Written by Michael Smith, KF0PAY
Introduction
On the morning of June 21, 2026, the Flat Rocks campground west of Sedalia, Colorado looked the way a well-run event should look in the hour before it opens: purposeful and calm.
RRMMC volunteers were setting up registration. Douglas County Search and Rescue was positioned and coordinating. And at the Start/Finish line, ARESDEC’s Mobile Command Center was already on the air, Net Control established, the net open, and operators checking in from six checkpoints and a mobile Rover spread across the Rampart Range trail system.
Seventeen licensed amateur radio operators. Eight positions. Fifty-five miles of trail. One net.
This is what the Amateur Radio Emergency Service looks like when it’s working.
The 2026 RRMMC Spring Poker Run drew approximately 400 participants to the Rampart Range area, around 350 dirt bike riders alongside event staff, RRMMC volunteers, Douglas County Search and Rescue personnel, and the ARES team itself. The courses run through open, multi-use terrain that remains accessible to the public during the event: two-way trail traffic, novice riders alongside veterans, families with children on the short course, and the standard Colorado caveat of afternoon weather building over the foothills. Providing reliable communications across that environment, across terrain where cell coverage is sparse and the distance between a rider in trouble and the nearest responder can be measured in trail miles, is exactly the mission ARES trains for.
ARESDEC (Amateur Radio Emergency Service of Douglas & Elbert Counties, Colorado ARES Region 1 District 5) led the operation, with mutual aid operators from R1D6 (the adjacent district covering the southern Denver metro and northern Douglas County corridor) and R10D1 (serving the Colorado Springs and El Paso County area) rounding out the team. Three districts. One net. One clean day of operations.
Event Highlights
Eight Positions, One Operational Picture
The communications footprint ARES fielded on June 21st covered the full arc of the event. The Mobile Command Center at Start/Finish served as Net Control, the central coordination node connecting ARES field operators, the RRMMC Events team, and Douglas County Search and Rescue into a single operational picture. The MCC is not just a vehicle with a radio; it’s a self-contained communications platform that brings antenna systems, power redundancy, and multi-band capability to bear in environments where improvised setups fall short. Having it at Start/Finish meant the event’s command-level communications were anchored by equipment and operators capable of managing sustained, high-traffic net operations across the full operational window.
Six checkpoint positions fanned out from there, distributed across both the short course (approximately 20 miles) and the long course (approximately 57 miles). Checkpoint operators logged rider passage, maintained situational awareness of conditions at their segment of the course, and served as the fixed reference points that gave Net Control a continuous picture of where riders were and how traffic was moving. With 350 riders spread across two courses on open terrain, that distributed coverage isn’t optional, it’s the architecture that makes coordinated response possible if anything changes.
The Rover completed the picture. Where checkpoint operators hold ground, the Rover moves, traveling the course continuously, filling the coverage gaps that fixed positions can’t reach, relaying traffic when terrain blocks direct paths, and providing mobile eyes-on-course awareness that no amount of fixed infrastructure can replicate. For prospective ARES members reading this: the Rover is not a support role. On a course this size, the Rover is often the most tactically important position on the net.
With 17 operators across 7 positions, all positions carried at least two operators, meaningful staffing depth that allowed for breaks, position handoffs, and the kind of sustained coverage that a multi-hour operational window requires. Net Control at the MCC was staffed to manage the full traffic load without single points of failure.
All positions were active and checked in on the net before the first rider left the Start/Finish line.
The Course and the Challenge
The Poker Run runs two courses simultaneously, sharing a common opening segment before splitting. The short course serves families and newer riders, approximately 20 miles, with a kiddie cutoff option partway through. The long course adds approximately 27 miles for more experienced riders. Both courses use trails that remain open to the public, meaning ARES operators and RRMMC staff are managing communications on routes that can include two-way traffic with ATVs, horses, hikers, or other recreational users at any point.
That’s the operational context that makes checkbox coverage matter. A rider down on the back half of the long course, in terrain with no cell signal, is only reachable as fast as the communications net can pass the information from whoever first has eyes on the situation to the people who can respond. Six checkpoints plus a mobile Rover means that net has coverage depth. No section of the course is more than a radio call away from a fixed or mobile operator.
Check-in ran from 9:00 AM through 11:00 AM with no late check-ins permitted. All cards were turned in by the 3:00 PM deadline. Prizes were awarded at 3:30 PM. The event ran on schedule.
Weather, Terrain, and Staying Heads-Up All Day
June 21st opened with mostly sunny skies and warmed toward a high near 88°F, excellent riding weather by any measure, and the kind of day that fills a course with confident, fast-moving riders. But Colorado afternoons in the Front Range foothills carry their own standing agenda item, and the possibility of a thunderstorm building over the higher terrain was a background variable the ARES team tracked throughout the operational window.
