Fun updates from our local mountain rescue and Pitkin County alerts.
Once again someone thought they had found a short cut down Capitol and got cliffed out---as the mountain rescue team will tell you, there are no short cuts---if there was a short cut it would be the path. Luckily they were able to reach help via their Garmin Inreach (sat phone). Mountain rescue luckily was able to get a black hawk helo to search and find the cliffed out hikers. AMR (Aspen Mountain Rescue) was lucky to be able to find the hikers because they were wearing black clothing which made spotting them difficult. For those snotty folks who say why a Blackhawk---the ceiling for most helicopters is 10k feet, these folks were stuck on the side of a cliff at like 13.5 feet and the helo obviously had to work at a higher altitude (drop a basket, climb over and around a 14.1k foot mountain) ---so yea a black hawk was necessary. Very lucky one was available---very very lucky.
Right after dropping off the hikers AMR immediately got another call about a 17 year old suffering from altitude sickness at Snowmass lake. This was at about 10.8k feet (high but really not that high however again above the height most helos can work at). Luckily there was a black hawk helo with its engines warm and it was immediately sent to pick this kid up? Why? He was foaming at the mouth--ie moved to HAPE. He was flown to Aspen then quickly transferred to Denver and put on 35 liters of Oxygen (ie a lot). He was released 4 days later with no brain damage. Very lucky.
That is a lot of back country luck---be careful and respect the risks. At the first sign of altitude sickness head to lower altitudes, and stay on the path---no bushwacking on 14ers.
I got an announcement that a road was shut due to a cattle drive. No a lot of areas where you get that in your daily updates.
Our main road in and out of Aspen was shut 3 times in 5 days due to car accidents.
Our 2 main grocery stores were out of eggs and milk and yogurt and ....well you get the point, because we live at the end of the grocery store supply chain and while Aspen is a meme for big money and big ballers we are actually rural as fuck.
Lastly there have been multiple rescues in other parts of CO for....dogs. Dogs too tired to hike any further, dogs whose paws were blistered and dogs who were on technical trails and fallen down rock faces that required them to be rappeled out. Come on folks, mountain rescue needs to focus on humans, don't over work them by bringing your dogs on hikes they shouldn't be on. This from a guy who hikes with his dogs all the time; there is a time and a place for dog hikes. Know your dogs and know the hike and get it right.
Lastly, my daughter has lots of retail jobs this summer and is working almost every day. She is making some bank. She is also seeing taxes get pulled out of her paycheck. Pretty funny to watch her get upset about paying $115 in taxes on a gross $915 paycheck. Love watching the kids grow up.