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Watch This Search and Rescue Team Save a Climber’s Life

A new video highlights the important role SAR teams play—and why we should help fund them.

2024 Featured Rescue: Black Canyon of the Gunnison Search and Rescue Team, Colorado

The Great White Wall

When a climber sustained life threatening injuries on the wall, the Black Canyon SAR Team raced against time to save her life.

Major Accident and Dramatic Rescue in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Climber in critical condition following gear-ripping fall on pitch four of The Great White Wall

Up, down and out: How SAR volunteers make complex rescues possible in the Black Canyon

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison may be a mere 25-minute drive from the City of Montrose, but rangers advise treating exploits in our neighborhood national park like deep backcountry adventures, especially when they involve rock climbing or venturing down into the canyon itself.

There’s no cell service inside the canyon, the only way out is up, and for rock climbers, the sheer walls pose serious rockfall danger and offer no mercy to the inexperienced.

Lessons From The Black Canyon

We can only meet others at the depth that we’ve met ourselves, and Colorado’s 2,722 foot-deep chasm of the Black Canyon of The Gunnison is one heck of a metaphor for that. It takes ability, willingness and courage to bring yourself to the base of the dark canyon floor and to climb the massive shadowed walls back out. Walker Brice — EMT, student of nursing and member of the Black Canyon Search and Rescue(SAR) team — has learned some of the most valuable life lessons within those walls.

When a climber was stuck at the base of Black Canyon of the Gunnison, this is how he was rescued

The rescue began when calls for help drifted across Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 5, reaching a visitor on the opposite side. Rangers on both sides responded quickly finding two climbers in a desperate situation hanging halfway up the 1,800 foot North Chasm Wall yelling for assistance.

Out from below

A 1,800-foot long-line rescue in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Local rescuers go to great lengths for technical rope rescue in Black Canyon

The rescue was of two male climbers located on a route along the North Chasm View Wall of the Black Canyon’s North Rim. The North Rim is known as the quieter, more rugged side of the park with limited services. Two men were approximately 800 feet up the Stoned Oven route when the lead climber, a 27-year-old man from Boulder, fell approximately 25 feet and fractured his lower leg. He and his partner, both experienced climbers, did manage to “self-rescue,” meaning they rappelled themselves back down to the bottom of the canyon. In the meantime, they called out to other climbers that they needed help.