A helicopter crew with the Utah Department of Public Safety pulled off a powerful, high-altitude rescue final Thursday within the La Sal Mountains close to Moab. The crew rescued a gaggle of three wildlife researchers, who had been collaring mountain goats within the space when their very own helicopter crashed right into a cliff. Miraculously, all three of the researchers survived the crash after sustaining solely minor accidents. They had been safely out of the mountains by round 3 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 8.
The group was conducting analysis for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, in accordance with DWR public info officer Faith Jolley. Jolley advised reporters with the Moab Sun News that the company had contracted with the non-public firm, Helicopter Wildlife Services, to additional examine the migrations and winter survival charges of mountain goats. (The species will not be native to the La Sals and was launched there in 2013.)
Officials are nonetheless investigating the crash, and Jolley defined that the privately owned helicopter was estimated to be a complete loss. The chopper went down within the Cleaver Chutes Area on Mount Tukuhnikivatz, in accordance with a spokesperson with the U.S. Forest Service.
“The cause of the accident is still under investigation, but the pilot believes it may have been caused by falling rocks, which appear to have hit the blades while the helicopter flew close to the cliff face,” Jolley mentioned yesterday.
According to the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, the crash was first reported at roughly 11:15 a.m. on Dec. 8, when “a witness in the area reported a metallic blue helicopter [going] down in steep terrain on the mountain peak but did not see any smoke or fire.”
Because of the distant location, the sheriff’s workplace requested a DPS helicopter to assist with the rescue. The helicopter crew flew to the scene of the crash, the place they had been challenged by the steep alpine terrain. Captain Luke Bowman, who piloted the rescue helicopter, advised reporters that the three researchers had been clinging to a 60- to 70-degree slope on the base of a sheer 1,000-foot cliff. He mentioned it was a miracle they didn’t slide any additional down the snow-covered mountainside.
“They had a very steep slope with a lot of runout, and you had an aluminum or metal helicopter that could have slid very easily on that slope,” Bowman mentioned in an interview with FOX-13 News. “I think they were very fortunate to not go tumbling down any further.”
After making contact with the three wildlife researchers, rescuers hoisted them into the DPS helicopter one after the other. They had been then flown to a staging space at roughly 3:15 p.m. Medical crews there decided that the researchers had suffered solely minor bumps and bruises within the crash.