More and more Colorado search and rescue groups are using drones in backcountry missions — not only to search for missing people but to drop care packages, scout for safe routes and even lift heavy objects up to rescuers.
When Brent Cartwright, who is now the head of Vail Mountain Rescue’s drone program, joined the rescue group five years ago, he said the drone technology was bulky and difficult to use in the backcountry.
“I was scared of the drone, because it was this huge thing to assemble,” Cartwright said. “It was kind of like an IKEA project. You had to put it all together, each individual propeller, and change out the lenses. I don’t see how that thing could have ever found anybody.”
Now, Cartwright said Vail Mountain Rescue uses drones on a wide range of missions as the technology has improved. He said the rescue group went from having four drone pilots when he joined to having 15 pilots today.
In interviews, drone pilots on Colorado’s all-volunteer rescue groups described how drone technology has advanced in recent years and how they’ve tested the technology, grown their drone programs and found new ways to deploy drones in the state’s vast and often rugged backcountry.
Equipped with infrared cameras and AI software, drones are not only able to find people faster in many situations, but they provide situational awareness for mission coordinators, reduce risk for rescue volunteers and can provide comfort to those awaiting rescue in the backcountry, the rescue volunteers said.
Drones are used to search avalanche debris, mountainsides and riverbanks quicker than teams can on foot, and can help mission coordinators scope routes through precarious terrain or light up the route at night.
In Douglas County, the search and rescue group once used a drone to drop food and water to a 10-year-old who got lost miles out on an ATV.
In Mesa County last summer, a research and development program that is part of the Colorado Department of Fire Prevention and Control worked with rescuers to deploy a heavy-duty drone to carry 600-feet of rope and other heavy supplies to rescuers during a mission.
“There’s a lot of cool things that are happening,” Douglas County Search and Rescue volunteer Darren Keralla said. “We’re finding that drones are obviously valuable to search, but just as valuable on the rescue-side of the house.”
One of the things that makes drones so useful for backcountry rescue missions is the speed with which they can be deployed.
While it could take rescuers hours to access an area on foot, drones can easily be flown up trails, into steep canyons and couloirs or over vast terrain to help locate people, according to the search and rescue volunteers.
“The best thing about it is the speed,” Rennke said. “We can get it up and cover a mile in a couple of minutes in really rough terrain and stand a couple hundred feet from the bottom of a cliff or a slope and fly it to the top.”
When an 80-year-old man went missing near State Bridge along the Colorado River, Cartwright said Vail Mountain Rescue “found him straight away … in a place that our teams hadn’t necessarily thought he was going to be” with the drone’s thermal camera.”
Rescue groups across the state are using AI software like Eagle Eyes Search, a program that can detect color anomalies and movement in drone images, to help in backcountry missions, according to the search and rescue volunteers.
Douglas County Search and Rescue Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Team Lead Darren Keralla said that software can help drone pilots spot things that they would otherwise not and could be used to pinpoint the particular color of a missing person’s jacket, for example.
“You take a 12 megapixel picture with this drone and that’s 12 million pixels that are now running through an algorithm and it’s looking for any unnatural color in that picture,” Keralla said. “Where that’s very helpful is if you are flying large areas of mountain terrain and you’re taking a whole bunch of pictures.”
When a person’s location is known, like when rescuers have coordinates from a cellphone ping, drones can get to the person sooner to help assess the situation and even communicate with the subject.
When a 10-year-old boy got lost riding his ATV in the Rampart Range area in December 2024, Douglas County Search and Rescue flew a drone to the boy’s location to confirm he was there, Keralla said. He said he was able to use a speaker on the drone to ask the boy if he was OK, and received a thumbs up.
Because the boy was so far out in the backcountry and it would take a while for rescuers to get to him, Keralla then flew the drone back out to him with supplies like a power bar, water and a thermal blanket.
Search and rescue members said drones can provide peace of mind to those who are stuck in the backcountry. For example, Summit County Rescue Group member Mark Svenson said the group’s drone team, which just launched its drone program about two years ago, recently used a drone to spotlight hikers lost on Buffalo Mountain, making it easier for rescuers to find them.
“It sort of provides this sense of relief for folks out in the field when they have to wait for hours for people on foot to reach them,” Mesa County Search and Rescue volunteer Lizzy Depew said. “They can think ‘OK, well, they know where we’re at. Maybe things aren’t so bad.'”
During a multi-day body recovery last summer on Mount Garfield, Depew said rescuers spent hours “tramping around” in the August heat looking for an access route, to no avail. Mount Garfield is steep with extremely loose terrain and “massive amounts of football sized rocks were falling,” she said.
Eventually, the rescue group chose access from below, but had to use ice axes and crampons to scale the side, despite it being summer. With the risky ascent, Depew said there was no way rescuers would be able to carry all the gear they would need.
So, the rescue group worked with the Colorado Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting, where Depew works, to have a heavy DJI Fly Cart 30 — a drone that can carry more than 50 pounds — to lift 600-feet of rope, rebar, a mini sledge, a rescue stretcher and some Gatorade up to the rescuers.
“To our knowledge it was one of the first times it had been done in the U.S., where some larger drone had been used to haul significant amounts of gear into a mission instead of just in testing,” Depew said.
The Center of Excellence is the research and development section within the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control. In a statement, Center of Excellence Marketing and Communications Manager Dana Way said, “drones have become indispensable, innovative tools that strengthen public safety operations throughout Colorado.”
The Center of Excellence has also developed the Colorado Team Awareness Kit, or COTAK, a software that provides real-time location information for first responders. Search and rescue volunteers described using COTAK to plot the locations of their team members and said it can be integrated with drones to livestream video footage of rescue scenes.
Grand County Search and Rescue member Lynn Trainor said that one of the main ways the rescue group uses drones is to “provide overwatch.” Trainor said, “there ends up being less radio chatter, because mission leaders can actually see what is going on.”
She said the rescue group has used drones to direct rescuers around difficult terrain, like deadfall, and to check avalanches for “hangfire,” or unstable snow that could result in another slide.
In Custer County, search and rescue volunteer Jamie Foote pitched the idea of a drone team in 2023, after he began using his personal drone on missions and it proved useful. The small search and rescue team of about 30 people often receives calls from the Crestones, a set of four 14,000-foot peaks in a remote, rugged wilderness area.
“The main purpose of getting the drone program going was to lessen our risk for rescuers and our team members when we do have to go into that technical terrain,” Foote said.
As drone technology continues to take off, Colorado search and rescue group members said they expect to find more uses for drones in the backcountry in the years to come.
Svenson said that the lifting capabilities of drones would have practical uses in Summit County and other locations with rugged terrain.
“Our guys would love it if we could fly litters and ropes and stuff up to a location so we’re just bringing it down with a patient,” he said. “That’s big. That’s on the horizon.”
While Vail Mountain Rescue has yet to deploy the techniques in the backcountry, Cartwright said the team has practiced shuttling small objects like headlamps and radios with drones and has experimented with using drones to drag throw ropes over the river.
With rescue groups across Colorado using drones, Keralla has organized statewide trainings and created a Discord channel for search and rescue drone pilots to talk about how they’re using drones, troubleshoot problems and ask questions. He said he only expects drones to be used in more backcountry rescues moving forward.
“The future? Man, it’s iterating. It’s happening very quickly,” Keralla said. “That’s a good thing for what we’re doing. The more advanced we get, the more lives we can potentially save.”
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