I have many incredible memories and enduring friendships from my time with Alpine Search and Rescue, and that time is one of those things I am most proud of in my life. Alpine performed roughly 100 rescues annually, finding lost or inured children and hikers, injured mountain and rock climbers. A good many of these rescues were at night and some of the more memorable were a brutal, freezing night on Berthoud pass, sleeping (ha) in an snow cave, rescue of a base jumper on Mt Evans, helicopter searches. I volunteered for Alpine for over 5 years, the last 2 + of which I trained a scent tracking search and rescue dog named Sage. She was an aussie mix stray, found under an abandoned rusty truck in a sagebrush pasture near Saratoga, Wyoming. Sage was a fetching machine and that drive, her intelligence and eagerness to please me, fueled her tracking success. We trained most every day in some way doing nose work and participated in many SARDOC trainings, some at the Deaf and Blind School building projects in Co Spgs to train among debris. Even long after her retirement and my moving here she successfully tracked kids and nephew for fun. A most wonderful 5 years. Miss you Sage. ( pics 1,2,photo credits Alpine SAR)
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 13:56:45 +0000
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