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December 4, 1978. 7:39 PM

FAA radio traffic rolled and faded. Back and forth, at first routine then building in
anxiety, the radio squelched and hissed between Denver Center in Longmont, Colorado
and Rocky Mountain Airways Flight 217, somewhere east of Steamboat Springs.

Rocky Mountain 217 “Center… Be aware that we have a little problem here.”

Denver Center “Rocky Mountain 217 – What’s your approximate location?”

Rocky Mountain 217 “We’re Victor 101 crossing the 335 Kremmling”… (garble)
… 13,000… (garble)

Denver Center “Rocky Mountain 217. Go ahead, sir.”

Denver Center “Rocky Mountain 217. Go ahead. Rocky Mountain 217,
(in a voice becoming do you copy? Denver Center to Flight 217 ... Denver
ever more urgent) Center, how do you read? ... over ... do you copy, over ...”

Flight 217, a DeHavilland Twin

Otter, launched from Steamboat
Springs and flew for forty-five
minutes, but it had gotten only a
short distance. In the normal time it
takes to get by air from Steamboat to
Denver, they had welded heavy coats
of ice to their wings. The loss of lift
and an untimely clash with a vicious
mountain wave kept them from
Rocky Mountain Airways Twin Otter boarding at the Steamboat
climbing high enough to make it Springs airport.
over the mountains ahead. In
desperation, they turned back. But as their altitude fell, they missed the navigation
markers and when ice on the plane’s antennas built and transmissions fried to
intermittent, Flight 217 fought, thrashed, then surrendered … and was gone.

In the middle of a dark night in the core of Colorado’s toughest terrain — in the middle
of nowhere — in the middle of a heart-pounding winter storm, with blinding snow and
winds chilled to 50 below, on a night that as one investigator put it “The sky was so thick
that if you’d thrown a brick into it … it wouldn’t have come down” ... in this cauldron,
Flight 217 was down and for the next fifteen hours dreadful consequence played hide and
seek with the most successful rescue team ever fielded by the Civil Air Patrol.

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 The Civil Air Patrol is among a
handful of America’s most highly
trained and qualified volunteer
frontline first responders. When a
plane goes down, they fly, drive,
race, and run to help. This is the
story of the largest single mission Even in fair weather, the mountains between Steamboat Springs
and the Front Range present a rugged and complex challenge,
save in CAP history, the story of even for experienced SAR crews.
Rocky Mountain Airways Flight
217, on December 4th, 1978.

THE KICKOFF

Along the Front Range of Colorado. 8:05 PM

Denver was cloudy and seasonably frosty. The Chargers and the Bears had just kicked off
on Monday Night Football. Dinner was done and a cold night settled in. At Earl and
Betty Berger’s house in Boulder emergency radios crackled to life, phones rang, and
nearly simultaneously at Sonny Elgin’s house, 25 miles
east of Denver, and at Jim Alsum’s in Aurora, too.

“RedRiver-50 Stand by, RedRiver-17 Stand by,

RedRiverR-19 Stand By, RedRiver-145 Stand by.”

Each woman and man came to their radio, each cross-

checked their phone. Each stood by.

Jim Alsum is nothing if not his own man. A Denver

area home builder by trade with a crew of fit young
men, Jim had put together a team that was hearty
enough for the weather, talented enough for the work,
Sonny Elgin, CAP ES Director at
the time of the Flight 217 rescue. and equipped to get the mission done. Jim’s team
included his two sons, Jerry and Dan Alsum, Rick
Hopp, Don Niekirk, and on this night, Harry Blakeman, and Stan Kilgore. From up and
down the northern Front Range of Colorado men slipped quietly but quickly into layers
of winter gear. They picked their personal supplies from storage closets, sorted through
their search and rescue bags — added or dumped as needed for the mission — and
“stood-by” for what sounded like a big “Red Cap.”

