Last August, a man from Wyoming named Kevin was hiking
Quandary Peak with his fiance and her friend. Kevin was not feeling
well for much of that hike, but he and his friends thought it must
be due to mild altitude sickness. Just as they approached the
summit of the 14,000 foot peak, Kevin collapsed and died.
Kevin's death was tragic and unexpected. And the body recovery
of a large man from an elevation of 14,000 feet meant a long,
arduous mission for the Summit County Rescue Group. But what truly
made this a remarkable event were the efforts of the hikers on
Quandary that day to save a man's life.
It started with several hikers who were near Kevin and his
fiance when he collapsed. One of them was a nurse and she took
charge, asking someone to make a 911 call and directing others to
help move Kevin to a flat surface. A group of hikers began CPR. A
hiker with a walkie talkie alerted his friends higher up on the
mountain, and one of them ran back up to the summit because he'd
overheard another group's conversation and knew there was a doctor
up there. The doctor ran at breakneck speed down the mountain and
took control of the CPR. A second doctor arrived and pitched in,
also running down from the summit. Other hikers ran to render
assistance, taking turns at CPR for nearly 45 minutes. Many of them
stayed with Kevin's fiance after he was pronounced dead, and one of
the doctors even hiked all the way down the mountain with her. By
the time we arrived on scene it was all over, despite the fact that
some of us arrived by helicopter.
It was a remarkable display not only of the willingness of
strangers to go out of their way to help, but also of teamwork
between a large group of people who had never even met before.
Ultimately, the teamwork on Quandary Peak didn't save Kevin's life.
But if it had been possible to save him that day, the team that was
up there would probably have achieved it.
In the months that followed, the Sheriff's Office collected a
lot of statements from witnesses and a few people sent us emails or
commented on blogs about what happened that day. It took a long
time to sort it all out, but eventually we identified 13 people
that we wanted to thank, some of them from Front Range cities and
others from as far away as Missouri and Wisconsin. Commendations
were sent out from Sheriff Minor to those 13 people recently. Some
of them read:
This Sheriff's Commendation is presented for assisting in
the effort to save a man's life on Quandary Peak on August 28th,
2009. The citizens of Summit County, the Summit County Rescue Group
and the Summit County Sheriff's Office would like to express their
deepest appreciation for your caring and compassionate
assistance.
The members of the Summit County Rescue Group have had the
privilege of meeting Good Samaritans out on the trail many times
before. We've seen people drop whatever they're doing to help us
find someone, or to stay with an injured person in the backcountry,
or to hike out and make a 911 call. But we saw something more than
that on Quandary last August. As we hiked up the East Ridge trail
to retrieve Kevin's body, we passed most of the hikers who had been
involved as they came back down. Their faces were somber and many
of them stopped to talk to us. They thanked us for what we do. We
believe that a lot of people went home that night thinking about
what's most important in life; we saw it in their faces. The
experience of working together to save a man's life had affected
them deeply, and they would never forget it. We will never forget
it either.
Photo by Tim Schlough.