Grand Junction, CO Via Four Wheels

We drove to Grand Junction to visit with Joe, the young man PJ helped rescued from El Diente Peak. Joe's story was published in several newspapers, I've posted the news article below.

PJ's version of Joe's mountain rescue, with some awesome-possum photos: TheHeliBase.

[Click on photos to see them enlarged]

PJ with Joe and Joe's mom. She was adorable.


There is no love greater than that of a mother for her son. I know that if that were my son, I'd hold his hand too.

The following photos were taken along our drive from Naturita, CO to Grand Junction, CO.





























Joe's story via Telluride Daily Planet:

Arizona climber rescued from El Diente

Suffered open leg fracture after 20-foot fall

By Kathrine Warren
Staff Reporter

Published: Monday, July 18, 2011 12:27 PM CDT

San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office and Search and Rescue personnel rescued an Arizona man on Sunday after he fell climbing El Diente Saturday evening.

Joe Yearm, 28, of Mesa, Ariz., was climbing by himself down El Diente after dark Saturday night when he fell off a 20-foot cliff into a snowfield suffering an open leg fracture.

He lay in the snowfield all night and Sunday morning crawled down to a scree field where he was discovered by two climbers who performed first aid and bandaged Yearm’s leg.

One of the climbers, Kenneth Nolan, of Buena Vista, activated his personal locator beacon, a small device backcountry users can activate in an emergency to send a signal with the beacon’s GPS location. The location pinpointed them about half a mile southwest of El Diente’s 14,159-foot summit, at 12,200 feet.

At about 7:40 a.m. San Miguel dispatch received a call from the International Emergency Response Coordination Center after it received Nolan’s beacon signal and Dolores and San Miguel county officials organized a search and rescue mission — El Diente lies in Dolores County’s jurisdiction.

San Miguel County Search and Rescue was activated and a helicopter owned by Heli-Dunn of Medford, Ore., and piloted by P.J. Hunt if Talkeetna, Alaska, was brought in. Heli-Dunn is in the area on a construction contract and suspended operations to help with the rescue.

At 9 a.m. San Miguel Sheriff’s Office Commander and Paramedic Eric Berg went up in the helicopter. Hunt spotted the three climbers and was able to make a “toe-in landing”— a hazardous maneuver in which the helicopter skid just barely touches the ground and the rotors are very close to the mountainside. Berg was able to exit and traverse the scree slope to the party.

Berg used the rescuing couple’s hiking poles and duct tape to splint Yearm’s leg. They then dug a short ledge in the scree so the helicopter could get a bit more stable for another landing.

At 10:12 a.m. Sunday Berg radioed that they were en route to the Telluride Airport. He was then transferred to an ambulance, which took him to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction.

Read Tuesday’s Telluride Daily Planet for more information.