Despite initially thinking he’d broken his leg, the man was found walking around under his own power. Photo: San Miguel County Sheriff // Facebook
Having a parachute fail to open is perhaps the greatest nightmare of any BASE jumper. However, a Colorado man experienced exactly that and lived to tell the tale. But that wasn’t before he managed to piss off local Search and Rescue crews by kicking off an extensive retrieval operation that he then refused assistance from.
The incident began at around 2:45 p.m. on Monday, when, according to a Facebook post by the San Miguel County Sheriff’s department, San Miguel SAR crews responded to a Garmin SOS activation in the Columbine Basin, about six miles south-southeast above Bridal Veil Falls, near Telluride. The source of the SOS turned out to be a 31-year-old Grand Junction, Colorado, resident, who said he fell between 150 and 200 feet. The man told responders that he thought he had broken his leg, couldn’t walk and needed assistance.
A response was mobilized soon after. Rescuers were transported to the area on motorcycles and UTVs, then hiked another mile and a half to reach the man. Meanwhile, a CARE Flight helicopter was deployed to a nearby landing zone, where the crew prepared to transport the patient to Montrose Regional Hospital.
However, when the ground team arrived, they found a very different scene than they were expecting. Rather than nursing a shattered leg, the would-be victim was walking around under his own power. The man, who is a member of a SAR team in another region, told rescuers that he had been BASE jumping alone off a nearby cliff when his chute failed to deploy. Despite the recommendations of the rescuers, he declined helicopter transport and said he no longer wanted assistance, before descending on foot with a friend who had hiked up to meet him.
In the Facebook post, the Sheriff’s office expressed annoyance at what it called a waste of resources. “Our SAR team consists of skilled professionals who risk their own lives to help others in need,” said Sheriff Dan Covault. “This individual chose to participate in an extremely dangerous activity alone, and particularly given his prior rescue history, his actions demonstrated a disregard for the risks involved and the resources required to rescue him. His decisions unnecessarily diverted emergency resources, including a Care Flight helicopter, that may have been needed for other emergencies. The fact that he was able to hike back down shows a profound lack of respect for the tremendous effort and resources devoted to this rescue.”
The “rescue history” referred to was a previous BASE jumping incident the man had been involved in 10 years earlier. That time, he was stranded in the Swiss Alps for 13 hours, during a rescue involving nearly two dozen rescuers and three helicopters. Though the San Miguel Sheriff’s department did not name the BASE jumper in its post, NBC News reported the Alps jumper to be Coleman Sperando, who at the time was a 21-year-old physics student at the University of Florida.
“I share your frustration with the outcome of this mission and with the time and effort dedicated to one individual who, as a SAR member himself, should have known better,” concluded Covault.