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Each will describe the next few
minutes in his own way, from
tense anticipation full of
adrenaline to the night’s last
quiet moments. From Mission
Command at Scott Air Force
Base near St. Louis came the first
call, the request for tributaries of
CAP Rescuers from little and big
towns in the mountains and along
the Front Range. These tributaries merged into a Top: A reunion in
early 2008 of some
river of response, swelling and surging. To look of the CAP rescue
crew (left to right:
for, to find, to help rescue the twenty-two on Rick Hopp, Don
Niekirk, Dan Alsum,
board Flight 217. Jim Alsum.
Right: Jerry Alsum.
At Jim’s house, son Dan Alsum double-checked
the just-completed Rescue Trailer and found it, as
it always was, ready to go. He’d just add water,
five gallons out of the tap and into the container. Dan swung the trailer and hitched it to
the Jimmy SUV. Meanwhile, his older brother Jerry, the only EMT on the team, sorted
through medical supplies and figured, “we might need everything.”

Colonel Sonny Elgin, Incident Commander, and Major Jim Alsum, Team Leader, were
the organizers of the Colorado CAP Emergency Services Team. These men had put
together a bunch of carpenters and construction workers — financed from their own
pockets along with other ad-hoc sources — and dropped them into a search and rescue
training regime that few crews —professional, volunteer, or military, will likely ever
duplicate. It was a blue collar crew, a get your “damn boots in the mud bunch,” forged
through numerous missions, and it was spooling up to roll.

This team had an astonishing blend of sage wisdom and fire in the belly bravado but most
of all, they were a team. By the time Flight 217 went down they’d already done 50
searches and a few saves. Before they finished their rescue careers they’d do hundreds
more. From 1974 through 2003 this team saved 50 people, participated in 300-plus search
and rescue operations, and found 175 to 200 crash-sites or wrecks where, as Jim put it:
“Places [that were] filled with the dead and the ‘just fine.’ When a plane goes down in
Colorado, there are the lucky and the dead … there’s no in-betweens.’” On the night of

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December 4th, 1978, they faced a daunting task with the growing confidence that
experience brings. But, Jerry Alsum was right, tonight they’d “need everything.”

THE GATHERING

8:45 PM — Midnight

Within forty-five minutes of the first call, gear and men were locked and loaded. They
gathered from various suburbs and hamlets in the plains east of Denver, Ft. Collins, and
Boulder, hurriedly filling their tanks with gas and talking plans, set-ups, and options over
their radios.

Harry Blakeman told them to meet in the Idaho Spring Safeway parking lot. Within an
hour everyone arrived. Don Niekirk took out a little L-per and got a signal. “We’d made
personal bets among ourselves,” said Jim Alsum, “that we wouldn’t get a signal here. We
were surprised.” None of the team needed much encouragement to keep moving, “but
that ELT beacon — knowing that people might be alive and waiting — ‘made it real.’”
The time was 9:45 PM. Flight 217 had been down for a little less than two hours.

Walden

High Voltage
Powerline

Steamboat
Springs

The high voltage powerline that transversed the terrain to the northeast of Steamboat Springs, running
over Buffalo Pass, became a critical element in the search for the missing Flight 217.

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Up I-70 through the Eisenhower Tunnel, the caravan drove fast, faster than was probably
prudent in the worsening conditions. Snow is usual up here this time of year, but as they
made the turn at Silverthorn, black ice stacked up and the visibility dropped. Over
Highway 9 they drove north, faster now, slipping between Green Mountain Reservoir on
one side and the William’s Fork Mountains on the other … into little ditches and back on
to the road through the treacherous weather, catching scraping blows from bulwarks of
plowed snow that chafed bumpers and chattered under fenders. Except for the CAP
caravan, traffic was non-existent. It must have looked like a “conga line of drunks” said
one rescuer, “but we were relentless.” The next gathering spot was Kremmling. “Wasted
time met dying people, so we just kept going.”

An Air Force C-130 Hercules working that night near Grand Junction had been re-tasked
by Scott Air Base to fly toward Flight 217’s emergency beacon. They reported the signal
to be near Hebron, Colorado. Other teams picked up echoes and ricochets of the plane’s
ELT seemingly everywhere. From Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Grand Junction, Colorado,
there were spurious emanations, eradicate and misleading. The atmospherics and terrain
played mischief with the emergency signal. But there was something more, something

HIGH VOLTAGE
POWERLINE

GRIZZLY CREEK
CAMPGROUND

CRASH SITE

A satellite image of the search area, photographed during a greener season. The white circle on the right
is the Grizzly Creek Campground. The white circle on the left is are where the powerline crosses Buffalo
Pass.

