Mt. Evans/Sawtooth Accident and Rescue

[JimR]

I was one of the other people who reached Doug originally (the "lounge chair"). Considering the pain he must have been in, he was pretty amazing. Hopefully he'll recover fully. And, of course, SAR was great. This is the first rescue that I've witnessed, so I don't know what constitutes "routine," but everything went smoothly and efficiently. Just walking down that slope wasn't fun; carrying someone down in a litter had to be harder, but I guess it's all in a day's (volunteer) work for the SAR folks. A big thanks to them.

On a side note, welcome to the forum bodeker. It was nice meeting you; wish it could have been better circumstances. Doug, if you read this, best wishes for a full recovery.

[djkest]

Hey guys, just stumbled on this thread. My climbing partner and I did the Beirstadt/Sawtooth/Evans combo yesterday and we swore that only 3 people did it (Sunday) but we could be wrong. We summited Beirstadt around 7:40 am and headed to the sawtooth just after 8am. Around 9:00 am we ran into a solo hiker who had stopped to take pics of 6 mountain goats. Anyway, we lost him at the top of the sawtooth, he didn't "summit" sawtooth and took off for the Evans trail, and never saw him after that. I'm pretty sure this guy wasn't the same person, but I was hoping that a solo hiker bushwhacking in difficult terrain wouldn't get hurt.

Glad to see this person was OK. I may have ran into some of the people involved in this story along the way- but it sounds like it happened on Beirstadt long after we had left. Did this happen near Beirstadt summit? That is a long, hard way to the evans summit if that is where they ended up taking him. I think I need a diagram, lol.

[JimR]

The accident happened a little below the SE ridge of Bierstadt, in the gulley from the Abyss Lake valley up to the saddle just south of point 13641. We reached the victim at about 10:15 (late start); the accident probably happened about 9:30 or so. He was not following the route describe by Bill or Roach, which gains the ridge earlier, before the smaller point to the SE of pt 13641. He had followed a couple other climbers that he saw going up the other gulley. They apparently were out or earshot by the time the accident occured. We were just starting up the slope of the prescribed route when we heard him, and bodeker was part way up this slope. None of us could see him, but we headed in the direction of his voice and found him a little below the ridge.