Two climbers rescued after fall on Crestone Needle

[Custer County SAR]

CCSAR wanted to share this mission with the 14ers.com forum and also to remind everyone that conditions on Crestone Needle and Crestone Peak are very icy. Many thanks to HAATs, CSRB and to all our mutual aid SAR responders.

http://custersar.org/two-climbers-rescu ... ne-needle/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[polar]

Wow, sounded like the pair had an anchor failure, which usually doesn't end up very well. Glad everyone made it out ok, thank you to CCSAR for doing such an amazing job.

[AlexeyD]

Wow, scary! Good job on extracting themselves from the most difficult terrain, thereby sparing the rescue team a possibly dangerous and time-consuming high-angle rescue.

Gotta say, Ellingwood Arete in April is an interesting route choice...

[ulvetano]

Yikes, indeed. I can only imagine taking a tumble in those gullies on the descent. Nice job to self rescue to the lake and of course kudos to SAR!

[doggler]

Gotta say, Ellingwood Arete in April is an interesting route choice...

Any time you ascend one route and descend another, you add a degree of risk. Not saying it should never be done, and not saying these kids made a mistake. Maybe they'd done the standard route on the Needle a bunch of times before. Maybe never. But usually, when things go wrong, it's because of not just one thing but list of little "coulda-done-this" and "shoulda-done-thats" that cumulatively increase one's risk exposure to a point where "bad luck" has a reasonable chance of taking a foothold.

I'm pretty sure you could get some folks from the insurance world to formulate some sort of accident predictor algorithm.

Glad the climbers are OK, and props to the folks at SAR for their efforts.

[AlexeyD]

Gotta say, Ellingwood Arete in April is an interesting route choice...

Any time you ascend one route and descend another, you add a degree of risk. Not saying it should never be done, and not saying these kids made a mistake. Maybe they'd done the standard route on the Needle a bunch of times before. Maybe never. But usually, when things go wrong, it's because of not just one thing but list of little "coulda-done-this" and "shoulda-done-thats" that cumulatively increase one's risk exposure to a point where "bad luck" has a reasonable chance of taking a foothold.

I'm pretty sure you could get some folks from the insurance world to formulate some sort of accident predictor algorithm.

Glad the climbers are OK, and props to the folks at SAR for their efforts.

I agree. My comment was unrelated to the cause of their accident. I apologize if anyone else interpreted it as otherwise.