Download media fact sheet here.
On a cold snowy night in December 1972, a group of forty-five
Summit County residents met at Swan's Nest on Tiger Road, the
historic home of Ben Stanley Revett, the "Gold Dredge King," to
talk about the need for a local search and rescue
organization. In July of the following year, the Summit
County Rescue Group (SCRG) was incorporated as the sixth mountain
rescue team in Colorado.
SCRG is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization incorporated
under section 501(c)3 of the IRS code. We operate under the
statutory authority of the Summit County Sheriff's Office, and our
mission is to fulfill the Sheriff's responsibility to provide
backcountry search and rescue services to the county.
Like any organization, we've grown tremendously over the
years. We've added more members, more equipment, and more
policy and procedure. We've developed new technical
specialties, and become more sophisticated in our internal and
external communication and educational programs. Our core
mission has never changed, however: our team exists to save
lives. And our top priority in the operation of our group has
always been the safety of our team members.
Today we have about 65 active members, seven of whom are mission
coordinators. The mission coordinators rotate in an on-call
role and act as the initial point of contact to assess a 911 call
for backcountry assistance. Each active member carries a
pager which can be toned by the county's 911 dispatchers when a
mission coordinator determines that an "all-call" is
needed. SCRG receives 100 to 200 requests for
help each year, and these requests usually translate into 50 to 80
"all-call" missions.
SCRG's missions are pretty evenly spread over the entire
year. In the summer we go out for lost or injured
mountain bikers, climbers, hikers, ATV and horseback riders; in the
fall, lost or injured hunters; in the winter, backcountry skiers
and snowboarders, crosscountry snowshoers and skiers, ice climbers,
snowmobilers and avalanche reports; and in the spring, swiftwater
accidents. The group also responds to the occasional downed
hot-air balloon, crashed hang glider, airplane or helicopter
accident, rolled four-wheel-drive vehicle and over-the-edge highway
motor vehicle accident. An average mission runs for a few
hours, but missions can extend overnight or even into multiple days
for extractions in challenging terrain or missing parties that take
time to locate.
SCRG is headquartered in Frisco, Colorado. We have
an equipment barn and a meeting/training facility in the county's
maintenance yard area near the Emergency Services Building and Fire
Training Center. The team has five emergency response
vehicles, plus a number of ATV's and snowmobiles, two tow-behind
evacuation wagons (one for summer and one for winter), and a
snowcat.
SCRG members have varying levels of medical training. At
minimum, every responder is required to have current CPR and First
Aid certifications. A large portion of the team is EMT
certified, and the wilderness paramedics of the Summit County
Ambulance Service are part of our team.
Weather permitting, Flight For Life medical evacuation
helicopters, one of which is permanently stationed at the level II
trauma hospital in Frisco, are available to us for backcountry
extractions of critical patients. Flight For Life also
assists SCRG in aerial searches or with rescuer transport in time
critical situations, and plays an essential role in transporting
avalanche rapid deployment teams including dogs, dog handlers and
snow technicians to backcountry avalanches.
The National Guard's High Altitude Aviation Training Center
(HAATS) in Eagle, Colorado also supplies helicopter support upon
request to help us with air search operations and backcountry
insertions and extractions.
The Summit County Rescue Group is a member of the Rocky Mountain
Region of the Mountain Rescue Association (MRA) and the National
Association for Search and Rescue (NASAR). The team must
recertify every five years with the MRA to retain active status,
which involves a series of tests in five separate search and rescue
disciplines over a two-day period. In addition to responding
in Summit County, SCRG is available for assistance on major
wilderness search and rescue missions anywhere in the country,
through a mutual aid agreement with the Colorado Search and Rescue
Board (CSRB). SCRG is also automatically activated by the
county's incident command group on any third alarm emergency or
mass casualty incident in the county.
The Summit County Rescue Group is available 24 hours a day, 365
days a year, at no charge to its rescue subjects.