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unusual and never experienced before by any in the team. That puzzle is what makes the
next piece of the story even more remarkable, some might say miraculous.

Sonny Elgin put two and two together but came up with 1, 3 or 5, and so did everybody
else. The standard ELT signal pattern was errant and illusive, an erratic barrage that
masked any sense of a hard target. In spite of this, the search area was focused down to
about 500 square miles. Still too large an area to properly search in this weather. Too
large an area to work in a coordinated fashion. Too large a territory in which to play hide
and seek.

Sonny had grown up in Steamboat Springs. He’d learn to fly in this same piece of
territory. As recently as the previous year he’d been elk hunting on the same ground
where another vital clue began unlocking the pieces of the predicament. Sonny heard on
the radio of a momentary power surge on the main electric lines coming over Buffalo
Pass. Lights in a single town had flickered, but just for an instant. Luminosity from all
over the valley had wavered, dimmed and brightened just about the time the plane went
down. As Sonny drove deeper into the blizzard, he worked this information deeper into
his head.

“The sky just fell in and took a plane with it.” Jackson County Sheriff’s dispatcher.

THE SEARCH

Midnight — 2:45 AM

Along the route the group stopped periodically to take out the direction finding gear. At
one of the stops the CAP team came across an under-sheriff who said he’d seen a flash to
the northwest and sent other teams to search around
Muddy Pass.

But to Sonny and Jim’s crew the best plan was to

push toward Hebron, an intersection with a single
house. The snow got deeper. Ice pellets bombarded
the direction finders. Ice clung to everything in the
same way it likely had the antennas, the flying
surfaces, and the body of Flight 217. The same ice
probably tormenting survivors, if there were any,
wherever they were. Jim Alsum remembers, “it was David Lindow’s snowcat in action in the Colorado
high country in severe winter conditions.
miserable, just miserable.” A tractor trailer with a

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 snowcat on board passed the team. They flagged it down. Inside the cab was David
Lindow, the snowcat’s owner-operator, and Steve Paulsen, a member of Rocky Mountain
Rescue, also on the hunt. The teams merged. As the DF signals kept pointing west, this
ad-hoc group, and a well-used but good-to-go old snowcat headed west, too.

A few miles later the plowed road gave out and the 4-wheel drives could make it no further.
The location was the parking lot at the Grizzly Creek Campground. They dismounted and
planned the next move. Sonny knew there was good chance this was it ... the plane had most
likely contacted the wires of a 230,000 volt transmission line that ran over Buffalo Pass at
10,300 feet, a major electrical conduit and the
probable source of the power surge. This high
voltage line and its connecting towers were
charged with the induced energy and radio
signals coming from the ELT. Instead of a
steady single source, the signal moved and
flowed “everywhere that line traveled,”
Sonny thought. In his mental re-enactment of
the plane’s actions, he reasoned they’d
probably find it up high and near the wires at
Ranger cabin at the Grizzly Creek campground during
the snowstorm of December 4-5. the top of the pass. The time was 2:45 AM,
December 5th.

THE FIND

2:45 — 6:00 AM

Jim Alsum sorted out his team. He and Sonny would work the radios and set up a base
camp. Jerry Alsum, the only EMT present, and Steve Paulsen of Rocky Mountain Rescue
would set out on David Lindow’s snowcat, along with Don Niekirk (an experienced
rescuer who had just begun his EMT training). Jim and Sonny saw a Ranger’s cabin at
the end of the parking lot. That would become the Rescue Base. The pace quickened as
the weather got worse. Jerry, Dan Alsum, Don Niekirk, and Steve Paulsen organized the
trauma kit, back boards, casualty bags, blankets, and the other gear and loaded the
snowcat’s tiny cargo bed. With room for David and one more in the cab — the gear,
Jerry, and Steve rode in the back, unprotected — it would be a tight fit along a bumpy
forest service road, for an unknown distance and to an unknown destination.

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Sonny and Jim broke into the cabin and started a fire in the stove. Other rescue teams had
moved closer from their assembly points in Walden and Kremmling. As soon as the plane
was found they’d get all the help that could be marshaled. That said, no one could move
until the CAP found the plane. Every hope crowded into the cab of that little snowcat;
every ounce of faith rode exposed with the CAP that night.

