![]() ![]() There was chatter up front, a crackle on the radio. John Putt sat on the squad’s equipment in the back of the SUV. 6, which ran from Denver to the Continental Divide, past the old gold-mining towns of Georgetown and Idaho Springs. Burdick was certain it wouldn’t be the last tragedy he’d see. By the time Burdick was on the road home, it was early the next morning. He hiked back eight miles with the rest of the team to the dirt road where they’d parked their cars. The teenager worked quietly for the next few hours, removing remains and loading them. Burdick saw part of one man’s frozen torso. Some of the men hustled down and found a gruesome scene. An hour or two later, someone found the Cessna’s tail 300 feet below. The recovery squad approached the wreckage. Atop one of the peaks was a Cessna 308 that had crashed five days earlier and killed everyone aboard. ![]() On those nights when he left home, his parents knew better than to ask if he’d be back for breakfast.Īnd now here he was, flying among the Spanish Peaks on a helicopter heading toward a narrow ridge. His Toyota Corolla was a rolling rescue unit, packed with a rucksack, a sleeping bag, a tent, extra batteries, and all sorts of radios. When Alpine called in the middle of the night, his father would ring a doorbell attached to Burdick’s room to wake him up. One time, he zipped 70 feet across Bear Creek, just to show the newbies how it was done.īurdick lived Alpine Rescue. His technical knowledge was unmatched: He could tie any knot in seconds he could read the most complicated topographical maps he could rappel like a spider fetching its prey. Although he wasn’t from Evergreen like most of the other teenagers, he was a folk hero of sorts to the kids in the group. Among the younger members, Burdick was an unparalleled mountaineer. Sturdy with thick shoulders and blond hair, Burdick was a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School in Denver and the burgeoning leader of Alpine Rescue-an all-volunteer mountain-rescue unit founded nearly a decade earlier. The early-morning fog had lifted, and Burdick found himself 200 miles from home, prepared for the worst. The thump-thump-thump of the propeller blades boomed across the Spanish Peaks northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, as the pilot lowered his helicopter onto a windblown patch of earth.Ĭhuck Burdick, a 17-year-old from the Evergreen-based Alpine Rescue Team, was aboard, along with a handful of other rescuers, including Alpine members and several from a search unit based in Boulder. There was room in the back of a Suburban. A National Guard helicopter had taken off. The last vehicles were blazing out of the lot. He hitched a ride to the Shack, the shed attached to an Evergreen church where the Alpine crew was mounting up. But what did that mean? He grabbed his pack, and soon he was back on the road, running again. That’s what Putt’s dad told him over the phone. Mom won’t understand this, Putt thought to himself. It was as hard and as fast as he’d ever run before. It was nearly two miles to his house, and Putt ran the whole way. He headed down the hallway proud, his head held high. He was just a kid, really, a prepubescent boy heading to…well, who knows what? Honor? Glory? Yes, that’s what it felt like to Putt-all 5 feet 3 inches and maybe 100 pounds of him, a sliver of a boy with a tuft of unkempt brown hair sticking from his head. Putt had tied knots behind his back in dark closets, searched for water, slept in snow caves, hiked until his feet bled. He’d trained six months for his first call to action, for an opportunity to prove himself to the roughly 50 teenagers and adults who made up one of Colorado’s only mountain-rescue outfits. The folks at Alpine didn’t call the youngest members out of class when grandma got lost hunting mushrooms in the woods. Whatever had happened, it must have been big. There was a mission, and Putt was determined to be in on it.Īnticipation, excitement. Wasn’t that what 12-year-old John Putt thought when that voice boomed over the loudspeaker at Evergreen Junior High School? Members of the Alpine Rescue Team, you’re needed. Thank God for Colorado.Īnd thank God for a reason to cut class early. It was one of those Rocky Mountain days that made you glad to be alive. A snow had fallen earlier and the tree line around Evergreen was touched with spots of white. It was October 2, 1970, and the perfect, crisp fall morning had given way to an afternoon of endless blue sky. ![]() That was the plane that changed John Putt forever.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |