Beaver Creek searchers sought peace for family

BEAVER CREEK, Coloradoo — Mary Brake’s 9-year-old daughter walked up to Lt. Dave Becker and gave him a note thanking him for looking for her mother in raging Beaver Creek.

That was June 23, the day authorities suspended their search for Brake, a 56-year-old prominent Lincoln, Neb., Realtor who disappeared after she fell off a horse while crossing Beaver Creek. Brake, her husband and daughter were headed to Beano’s Cabin, an upscale restaurant on Beaver Creek Mountain only accessible by horseback, sleigh, tractor-pulled wagon or shuttle.

Becker had arrived the day before with seven other members of the Metro Dive Team, a group of 70 divers total from five fire departments and districts on the Front Range.

“I wish we could give the family some closure, I really do,” said Becker, leader of the dive team and a member of South Metro Fire Rescue.

Rescuers like Becker from 16 different agencies braved cold whitewater, steep drops and fallen trees, and searched in varying depths of water — from around knee-deep to 10 feet — for Brake.

Authorities worked more than a total of 2,100 hours during three-and-a half-days, the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office said. The search, in which authorities from throughout Colorado participated, covered almost all the three-and-a-half miles of Beaver Creek.

An ambulance crew from the Eagle County Ambulance District waited in case anyone was injured. The area also was searched by Clear Creek County Search and Rescue and from the air by the Colorado National Guard High Altitude Aviation Training Center.

Creek’s running high

Justin Ayer, engineer for the Eagle River Fire Protection District, works at a fire station along Beaver Creek, a short distance downstream from where Brake fell into a calmer area of the creek that horseback riders cross to get to Beano’s Cabin.

In spring, Ayer saw an incredible rise in the creek, which runs at a trickle during the winter.

“At this level, it’s pretty dangerous,” said Ayer, who worked with members of the dive team.

Two Eagle River fire engines and some other firefighters arrived minutes after Brake fell into the creek, he said. She was nowhere in sight.

Ayer still has a hard time imagining how Brake went missing, he said.

“It’s a tiny little creek in the winter,” he said. “That’s the thing that everyone said.”

Lt. Chip Carney of Eagle River fire also worked with members of the dive team to recover Brake’s body. Carney’s group started near the fire station and ended at Beaver Creek Chapel the third day of the search.

The next day, they went from the chapel to Elkhorn lift. That afternoon, they searched downstream from the scene of the accident, around 100 yards upstream from a water tank.

The number of authorities involved and the long hours spent looking for Brake made the search unique, Carney said.

“I have been a raft guide in the valley for 15 years and a swift water technician all those years and have never been involved in something that intense,” Carney said.

Searchers were in water up to their chests in spots — everyone did their best, he said.

“Its’ going to take the water level coming down until we can get in there and find her,” he said.

Shannon Cordingly, a spokeswoman with the Sheriff’s Office, declined to say when recovery efforts are expected to resume and under what specific conditions that would take place. Eagle County Sheriff Joe Hoy has said the search will resume when “more opportune conditions exist.”

‘Time-consuming, hard work’

The terrain that the dive team encountered was quite different from past operations in the mountains, said Lt. Dustin Horn, of the West Metro Fire Protection District.

The team typically works in the Denver metro area, and their specialties include whitewater search and rescue — a great deal of which have taken place on Clear Creek — and in lakes, which are sometimes frozen, team members said.

On narrow, steep Beaver Creek, Horn and others, wearing wet suits and helmets, had to navigate the creek, rife with drops, log jams and rock crevices that could easily trap them.

Rescuers did a “top-notch job,” said Becker, who has done a number of missions in Colorado’s high country. The Sheriff’s Office and Vail Mountain Rescue Group “brought in the absolute best resources that were needed to complete the mission,” Becker said. “Unfortunately we didn’t find her, which happens.”

Beaver Creek ran so swiftly that rescuers had ropes connected to harnesses on their life jackets while they searched in the creek.

Authorities stood on the shore holding those ropes as other rescuers searched each side of the river. Searchers could have disconnected the ropes from their life jackets if they were swept underwater.

Other rescuers stood guard downstream with “throw-bags,” with a long rope inside that can be thrown to someone stranded in whitewater. Once the person grabs hold, the rope swings like a pendulum and the current brings that person to shore.

Switching places every 15 to 20 minutes due to cold water, authorities slowly searched with long and short metal and bamboo poles, and at times getting on their knees and feeling under water and rocks with their hands.

The morning of the final day of the search, authorities found a blanket from the saddle of Brake’s horse and a sweatshirt, which the family confirmed was not Brake’s, Becker said.

“It’s time-consuming, hard work,” Becker said. “We’re going through brush and trees and things the whole time. It just beats you up.”



Staff Writer Steve Lynn can be reached at 970-748-2931 or slynn@vaildaily.com.