from state officials — was that CSAR would bid for the new coordination contract and most likely keep doing the work under a new banner. According to the association's May member newsletter, that is no longer the plan.

For anyone heading into the mountains this summer, the front door to rescue has not changed: you still call 911. The open question is what happens behind that door during a transition that lands in the busiest weeks of the year.

First, what's actually changing on paper

The formal change is narrower than the headlines suggest. CPW, the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (DHSEM), and the County Sheriffs of Colorado (CSOC) signed an Interagency Agreement (IAA) that takes effect Aug. 1. It delegates DHSEM's statutory authority to CPW to help coordinate backcountry search and rescue (BSAR) response when a local team's resources are exceeded. Crucially, county sheriffs keep full statutory authority over rescue operations in their own counties. The agreement does not centralize command; it formalizes how outside support gets pulled in. (We broke down the full agreement in our earlier explainer on Colorado's new SAR interagency agreement.)

The piece in dispute is narrower still: the mission coordinator program. When an incident grows beyond what one county can handle, CSAR's roughly two dozen trained, on-call state coordinators are the people who make a single call bring in neighboring teams, K9 units, federal cell-phone forensics, and aircraft — including National Guard helicopters. CSAR has one paid staff member; nearly everything else is volunteer work, built up since the association was founded in 1973.

The new wrinkle: CSAR signals it won't bid

As recently as April, the expectation pointed toward continuity. The Colorado Sun reported a bid from CSAR was expected, and a DHSEM official characterized the change as "a management thing, not a functional thing." CPW's spokesperson said the agency would issue a request for proposals (RFP) for the coordination role once the current agreement expires, and that CSAR was welcome to apply. In other words: new contract, probably the same people doing the work.

CSAR's May member newsletter changes that calculus. The association told its member teams it does not intend to submit a proposal for the coordination contract. If that holds, the question is no longer whether the same veteran coordinators keep working under a new banner — it's whether a different entity can stand up multi-county coordination from scratch, and how quickly.

An important caveat on this point. As of publication, CPW had not publicly issued the formal RFP, and CSAR had not made a public statement beyond its communication to members. This part of the story is developing, and we'll update it as the official solicitation and any public statements emerge.

Why veteran volunteers are uneasy

The concern among county-team leaders is less about who is "in charge" and more about timing and institutional memory. Joe Mariola, president of Chaffee County Search and Rescue South, warned there could be "a gap in coverage for that mission coordinator program for this summer" — Colorado's busiest stretch. Erik Rasmussen, a CSAR coordinator with more than a decade of experience, has described a roughly 40-day window between the old agreement ending and a confirmed structure being fully in place, and put the stakes plainly: if summoning a Black Hawk takes six hours instead of one, "that could be life or death."

Rasmussen has also pushed back on the idea that decades of coordination expertise can be rebuilt overnight. CSAR's coordinators train for the better part of a year before going on-call; five new ones graduated just this past January. That hard-won knowledge — which teams have which specialties, how to deconflict multiple aircraft over the same drainage, how to reach federal forensics support — is exactly what's hardest to transfer in a hurry.

What the state says

CPW and DHSEM have been consistent: for the public, nothing changes. A recreationist still calls 911, the local sheriff's office still runs the response, and most calls are resolved at that level without ever needing outside coordination. CPW says it is not taking over operations — its role is funding and coordination through the state's emergency-operations system, while sheriffs retain authority on the ground. State officials frame the IAA as an upgrade in reliability and accountability for the rare, complex incidents that escalate beyond one county.

State leaders have also acknowledged the rollout was bumpy. DHSEM's director conceded an initial mistake in how the transition timeline was first communicated to CSAR — a misstep that fed much of the early uncertainty among volunteers.

Why coordination is the linchpin

Colorado's SAR system runs on volunteers, and it is busier every year. State funding has climbed sharply since the Backcountry Search and Rescue Fund moved under CPW in 2023: more than $2.7 million went to 44 teams across 37 counties last year, up from about $1.1 million to 39 teams in 2022, and CPW reports roughly $6.8 million distributed for equipment and training since the fund moved over. (We've covered that funding shift and the rising call volume on Colorado SAR teams before.)

That money strengthens the teams. But the coordination layer is different — it's the connective tissue that turns a stretched local team into a multi-agency response when minutes matter. There is also a political backdrop: records obtained by the Colorado Sun show CSAR had been pushing a new dues structure and a longer-term funding fix, a proposal at least one sheriff sharply criticized. We note that context, attribute it, and leave the politics to the people inside the system. Both CPW and the volunteers are acting in good faith and trying to keep Coloradans safe.

What this means for you this summer

If you're climbing a 14er, backpacking, or hiking above treeline in the coming months, the practical reality is reassuring and unchanged: call 911 in an emergency, your county sheriff still runs the response, and your CORSAR card or Keep Colorado Wild Pass still helps fund the teams who come for you. The thing worth watching is whether the behind-the-scenes coordination for the biggest, multi-county rescues stays seamless through an Aug. 1 transition dropped into peak season.

You can't control the bureaucracy — but you can shrink the odds you'll ever need it. Carry a satellite communicator so you can summon help directly from terrain with no cell service. Leave a trip plan and a hard check-in time with someone who isn't on the trail with you. Check the forecast, set a real turnaround time, and carry the ten essentials. In remote country, the smartest assumption is that help is not one quick call away — so plan to be self-sufficient long enough for it to reach you.