Overnight Misadventure Led to Worry, Rescue Effort

By DEAN TODA, THE GAZETTE

After a long, cold night stranded on a mountainside, a weary hiker trudged back to the parking lot at Guanella Pass, eager to fire up his Jeep and point it in the direction of a big breakfast, a hot bath and an epic nap.

Except that parked next to the Jeep was a sport utility vehicle belonging to the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Department. And from that SUV emerged a man with a question:

“Are you Dean?”

All I could say was, “Uh-oh.” Obviously I had been reported missing after failing to return home on time from what was supposed to have been a day hike up mounts Bierstadt and Evans, two Front Range fourteeners in Denver’s backyard.

My questioner was Paul “Woody” Woodward of the Alpine Rescue Team, a volunteer group based a few miles down the road in Evergreen. Behind the wheel was Cpl. Rick Safe.

“Glad to see you,” Woodward said. He asked if I was all right.

I assured him there was nothing wrong with me that some sleep wouldn’t fix and said I was embarrassed to have caused them any trouble.

I didn’t know the half of it. But before they gave me their story, they wanted to hear mine.

I had left Guanella Pass 26 hours earlier at dawn to climb Bierstadt, traverse over to Evans via a tricky ridge called the Sawtooth, hike to the summit, then return to the pass down Evans’ gentler northwest slopes. Gerry Roach, whose “Colorado’s Fourteeners” is my most dog-eared, highlighter-smeared book, calls the route a classic.

I described how I had gotten off-route on the steep slopes below the Sawtooth, descending almost to Abyss Lake, 1,000 feet lower than I had wanted to go. I got back onroute and completed the trek to the top of Mount Evans, but it was 5:30 p.m. by the time I got to the summit.

There’s a road to the top of Evans, but it was empty and the parking lot deserted. With some sense of foreboding I headed down the trail as quickly as I could. But my detour and the fact that I had underestimated the distance and difficulty of the final traverse on Evans meant that 9 p.m. found me still descending the mountain, my LED headlamp poking a meager hole in the darkness as I struggled through a maze of the head-high willows for which Guanella Pass is notorious.

Occasionally I could see lights on the road and in the parking lot where my Jeep waited, but I reckoned I was three miles away.

With a sense more of resignation than of fear or anger, I realized I couldn’t get there in the dark. So I stopped thrashing through willows and sat down. I put on, zipped up and cinched down every stitch of clothing I had. I even put on my pack because it covered part of my back. And I waited, hoping that moonrise would reveal the trail I had strayed from before the cold could invade my suddenly inactive body.

Fat chance. I was shivering in 20 minutes.

And when a brilliant full moon cleared the ridge about 10 p.m., I could discern that I was perched on a steep slope above a meadow threaded by a willow-choked creek. But I still couldn’t see the trail.

I was going to spend a mid-September night at 11,600 feet in the Colorado Rockies, wearing a hooded, windproof jacket over a fleece vest and a thermal long-sleeve undershirt; wind pants over hiking shorts and a pair of runner’s tights; socks and boots; thin glove liners and a watch cap.

Knowing it would be a long night, I tried to relax, but discomfort made every minute seem like 10. The ground was cold and froze overnight. I kept slipping down the slope, giving myself a willow wedgie. Eventually I developed a rotation of fetal positions: seated, lying on my left side, lying on my right.

My teeth chattered constantly, except during the moments after I imagined I heard a bear. I found I could think scary thoughts for a minute or two of adrenaline-generated warmth.

But I was never really afraid. My fingers and toes were cold but never numb. I had food and water, I knew where I was, and I was sure that in daylight I would find my way. It was just a matter of enduring discomfort and marking time by the moon’s excruciatingly slow crawl across the sky.

I might have dozed off for two minutes, or 20 or even two hours. All I know is that suddenly something more than moonlight was falling on the thicket in front of me. I sat up, squinting through contact lenses that weren’t supposed to be left in overnight. And there, unmistakable, 200 yards away across the meadow, was a stretch of trail!

