At 06:15 on Friday June 4th our Team Leader sends out the text. The message is asking for volunteers for a mission in the Sandia Mountains for an overdue male subject starting at the La Luz trailhead.
Arriving at Incident Base the five of us are teamed up with members from Albuquerque Mountain Rescue and Santa Fe SAR to form a large team of ten. Our mission is to re-search the lower section of the La Luz and split up as needed to search any trails, game paths, ravines, etc. our subject could have mistakenly followed. We stop often to conduct sound sweeps and scan the terrain for clues. We split up a few times to explore the old La Luz trail and game paths.
The Bernalillio County Sheriff’s Office Bell UH-1H (Huey) joins the search in the afternoon. Around four o’clock in the afternoon the crew of the helicopter spots our subject. Our team, at this point, is working our way down the trail and is very close to the location and we quickly move to the coordinates given by the helicopter crew. Unfortunately, he did not make it.
Our sincere condolences to the family on their loss.