Mountain rescue: life and death on the line

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Mountain rescue: life and death on the line

Colorado's beautiful peaks can be deceptively dangerous. Each year, scores of people are lost;
some die. A new book, The Falling Season, takes you inside one of America's premier mountain rescue teams for a spellbinding account of the courageous men and women who put their lives on the line to
save others.

When backcountry skiers are caught in avalanches, the mountain rescue team mobilizes a search. Here, dramatic avalanche footage and a simulated search.
(Video courtesy Telluride Heli-Trax (top) and Bruce Tremper)

Excerpt from The Falling Season
A gripping account from Hal's new book.

Q&A with author Hal Clifford
Hal Clifford, author of the newly published book, The Falling Season, answered your questions about rescue work.

Why this story needed to be told
"Rescue work is very stressful; it's a place where all pretense is stripped away, and you get raw human interaction. Few people realize that these aren't a bunch of hardbody Lone Rangers; these are ordinary people struggling with egos and feelings, wickedly critical of each other--yet willing to put their life on the line for a fellow team member."
--Author Hal Clifford

Excerpts from The Falling Season
"If I think it's messy, brutal, if I think somebody is going to die and scream and fight and leave us all with nightmares for a year, I'm going to send the people I think can handle it. If you're afraid of fire, and I send you out on a downed plane where there are six charred bodies, it's probably going to do things to your psyche that I can't imagine. I don't want to do that to you."
--Rescue leader Tom McCabe