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| Boeing Chinook News from Colorado |
| Colorado Guard Dings Rotor Blades |
| 15 June 2010: ALAMOSA - A Chinook helicopter, 86-01647, made a hard landing on one of the most difficult mountains to climb in Colorado on Tuesday night, while trying to save a climber who later died. It happened on Little Bear Peak, which is near Alamosa. |
| Climbers Kevin Hayne, 18, and Travis Winder, 17, both from Highlands Ranch, were climbing the rock face of Little Bear Peak in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains Tuesday when Hayne fell. |
| The Alamosa County Search and rescue says Winder immediately left to get help. |
| A spokesperson at Buckley Air Force Base says a Chinook helicopter training at Fort Carson was called to rescue a climber. |
| Buckley Air Force Base says around 7 p.m. the tail of the chopper hit part of the mountain as it tried to search for Hayne. The pilot was able to land the helicopter in a small field at 12,000 feet. A Black Hawk helicopter took the aircrew back to Fort Carson. None of the 11 crew members was injured. |
| Three civilian emergency responders made it to the hikers, but Hayne had already died. Search and rescue workers say due to nightfall they decided to wait until morning to recover Hayne's body. |
| The Chinook helicopter, assigned to Detachment 1, Company B - "Mile High Hookers", 2nd General Support Aviation Battalion (GSAB), 135th Aviation, Colorado Army National Guard, was upright and extensively damaged. A security team is guarding the helicopter until it can be removed. |
| The aircraft's aft rotor system struck the mountain twice. The first strike was at about 13,500 feet. Shaking severely, the aircraft was flown down and away from the mountain. Just prior to crash landing in a small marsh at 11,500 feet, the aft blades struck the mountain again and the aircraft landed very hard. The airframe is buckled mid-point. The aft right gear was ripped off and the ramp area was displaced upward about two feet above the cabin floor area. The aircraft is currently being dismantled for extraction by another CH-47D. |
| Little Bear Peak is at the end of the Sangre de Cristo Range and is just southwest of Blanca Peak. It is in the Rio Grande National Forest, on the border between Alamosa and Costilla Counties. Little Bear tops out at 14,037 feet above sea level. |
Aurora, Colorado |
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| 15 September 2003: Newly formed Detachment 1, Company E, 168th Aviation, Heavy Helicopter unit, based at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado received it's first CH-47D Chinook helicopter today. Tail number 84-24164, the first of seven airframes, was transferred from the Army National Guard, based at Pendleton, Oregon. The unit and approximately 110 personnel are transitioning from UH-1H helicopters to the Chinook. The Chinook will bring much needed heavy lift assets to the state. |
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