It took a few minutes to shake the stiffness out of my legs, but the rest was routine. Feeling much warmer after an hour and a half of hiking, at 8:15 a.m. I arrived at the parking lot and my friendly inquisitors, Woodward and Safe.

Only then did I learn the true consequences of being overdue. After I had not checked in with her Sunday night as promised, my companion Leslie Herald, who was on a business trip in Texas, called the Colorado State Patrol. She remembered I had said the word “Bierstadt,” so the troopers forwarded her to Clear Creek County officials, who wanted to be sure I hadn’t driven home. For this, Leslie woke our neighbors, Chrissy Witt and her daughter Faryn, who confirmed that my garage was empty.

Sometime after midnight, Clear Creek sent a deputy, Don Wilson, to Guanella Pass, the main starting point for Bierstadt hikers, to ascertain that my Jeep indeed was parked there. Some of the lights I saw from three miles away were his.

Meanwhile the dispatcher gave Leslie’s number to Woody, who called her at 1 a.m. Leslie told Woody she was cutting short her business trip and hopping the first flight back from Houston. “I think that’s a good idea,” he told her. (“I wasn’t feeling too bad till that point,” she said later.)

Woody interviewed Leslie for a half-hour about things such as my fitness and outdoor skills, what I might be wearing and what kind of equipment I was likely to be carrying.

To answer the last question, Leslie roused her cousin, Kelly Ragan, who drove through the night from her home in Woodland Park to mine in Castle Rock to see whether my tent and sleeping bag were still in the basement. (They were.)

Woody told me a Rescue Team search party had driven to the top of the Mount Evans road at dawn and was already looking for me.

I had inconvenienced sheriff’s deputies, SAR volunteers, friends and neighbors. Everyone seemed to get involved: Before I got off the mountain my name had already been forwarded to a neighbor’s prayer group. Weeks later I am still running into people who say, “Hey, I heard about your problem on the mountain.”

I went right out and spent $12 on a Colorado Outdoor Recreation Search & Rescue Card, which supports SAR groups statewide. I also sent a check to the Alpine Rescue Team, and I resolved to:

Allow more time or set less ambitious goals. I’m trying to stay in shape but am not as young as I was.

Study the guidebook more. I was taking a relatively complicated combination of routes, and the Evans summit segment was longer and trickier than I thought it was, meaning I was budgeting my time based on false assumptions.

Turn around, stupid. I could have aborted the Evans segment and been home for dinner.

Pack for an unscheduled night alfresco. A sleeping bag or bivy sack would have helped.

Pack a more powerful headlamp.

Find a hiking partner. Assuming we made the same decisions on Bierstadt-Evans, we’d have gotten just as stuck, no matter how big the group. But if one of us is hurt, the other can go for help. And the fact that neither of us shows up should be a signal to loved ones that nobody’s hurt, merely delayed.

I thought I would ask Leslie, if this ever happens again, not to file a missing-persons report until noon of the day after I’m supposed to be home. If I’m hurt, I’ll still be hurt at noon, and if I’m dead, I’ll still be dead. If I’m merely delayed, by noon I’ll have had a chance to walk out, and no SAR efforts will have been wasted.

But Woody, who has 14 years with the Alpine Rescue Group, said it is better to report any overdue hiker immediately. Many people hold back, he said, fearing they may be billed thousands of dollars for a search effort.

“We never charge,” Woody said. “The sooner we’re notified the better off we are.”

He described a rescue on St. Mary’s Glacier in which a family member didn’t make the call. As it turned out, he said, timely notification would have saved a hiker’s life.

“It’s not an inconvenience,” he said of rescue calls. “It’s what we do. If it makes a difference one time, then it’s worth it.”

But the true cost of my little misadventure was not a searcher’s time or my discomfort. It was the anguish of one person who cared about me.

As I drove back into cellphone range on my way home from the mountain, I listened to a series of voice messages Leslie had left the night before. The first was nonchalant, reminding me that I was supposed to call her when I got home. By the sixth and final message, she was weeping. “It is now 12:45 a.m. and I am beside myself,” it began.

I don’t want to put her through that again.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 476-1654 or dean.toda@gazette.com