Hello Friends!
Welcome to our latest video.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing Rocky Mountain Disappearance and Tragedies.
Now The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies,
are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America.
The Rocky Mountains formed 80 million to 55 million years ago during the Laramide Orogeny,
in which a number of plates began sliding underneath the North American plate.
The angle of subduction was shallow,
resulting in a broad belt of mountains running down western North America.
Of the 100 highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains, 78 (including the 30 highest)
are located in Colorado, ten in Wyoming, six in New Mexico, three in Montana, and one in Utah.
Public parks and forest lands protect much of the mountain range,
and they are popular tourist destinations, especially for hiking, camping, mountaineering,
fishing, hunting, mountain biking, snowmobiling, skiing, and snowboarding.
Being in the Rocky Mountains have been said to
literally make people feel like they’re “on top of the world.”
Or as John Denver sang "Rocky Mountain High"
Today though, the breathtaking views and scenic landscapes of
this gorgeous mountain range aren’t the reason we are bringing you this video.
There is something else entirely and something entirely sinister
in what we will be discussing with you today.
Bizarre and tragic deaths and disappearances in the Rockies are far too common and because
most National Parks don’t keep very good records of their missing and deceased,
if they keep any at all, we think it necessary to review this information
and a few of very many, cases like this.
Between 1915, when Rocky Mountain became a national park, and 2010, a total of 344 park
visitors have died as a result of accidents, car crashes, heart attacks and various other reasons.
Included in those statistics are 60 fatalities associated with climbing Longs Peak in particular.
While of course, we can’t dig into every single one of these tragedies in this short video,
let’s dig a little deeper into just a few of them.
Here it is folks, bizarre and strange deaths and disappearances in the Rocky Mountains.
The average age for those that have died on the mountain is 32.5. The oldest person
to die was 75 when he slipped on ice along the Narrows section of the Keyhole Route.
There were also two 16-year-olds that died on the peak, one in 1932, and the other in 1980.
A total of 9 victims were teenagers, which represents 15% of all deaths.
This data was collected back in 2013 and as you can imagine at least a few more deaths
of teenagers have occurred at one point or another from one thing or another, since then.
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, eight fatalities have been recorded.
However, the deadliest decade was the 1970's when the mountain claimed the lives of thirteen people.
Mountaineering in particular can be one of the most dangerous outdoor activities one
can take part in when out in the Rockies or on any other range for that matter.
Despite these dangers, however, people have been climbing for thousands of years.
It’s the perfect thing to do
if you have a great love of the outdoors and a spirit of adventure to go along with it.
Some have said that while out in Mother Nature as scenic as
the views from so high above the rest of the world are, you start
to realize how absolutely insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things.
It’s very humbling.
I reiterate, however,
it’s also extremely dangerous and one tiny mistake or misstep can cost you your life.
Take the case of Matthew Burklow who on June 9th, 2014 at around 2 o’clock in the morning
got into his Honda Fit and drove an hour from his home to the Longs Peak trailhead.
The 25-year-old hiker planned on summiting the Front Range's most
prominent 14,000-foot mountain and returning to Fort Collins in time for his afternoon
shift at a King Soopers pharmacy where he was a certified pharmacy technician.
He had his whole life mapped out.
He would study physics at CSU and then attend pharmaceutical school.
He made the summit, but he did not make it off the mountain alive.
Matthew Burklow became the 59th fatality on Longs Peak
one of, if not the most, deadly peak in Colorado.
Matthew was born and raised in Georgia but according to his loved ones,
Colorado stole his heart.
He didn’t have a cellphone as he believed he had no use for one.
He didn’t have credit cards either. He was building websites at the age of 8
however and his family insists he was a stringent planner in everything he did.
So what happened? Matthew was an experienced hiker who had recently started ice climbing
and had completed the Appalachian Trail two years before his fatal journey.
He was a meticulous planner who treated
the mountains with tremendous respect, his family reported.
For months, Matthew planned the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail trek from Georgia to Maine.
How much food he needed.
Where the group could restock supplies.
How many miles a day they could manage.
Where he'd meet his wife, Haley, who would drive from Tennessee on the weekends with fresh supplies
and they'd spend Saturday nights together.
His father said of his son that anything Matthew did
he excelled at and if he couldn’t be the best at it then it wasn’t for him.
Back to that fateful day in June 2014; Matthew's extensive planning and collection
of the newest and best outdoor gear earned him the trail name "Fancy."
He climbed the 14,259-foot-tall Longs Peak alone, in winter conditions that would
caution hikers to include crampons, a helmet and an ice ax — he packed all but a helmet.
After recovering Matthew's body, Rocky Mountain National Park Search and Rescue
rangers investigated the fatal accident, piecing together what clues they had at their disposal.
They found photos of Matthew smiling on the summit. After two previous unsuccessful attempts,
he had reached Rocky Mountain National Park's highest point and the 14th most-difficult
fourteener (peaks 14,000 feet high or higher) among the 54 in Colorado, as rated by 14ers.com.
Despite the calendar showing the month of June, Longs Peak still exhibited winter conditions.
On the evening of June 8th, just hours before Matthew left Fort Collins for the trailhead,
Rocky Mountain National Park closed the high-elevation Trail Ridge Road,
due to it being covered in a new sheet of ice.