Jerry Alsum later recalled, “We were up the trail about two miles when we decided to
take a reading on the ELT. The reading was sketchy and multi-directional but headed us
toward the top of the pass. We decided to continue … we saw a sign that said ‘Rough
Road, 4 wheel drive only.’ We knew we were on the right road.”

Each time the rescue team took a reading they’d call back with their approximate location
and where the signal pointed. Sonny had been right, the electric lines were the key. David
Lindow kept trying one road after another. A logging road would look promising one
moment but head the wrong direction the next. With the weather down and the visibility
bad, the tortuous trek was maddening. Don and Steve held on tight. It was a labyrinthine
three hours of DFing, backing up, changing directions, but the ELT signal kept
improving. From base camp Sonny and Jim urged them to, “head toward the wires,”
“look for the towers,” and “stay under the lines.”

The snowcat-crew was in danger of rolling off the mountain many times. The ability to
see was near zero as the roads got narrower, steeper, and worse. The treachery of the
conditions obliged caution to their every effort and so it
went until about 6:00 AM. They were nearly 13 miles
from base camp but finally under the wires. They
stopped.

Steve Paulsen and Don Niekirk stepped to the rear of the

snowcat to take another DF. David Lindow and Jerry
Alsum were in front, looking down a very steep ravine.
Certain that they shouldn’t go down it unless they could
get back up, they hesitated. It was quiet.

In the silence, they heard ... voices, Jerry heard voices. An image of the crash scene taken from film
footage shot by Channel 9 (KUSA, Denver).
David heard voices. They were not far away. The voices
were coming from the trees directly ahead. Nothing was
visible but these voices were distinct and real. Jerry transmitted a radio message, “Base
camp … we found the plane and there are SURVIVORS!” It was 6:04 AM.

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 THE SAVE

While the snowcat crew pushed their way to the crash site,
new rescue parties made their way to the Ranger Cabin
base camp. Two more snowcats, a sheriff’s patrol, a Rocky
Mountain Rescue team, and the Steamboat Ski Patrol filled
the parking lot of the campground with a rescue force
nearing seventy-five. While they waited for signs of life,
options were weighed and assignments made. The wind
chill belligerently clung to 50 below. Additional Image taken from onsite film
footage from Channel 9.
When the initial radio call came in, the number-one follow-
on team at Grizzly Creek Base Camp mounted up and charged toward the precious
sounds of life. It headed up the same tortuous trail, filled with the same incessant blind
alleys, back-trackings, and red-herring routes. It would take another hour or two for them
to arrive on-scene.

Jerry reported later that David and he “went about 50 yards and looked off to our right ...
In the glow of our headlights we saw people waving along [and] what looked like the tail
of the plane. There were no trees around the plane so David headed straight for it.” Jerry
asked David if he thought they could get back up the sharply descending grade … David
shot back, “I don’t care, do you?”

“We could see five or six people standing near the

front of the plane one of them holding a baby. We
had no idea there was a baby…”

Left: The rescued baby after he had been carried down to the
triage site. Below: An excerpt from the incident report typed
shortly after by Jerry Alsum.

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Jerry reported, “We have many survivors!” The first
people appeared to be in shock but could walk and
talk. “Passenger John Pratt walked forward to greet
us. He seemed to be in good shape with just a bump
over his eye.” Don Niekirk headed to the cockpit
and Jerry to the back of the plane. Both men
reported that their first impression, the one that still
lives with them and still makes them pause … was a
terrible smell. Both men reeled from this nose-
splitting surprise.

Jerry recollected his first view inside the baggage

compartment and cabin: “The scene was that of people laying
one atop the other with legs and arms intertwined. It was hard
to tell where one person started and another ended. We threw
in some blankets so they could cover themselves.”

With the next report more snowcats and personnel headed Additional images from the Channel 9
film depict the mangled wreckage of
toward the pass. Temporary first-aid was administered at the the Twin Otter, which complicated the
extraction of some of the victims, and
crash site. The flight crew seemed bad off. The Captain the proximity to towers of the high
voltage power line.
(Scott Klopfenstein) had been in the left seat but had already
been moved by the passengers to the baggage area along with
another woman, Mary Kay Hardin. Jerry said he “black tagged” them both. (Triage
shorthand for survivors who wouldn’t likely survive much longer and therefore wouldn’t
receive immediate attention. At this point Ms. Hardin, the passenger, was dead; Capt.
Klopfenstein would die four days later.)

