He Called for Rescue at 13,000 Feet, Then Hiked Out

A BASE jumper triggered a satellite SOS after a bad fall above Bridal Veil Falls near Telluride on July 6, drawing about 20 rescuers, two county teams, and a helicopter. Then he declined the ride and hiked out on his own. Here is what a satellite SOS actually sets in motion, and why the volunteers who answer it cannot be everywhere at once.

At 2:45 in the afternoon on Monday, July 6, an emergency signal went out from high in the San Juan Mountains. According to the San Miguel County Sheriff's Office, a 31-year-old man from Grand Junction had triggered a Garmin SOS from the Columbine Basin, roughly six miles south-southeast above Bridal Veil Falls near Telluride. His message said he had fallen 150 to 200 feet, believed he had broken his leg, could not walk, and needed help.

What followed is the part worth sitting with, because it is easy to press a button and much harder to answer one.

What happened above Bridal Veil Falls

Deputies and San Miguel County Search and Rescue moved fast. Rescuers rode motorcycles and UTVs up toward the Lewis Lake area, then shouldered a litter and equipment and hiked another mile and a half to reach the reported location, near 13,000 feet. Several members of San Juan County Search and Rescue crossed over from their own county's access point to help. A CARE Flight helicopter staged at a landing zone by the Idarado Mine at the base of Bridal Veil Road, then flew up to the scene with a SAR member aboard, preparing to fly the patient to Montrose Regional Hospital.

When the ground team reached him first, they found the man walking around. He then told rescuers what had actually happened: he had been BASE jumping off a cliff, his parachute failed to deploy, and he was injured in the fall. (BASE jumping is leaping from a fixed object, a cliff or bridge or tower, and deploying a parachute on the way down.) He said he was an experienced jumper and had been alone when it happened.

Then, despite the rescuers' recommendation, he declined the helicopter and said he no longer wanted Search and Rescue assistance. He walked down on foot, watched over by San Juan County SAR personnel, alongside a friend who had hiked up to meet him. The San Miguel team faced a long slog back out and was clear of the field just before 10:00 p.m. The mission officially closed at 11:30 p.m. In all, roughly 20 SAR members and deputies were committed to it.

No one was going to leave him up there on a maybe. That is the whole ethic of Search and Rescue: you get the call, you go. Which is exactly why what the call actually costs is worth understanding before you are the one making it.

What a satellite SOS actually sets in motion

If you carry a satellite communicator, and if you spend much time above treeline you probably should, it is worth being clear-eyed about what that SOS button does. It is not a text to a friend who might wander up if they get around to it. On a Garmin inReach or a similar device, pressing SOS routes your signal to a 24/7 emergency coordination center, which contacts the responsible county sheriff, who launches the local Search and Rescue team. From that moment, real people start moving.

In this case, "real people start moving" meant about 20 rescuers, two separate county teams, motorized transport up rough terrain, a litter carry to 13,000 feet, and a helicopter in the air, all committed for the better part of nine hours. That is what one press of the button set in motion.

None of this is an argument against carrying a device. The opposite: a satellite communicator is one of the best safety tools a backcountry traveler can carry, and a real SOS from a genuinely stranded, injured, or lost person is exactly what it exists for. The point is that the button is powerful, and knowing what it commits, before you are cold and hurting and reaching for it, is part of carrying one responsibly. If you have never thought through when and how you would actually call for help, that is worth doing at the kitchen table, not on a ledge. We wrote a whole guide on how to call for help for exactly that reason, and choosing the right device is its own decision worth making carefully, which is why we keep an updated rundown of the best satellite messengers for Colorado hiking.

A volunteer system with a hard ceiling

Here is the thing most people do not realize until they need it, or until they join a team: in Colorado, Search and Rescue is almost entirely volunteer, and it is free to the person being rescued. You are not billed for the team that comes to find you, splint your leg, and carry you out. That is a deliberate choice, and a good one, because the moment people start hesitating to call out of fear of a bill, someone dies waiting.

But free to you does not mean free. Colorado has roughly 2,500 active backcountry SAR volunteers, and the state estimates they spend on the order of $5 million a year of their own money on the training and gear it takes to be ready to come get you. These are people who leave work and family, sometimes in the middle of the night in brutal conditions, on their own dime. We have written before about the strain those teams are under, and the recent quadrupling of the state's backcountry rescue fee was a direct response to that pressure.

That is where capacity comes in. For most of nine hours on July 6, about 20 people and a helicopter were tied up with one incident. If a lost hiker or a heart attack or a real fall had come in across those same counties during that window, the cupboard was a lot barer. Volunteer SAR has no surge capacity you can buy on short notice. The system works because most people do not trigger it lightly.

That is also why the San Miguel County Sheriff, Dan Covault, was openly frustrated in his public statement, and why he included one more detail. He noted that the man had previously required extensive Search and Rescue resources, pointing to published media reports of a BASE jumping accident in the Swiss Alps about a decade ago, in which the same individual was stranded for roughly 13 hours during a rescue that involved nearly two dozen rescuers and three helicopters. We are not naming him, and neither did the Sheriff. But the detail matters for a reason that is bigger than any one person: a satellite SOS has no memory and carries no penalty. The button works the same the first time and the third time. Which means the entire system rests on each of us choosing to take it seriously, every single time we might reach for it.

How to carry an SOS button responsibly

You do not need to be a BASE jumper for any of this to apply. Anyone who carries a satellite communicator carries the same responsibility. A few ways to hold it well:

• Carry the device, and mean it. This is not a reason to leave the inReach at home. It is a reason to understand it. A satellite messenger is one of the highest-value safety tools you can pack for the Colorado backcountry.
• Know what the button does before you go. Read your device's SOS behavior, learn how two-way messaging works, and think through, in advance, what an actual emergency looks like for you versus a bad-but-manageable day.
• If you self-resolve, cancel the activation immediately. If you trigger an SOS and then get yourself moving under your own power, tell the coordination center and the team so they can stand down, rather than letting a full response keep rolling toward you.
• Leave a trip plan with someone. Where you are going, your route, and when to worry. It shortens every search and it is the single easiest thing on this list.
• Support the people who answer. A CORSAR card costs $5 for a year or $20 for five, and a Keep Colorado Wild pass adds $29 to your vehicle registration. Neither is insurance, and you will never be billed for a Colorado rescue, but both put money directly into the fund that reimburses these volunteer teams.

The SOS button is a promise: that when you press it, you truly need the people on the other end. Keep that promise meaningful, and it will be there, working, on the day you really do.

Reporting from the San Miguel County Sheriff's Office public statement; as of publication, no secondary outlet had yet covered the July 6 incident. For more on supporting Colorado's volunteer Search and Rescue teams, the Colorado Search and Rescue Association and Colorado Parks and Wildlife both have resources.