By Amy Bounds
The Daily Camera
LONGS PEAK, Colo. — Rescuers brought Rebecca Stubbs, a 20-year-old student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, out of the backcountry at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, ending a long rescue after she fell that morning while climbing east of Longs Peak.
Stubbs, whose hometown is in Massachusetts, sustained multiple, serious injuries, but none of the injuries are life-threatening, said Larry Frederick, a spokesman for Rocky Mountain National Park. She was conscious and alert when rescuers reached her around noon and remained conscious throughout the rescue.
She was in a party of five and left the Longs Peak Trailhead at 4 a.m. with the goal of climbing 13,191-foot Mount Meeker. Just before 8 a.m., the climbers put on their crampons to start across a steep, icy slope above Peacock Pool in the Chasm Lake area just east of Longs Peak. Stubbs fell and slid 200 feet down slope.
Park rangers received a call for help through a satellite tracker around 8 a.m. and left immediately, Frederick said. After stabilizing the woman, it took rescuers until 5:20 p.m. to bring her up the steep slope.
A total of 22 rescuers then began moving Stubbs roughly three miles to the Longs Peak Trailhead, arriving around 11:30 p.m. She was taken by ambulance to the Estes Park Medical Center.
Boulder’s Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, Larimer Country Search and Rescue and a paramedic from the Estes Park Medical Center assisted in the rescue.
Copyright 2011 Prairie Mountain Publishing