First Officer Gary Coleman was buried to the chest in snow that had leaked and blown in
through the broken cockpit’s windscreen, then hardened to ice. His core temperature was
in the mid-80s, but the cold kept him from bleeding out. Don Niekirk and soon Rick
Hopp, then Dan Alsum (who arrived at the site on snowmobiles) all worked with what
tools they could scavenge to free the frozen man. Pipes, knives, and skis were all there
was for digging, a task that took an hour. Mr. Coleman was awake for much of it.

About this time the Incident Command responsibility was passed to the Sheriff’s
Department. Sonny and Jim assisted as evacuees were taken first to the triage center in
the rangers cabin, checked over by a Doctor and EMTs, and then sped to hospitals in
surrounding communities.

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By 11:45 AM the mountain had been cleared of the living and the dead. The parking lot at
Grizzly Creek Campground was busy for a few more hours but it fell quiet by 2 PM. The
mountain was turned over to the NTSB security and investigation teams for further
processing.

Snapshots of the Grizzly Creek Campground during the snowstorm early in the day on December 5th.
The ranger’s cabin and the parking lot were transformed into a triage center. From onsite film footage
from Channel 9.

THE AFTERMATH

• The NTSB judged that Rocky Mountain Airways Capt. Scott Klopfenstein, who died
several days after his evacuation, shouldn’t have taken off in the conditions. Likely, he
was spurred on by the company’s “no pay for no haul” rules, meaning if the captain
didn’t fly he’d wouldn’t be paid for that haul. It is the same as being docked pay.
However, it has been noted that Captain Klopfenstein had flown that same route earlier
in the day without incident.

• The NTSB also found that if the Flight 217 crew had been wearing shoulder harnesses,
the injuries to Capt. Klopfenstein and First Officer Gary Coleman would have likely
been less severe. Due to this accident, it is now required by the FAA that all Cockpit
Flight Crew in commuter craft as well as larger planes wear shoulder harnesses.

• Technology played a critical role in the rescue of Flight 217. In 1978, Emergency
Locator Transmitters (ELTs) were not required on all planes, but this incident
demonstrated the value of such a resource. All planes are now required to fly with an
ELT.

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• And critically, rescue resources worked. Although many teams were involved, they had
a single goal, and through interoperability, a comprehensive rescue plan, and
benchmarked standards, they saved the day. They saved twenty lives.

THE STORY’S CHARACTERS

The Baby. Eight-month-old Mathew Kotts sat on his mother’s lap throughout the flight
and during the accident. The fact that he was only lightly injured seems to defy physics or
explanation. His face (in photos) and his personal drama became the center of the press
coverage at the time. He is now a 30-year-old CFI-II in Steamboat Springs. He has never
met his rescuers.

The First Officer. Gary Coleman lived to fly again, although he never had the vigor to
fly for Rocky Mountain Airways again over this same route in winter. A few years after
this incident, during the summer, when the Alsum team was out climbing Long’s Peak on
a conditioning hike, they came across Mr. Coleman. They talked to him about the day.
On this his memory was hazy and given his state at that time, no one should wonder why.

On-board Heroes. The first rescuers at the scene report there was no panic. Clothes had
been scavenged from the baggage compartment. Some remedial medical treatment had
been given. Through many hours in a long-suffering night amid the cold were two voices
who kept order, organized the scene, and made plans for what looked like a long wait:
David Erb, then 29, and John Pratt, 20 years old and a former Eagle Scout.

On-scene Heroes. The CAP teams, three local county sheriff’s departments, Rocky
Mountain Rescue, Dave Lindow, the State Patrol, the Red Cross, approximately 75 other
rescuers who were gathered at the scene, and hundreds of unnamed and unknown people
standing by or digging in from Scott Air Force Base and Ft. Carson. “God Bless Them
All!”

Gerald (Jerry) Alsum. Currently the senior paramedic of the Aurora Colorado Fire
Department. While a CAP member, Jerry received an additional Medal of Valor for
saving a life. He also has many fire department commendations, but he is most proud of
his service the night of December 4th and 5th, 1978.

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