FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A backpacker surrounded by the Cameron Peak Fire was airlifted from the fire Tuesday afternoon by a Colorado National Guard helicopter.
The backpacker is presumed to be the last recreationist in the Cameron Peak Fire, which has grown to more than 15,000 acres as of Wednesday morning with 0% containment.
David Moore, Larimer County Sheriff's Office spokesman, said the agency was contacted at 1:24 p.m. Tuesday with an SOS signal from the man's Garmin GPS navigation system, indicating he was trapped by the fire near Blue Lake. The lake is 5 miles in from the trailhead along Colorado Highway 14 and near where the fire is believed to have started in the Roosevelt National Forest's Rawah Wilderness.
The sheriff's office contacted the Colorado National Guard, which specially equipped a helicopter, to rescue the man, whose name was not released.
The man, who said he had been in the area since Thursday, the day the fire started, was transported by helicopter to a sheriff's office Emergency Services specialist at 5:40 p.m.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Clayton Horney piloted the helicopter used to rescue the backpacker. He's the Program Manager for the Guard's Colorado Hoist Rescue Team (CHRT).
"We have the aircraft and crews that supply the Army side, and we do training and real-world missions with the rescue technicians to go out there and meet the needs of citizens and visitors of Colorado that get to positions where they can't be solved through civilian air ambulances or ground rescue," he said.
It was the group's second rescue mission within the past week near the Cameron Peak Fire.
Horney said the first request came on Friday, when Larimer County officials needed help searching for a family of four, reportedly missing in the backcountry. CHRT was unable to locate any missing family, and the Sheriff's Office later determined that report was unsubstantiated.
However, that mission gave Horney and his team some familiarity with the fire zone and terrain which prepared them for the second request to rescue the backpacker from the Rawah Wilderness on Tuesday.
"We went out there and, in this case, it was easy to identify where to pick him up," Horney said. "[We] landed at around 11,000 feet, our rescue tech went out and met with him and got him loaded up, and then the bigger challenge was honestly just getting him back down to where his car was located because that area was more affected by the fire."
The CHRT team trains extensively for all kinds of missions and frequently rescues people from rough, "technical" terrain. When fires are burning across Colorado, it's common for the team to be put "on-call" in the case of a rescue, but Horney said its rare to actually fly through an active fire zone.
Horney said the team flies 25-30 missions every year. He listed the crew on this, specific rescue mission:
- Pilot in Command - CW3 Clayton Horney
- Pilot - CW4 Brent Foster
- Crew Chief - SGT Theo Rhoades
- Rescue Technician - Kelly Lucy, of Rocky Mountain Rescue Group
Horney credits the backpacker with having the right gear for his backcountry adventures, including the GPS device he used to call.
"We carry one as a family when we hike and snowshoe," he said. "You never know, when something goes wrong, having the ability to hit a button and have somebody come to you is pretty amazing."
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