About a foot of snow covered the Trough,
the Narrows and the Ledges sections of the Keyhole Route,
and the Homestretch — a steep slab of granite near the summit — had many sections slick with ice.
Matthew fell from the Ledges section of the mountain — a series of narrow ledges
with a drop-off of 2,000 feet. Matthew wasn’t this particular spot’s first victim either.
He'd already traversed the steep Homestretch and the snowy Narrows and had nearly reached
the Keyhole, the final hurdle before the simple scramble down the Boulderfield.
It should have been easy going from there back to his vehicle.
But Matthew fell — perhaps on a slick section of snow, or
because of tired legs or a brief second of inattention. He fell about 600 feet,
his body found in a rocky outcropping below the marked section of the Trough.
Chances of surviving a fall of that magnitude are extremely slim,
said Rocky Mountain National Park East District ranger Mark Pita.
His body was flown to the helipad at Upper Beaver Meadows in Rocky Mountain National Park
and transferred to the Boulder County Coroner's Office.
Perhaps the most famous person to perish on the mountain was Agnes Vaille.
On January 25th, 1925, she became the first woman to climb Longs Peak in the winter.
While making her descent along the Keyhole Route, Vaille slipped and fell about 150 feet.
Exhausted and running out of steam, Agnes insisted she needed a short nap,
but froze to death before her hiking partner could bring help back.
Today, just below the Keyhole, is the Agnes Vaille Shelter.
Built as a memorial to Ms. Vaille,
the shelter also serves as a refuge for hikers and climbers in need.
Another notable death occurred in 1889 - prior to the park even being established.
A man named Frank Stryker was descending down the Homestretch on the Keyhole Route
when a loaded pistol fell out of his pocket and discharged into his neck.
Some say this was Karma at work as the 28-year-old was taking pleasure
in launching large boulders down the mountain while climbing up himself.
The newspaper account at the time said "he announced his intentions of sending off a
particularly huge stone" just before the accident occurred.
He continued to cling to life for ten more hours while his
companions attempted to transport him down the mountain on a makeshift litter.
He died of his injuries shortly thereafter.
There is so much more statistically that we could look at to try and make sense of
these senseless tragedies. Even the well prepared and almost obsessive-compulsive have accidents.
Nobody goes mountain climbing or hiking expecting
to never make it back home to their loved ones alive.
Let’s discuss some other tragedies, ones that didn’t have to do with climbing.
There are literally thousands of ways to die no matter what you’re doing.
Admittedly, however, being in nature and being careless is almost always a recipe for disaster.
Being unprepared is also a surefire way to get yourself in trouble out there in the woods.
What about the unexplained?
This wouldn’t be a complete video if we didn’t mention at least one of the more strange,
bizarre and unexplained deaths that happened in the Rockies.
Take the mysterious disappearance of Keith Reinhard.
Keith was a sports reporter at the Daily Herald in Chicago in 1988 when he announced he’d be taking
the next 90 days off to fulfill his lifelong dream to spend some time living in the Rocky Mountains.
In a letter he wrote to a friend Keith stated,
“I love these mountains and want to live in them before I die.”
So, he took off for Silver Plume, Colorado; a small mining town of
200 that sits inside the Arapaho National Forest, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
Ironically and somewhat eerily, Keith had another
reason for wanting to visit this particular tiny little mining town.
In addition to fulfilling his one dream, he was also hoping to achieve another.
This was to write a novel about the disappearance of Tom Young.
Tom was another young man who just happened to have disappeared from that exact same mining town
but in September of 1987.
He immediately opened an antiques store
in the building which used to house Tom Young’s book store.
He wanted to get a feel for Tom’s life so he could more easily and authentically write about him.
Late one afternoon, hungover from a night of heavy drinking and having fun,
Keith Reinhard went to hike Pendleton Mountain, and never returned.
More than 100 people logged over 10,000 hours searching
and never found a clue as to what had happened to him.
“Sometimes the answer is there is no answer,”
Reinhard’s widow, Carolyn O’Donnell, told the Daily Herald in 2008.
Sometimes there really isn’t.
Not that any answer could ever be satisfactory enough,
surely, for the deceased person’s loved ones.
To have to reconcile yourself to the fact that someone so important to you and that
you love so much is gone and never to return again must be hard enough.
But to have to make sense out of the fact that somewhere so incredibly beautiful, scenic,
and mostly peaceful and serene is the cause of that person’s demise- it has to be unbearable.
Make sure when out in the woods camping, hiking, climbing, etc,
whether in national parks or in your own backyard, that you’re well prepared and careful.
If you absolutely must be alone, always be sure to
tell at least one other person where you are going and when you expect to be back.
A lot of people even go so far as to give a time that if they haven’t yet returned
that the authorities are to be called.
You can find so many safety tips online
these days. So please do your own research before going out into the wilderness.
There you have it folks!
Just a few of the strange deaths in the Rocky Mountains.
I look forward to your comments. But please keep it friendly and respectful!
In the meanwhile, be good to yourselves and each other,
and I'll see you just a little farther on down the trail.
I'm Steve Stockton and I'll talk to you next time!