Rocky Mountain Rescue delivers to sanctuary

Lynn Volkens

01/18/2007 - As snowstorm followed snowstorm, chased by high winds, Gilpinites from North to South-County hunkered down. Digging out was done by degrees, a few hours here, a day there—whenever the weather broke long enough to make headway. That worked for most residents. Out in Wide Awake, the location of Gilpin’s wolf-dog sanctuary, it was going to take a little more than a few days of digging. The sanctuary is located on a private road, connected to a seasonal road (low priority for County maintenance) and three miles from the nearest neighbor. The Morgan family hosts the sanctuary, helping with some of the caretaking, but the animals are mainly cared for by volunteers who drive in daily to distribute food and water. It was getting more and more difficult for them to get in to the thirteen wolf-dog residents there.

  On Sunday, January 7^th, Lou Dobbs of W.O.L.F. (Wolves Offered Life and Friendship), the sanctuary’s founding organization, sent out a call for help. A Rocky Mountain Rescue team from Boulder responded. That organization had scheduled a training exercise in the Nederland area for Tuesday, January 9^th. Word went out to the rescue team, same date but a different venue, Gilpin County. By noon that Tuesday, four men had arrived at the staging area near Pickle Gulch. They brought along five snowmobiles and cargo sleds. Five W.O.L.F. volunteers met them, trucking in 500 pounds of donated food, including bundles of frozen elk meat, whole turkeys and bag upon bag of commercial dog food. Rescuers heaped the cargo sleds and ferried the goods and W.O.L.F. personnel to the sanctuary. There, the sleds were unloaded and the Rocky Mountain Rescue team was sent back to the staging area for more. Meanwhile, W.O.L.F. volunteers began stowing away the replenishments. Others squatted in the snow, cutting the raw meat into portions. They’d managed to keep immediate access to the enclosures open—at least enough to open the gates and get to the food and water containers. In between supply duties, the volunteers dug trails through the enclosures to increase the wolf-dogs’ mobility. And so went the next three hours.

  Mission accomplished: as the afternoon light faded, each wolf-dog met the night’s cold with a belly full of fresh meat. (Each animal needs one-two pounds of meat per day, more when the thermometer drops to the below freezing range.) A couple of the W.O.L.F. volunteers stayed at the sanctuary to observe any animal health issues and to ensure continued animal care. All expressed praise and gratitude to Rocky Mountain Rescue. “I’ve never seen so many doors blow open and green lights,” noted W.O.L.F. volunteer Ken Dobbs, commenting on the response to their call for help. “Everybody worked together—it was the only way we could get this meat up here.” At the staging area, the men of Rocky Mountain Rescue were loading the “sleds” into their trucks. A call had come in from nearby Boulder County, and they were off to help with another rescue.