Story Update: Search and Rescue Missions at Mount Quandary’s “Escape Hatch” are as Terrifying as they are Unique
At the top of Mount Quandary in Summit County, Colo., enticing views of Blue Lake and the car parking area next to it can persuade even an experienced hiker to take a shortcut down the mountain.
It looks like an off-trail shortcut to Blue Lake, and if a hiker is tired, it resembles something more like Godsend.
The topography looks accommodating. That is, until it begins to steepen at an accelerating rate to a point where the hiker comes face-to-face with cliff bands. If they can meander their way through them, they are met with a vertical cliff face.
“Hikers will try to pick their way through those cliff bands and will eventually get to the point that they can’t go down, yet they can’t go back up,” said Charles Pitman, a mission coordinator at Summit County Search and Rescue.
With no way down and the only way back up being a terrifyingly-steep scramble, hikers will call Summit County Search and Rescue to the scene.
Rescuers call it being “cliffed-out.” That location is so common for rescue missions to take place that they have bolted a route up to it and called it “the escape hatch.”
Getting someone down the hatch isn’t easy, and it can take all night to do so.
“These are pretty much all night rescue missions, with technical climbing,” Pitman said. “Rappelling for a non-climber is rather unnerving, especially at 1:00 a.m.”
Because of this, the impact search and rescues have on the rescuers themselves are harrowing. That, in essence, will be the focus of my story.
I have a contact at Summit County Search and Rescue who I will interview via Facebook live. His name is Charles Pitman, whom I’ve quoted above. He contributed an interview to my original reporting of this story and will be the main character that drives the narrative of this story forward.
I want to uncover how the rescue missions he has participated in have impacted not only his life, but the lives of those around him. It’s not just the rescue team that has emotional ties to the nature of their work. Their friends and family are deeply impacted, especially if the circumstances of the rescue are potentially deadly.
Using Snap Chat to create a 1:30 video could be fatal if the stories do not upload properly. That is why Instagram in this case is the better alternative, because I can shoot the clips etc on my phone and then upload them as a batch to my story. That method seems much more secure, and I won’t be having panic attacks after I record each clip.
Adornato offers some good advice about reporting on the spot with mobile devices in Chapter 5 of his book, Mobile and Social Media Journalism: A Practical Guide. His first bit of advice is one that I just mentioned — it’s one that Dr. Ryan and I hashed out in our one-on-one together. I simply cannot trust Verizon’s cell service on the spot at a 14er.
I must admit, I take Adornato’s equipment advice pretty seriously because I am not all that tech savvy myself. I want to bring a little monopod with a stabilizer for my phone to make my shots more cinematic…hopefully. I’ll need to practice with it beforehand. I’ll be sure to bring a quality microphone to use for my live interview as well.
“Your ‘office’ as a journalist is, well, just about anywhere,” Adornato says. “Odds are you won’t be returning to the newsroom to write and “file” most stories.”
He’s right in my case, and I need to make sure I remember his advice while I’m out reporting in the field.
Medium will be the meat of my story. I feel confident that the best way I can convey this story is through the written word. The social media elements will only supplement my blog posts. Live interviews, video stories on Instagram and visuals like info graphics will be incorporated into the blog to keep it “hip.”
My goal is to somehow film or get clips of the escape hatch, or even better, of an actual rescue mission taking place on the hatch. But, I plan on documenting the dangers of hiking 14ers like Quandary alone throughout the climb. I’ll highlight areas that Search and Rescue believe to be of concern and offer advice to novice hikers who are allured by Colorado’s 14ers.
And lastly, for experimental, Vero should suffice for the content I am trying to curate. That is, it’s a great platform to curate a page of links to my stories, other people’s stories, images, videos etc. I can upload info graphics and make sure my blog automatically uploads to Vero upon publication.
Do you have any ideas that can make this story more unique? I’d love to hear them.