Checkpoint operators at exposed positions maintained weather awareness alongside rider monitoring. The Rover, continuously mobile on the course, was positioned to observe developing conditions in sections of terrain that no fixed operator could watch. Net Control at the MCC maintained the synthesized picture — weather, rider traffic, checkpoint status, that gave the RRMMC Events team and DC SAR the situational awareness to make decisions quickly if conditions changed. They didn’t need to on June 21st. The storm potential dissipated without incident, and the afternoon stayed operational through close. But the monitoring capacity was there, and that’s the point. The value of a trained communications team is not measured only in the emergencies it responds to. It’s also measured in the emergencies it sees developing early enough to prevent.
Partners Who Made the Day Work
Events at the scale of the Rampart Range Poker Run don’t run smoothly by accident. Special recognition to Brandon Harris and the entire RRMMC volunteer crew, who coordinated with ARES in the weeks before the event and ran a tight, professional operation on the day. The RRMMC made a deliberate organizational decision this year: they rescheduled the Spring Poker Run date to ensure ARESDEC’s availability. That’s not a minor scheduling note, it’s a statement that the committee considers ARES an essential part of their event infrastructure, not an optional add-on.Douglas County Search and Rescue (https://dcsarco.org) provided the emergency response capability that a 400-person, multi-mile outdoor event requires. DC SAR’s coordination with the ARES net was pre-established and operationally clean. It’s also worth noting that a portion of Poker Run proceeds is donated directly to DC SAR, the RRMMC backs its safety partnerships financially as well as operationally. That kind of institutional alignment is what makes multi-organization events work at a high level.
Community Impact
Mutual Aid in Practice
The three-district composition of the June 21st team deserves more than a line in a roster. R1D5 (ARESDEC), R1D6, and R10D1 represent different geographic areas, different home repeater systems, and different organizational cultures within the Colorado ARES structure. Operators from those districts don’t automatically integrate on a net, they do it because the ARES training framework gives them a common operational language, and because events like this one give them the chance to actually use it together.
Every operator who worked the June 21st net now has direct, practical experience running alongside operators from other districts, what their operating habits are, how their traffic discipline works, where the integration points are smooth and where they need refinement. That experience doesn’t show up in a training log, but it shows up when a real multi-district emergency activation opens a net and the operators on it have already worked together under field conditions. The Colorado ARES mutual aid framework is built on exactly this kind of accumulated interoperability.
R1D6 and R10D1 operators: your contribution to June 21st was not incidental. You filled positions that made the coverage complete. Thank you.
A Partnership Built Activation by Activation
The RRMMC’s decision to reschedule around ARESDEC’s calendar is the kind of outcome that only comes from years of consistent, professional performance. Organizational trust is not granted — it’s earned, incrementally, through activations where the net works, the operators are where they’re supposed to be, and the served agency’s event runs better because ARES was there.
That trust has compounding returns. ARESDEC gains a recurring, well-structured activation that delivers real field training in a live operational environment. The RRMMC gains the confidence to run a large event on remote terrain knowing their communications are covered. DCSAR operates with a richer situational picture. And the 350 riders on the course, most of whom will never know a radio operator’s callsign, ride with a safety net that works.
The Fall Poker Run is on the calendar for September 13, 2026. Everything built on June 21st carries forward.
Why This Work Matters Beyond the Event
Colorado’s outdoor recreation community is large, geographically distributed, and regularly operating in terrain where cellular infrastructure is unreliable or absent. Amateur radio is not a legacy technology in that environment, it is the appropriate tool for the job, specifically because of what it can do when everything else fails.
Every clean ARES activation at a public event is a proof of concept delivered to a new audience. Event organizers talk to each other. Served agencies share operational assessments. The professional reputation Colorado ARES builds through activations like the Spring Poker Run shapes the partnerships, the served agency relationships, and the public trust available to the organization going forward.
June 21st was a good day at Rampart Range. It was also a contribution to the long-term case that trained volunteer communicators belong at events like this, and that when they show up, things go better.
Join the Mission
The seventeen operators who staffed the 2026 Spring Poker Run gave a Sunday to work that had real consequences. Eight positions. Six checkpoints. A Rover on the trail. A Mobile Command Center holding the net together from Start to Finish. Four hundred people who got home safely.
If you hold an amateur radio license, Technician, General, or Extra, and you haven’t connected with your local ARES organization, the path is straightforward: go to coloradoares.org, find your district, and reach out. Attend a net. Introduce yourself. Show up for a training exercise. The activations follow from there, and they are the kind of field experience that makes you a better operator and a more capable emergency communicator.
If you don’t hold a license yet, start with the ARRL’s license exam finder at arrl.org/find-an-amateur-radio-license-exam-session to locate a Technician exam session near you. Study resources are widely available and free, HamStudy.org is a reliable starting point. The Technician license is the entry point into amateur radio, and it’s the credential that gets you on an ARES net.
The Fall Poker Run is September 13, 2026. Volunteer positions with ARESDEC will open. If June 21st looked like the kind of work you want to be part of, coloradoares.org is where that starts.
73, ARESDEC | Amateur Radio Emergency Service of Douglas & Elbert Counties Colorado ARES Region 1, District 5