MINTURN, Colorado — Eight local skiers and snowboarders who took the Minturn Mile backcountry route off Vail Mountain Monday ended up stranded overnight before Vail Mountain Rescue teams were able to get them down Wednesday.

The group finally got off the mountain around 2 p.m. Tuesday, shaken from the experience of spending the night in the backcountry with nothing more than standard ski gear and some flashlights.

Thanks to a smoker in the group, they were able to start a fire, using it both to stay warm and to melt snow for drinking water.

Vail Mountain Rescue mission coordinator Dan Smith said everyone is lucky to be alive. Snow fell throughout the night and temperatures reached into single digits overnight.

Someone from the group called for rescue around 8 p.m. Monday from a cell phone. They reported that they were lost and seven of them were together while one man had gone a little farther and was stuck on a ledge above a cliff.

Vail Mountain Rescue asked them to shine their flashlights down toward Highway 24, which the stranded group could see from where they were, in order to locate them since nobody in the group had a compass, map or GPS.

Gregg Burkhardt, who headed up the rescue mission for Vail Mountain Rescue, worked through the night to rescue the group. His eyes were glossed over around 2:30 p.m.

“I started at 8 p.m. and went right through the night,” he said.

Technical rescue

The skiers and boarders, all locals, did not want their names published since many of them hadn't told family members about the incident and didn't want anyone to worry.

“I'm just embarrassed,” one of the rescued men said.

The skiers and boarders ranged in age from 22 to 32, Smith said. There were three women and five men in the group.

Tom Clemants, of Vail Mountain Rescue, said the one man who was separated from the group didn't have any heat throughout the night and was quite cold by the time rescuers reached the group around 4:30 a.m.

Rescuers had to repel down on ropes at day break in order to get him off the ledge. That part of the mission was the most technical, and fairly rare for this type of rescue, Smith said.

Clemants said everyone had a good laugh once the man was gotten off the ledge and reconnected with his friends. As he sat there eating a sandwich and drinking water that rescuers provided, a pine tree fell over and landed on him, Clemants said.

“When that happened, we all started laughing — it was pretty hilarious,” he said. “We had gotten him, gotten him motivated, and then the tree fell on him.”

Had the man on the ledge or anyone else in the group been injured, the rescue would have been a lot more difficult, Clemants said.

“We would have needed a lot more people,” he said.

Smith said the group was in a location that would have easily required a helicopter rescue had anyone been injured.

Once rescue crews were able to get the group, via ropes, skins and snowshoes, back to the Minturn Mile trail, everyone skied and snowboarded down the trail together.

Lesson learned

Once the two rescue crews, a total of five rescuers, reached the group and provided food and water for everyone, they began to help get them out of there.

“They're in good spirits,” Clemants said. “They're actually really strong.”

Clemants said they spent the night at about 10,200 feet.

“The cool thing is they stuck all together,” he said.

One woman in the group said they were following someone who they believed knew the way, but he obviously did not, she said.

About half of the people in the group have done the Minturn Mile before, some of whom have done it several times, the woman said.

“We definitely learned our lesson,” she said.

Another woman in the group said they want to let other people doing the Minturn Mile to be prepared for anything, especially for an overnight stay in the backcountry. The group was only about half-prepared, she said.

Conditions were snowy and the crew lost the trail, ending up way south above the Minturn gun range in a location they just couldn't hike out of and couldn't ski or snowboard down from.

“The (Minturn) Mile is real backcountry, especially on a day like yesterday,” one of the rescued men said.

The group left Vail Mountain around 3:30 p.m. with already tired legs after a long powder day. They didn't have any maps, compasses or GPS systems between the eight of them, or any overnight gear.

They were extremely grateful for the rescuers and planned to buy them some liquor as a token of their appreciation.

Smith said there's a lesson to be learned from the incident and he hopes to never see the same people making the same mistake again. He gave them a friendly lecture after the incident before they went home to get some rest.

“Know what your mistakes were,” Smith told them. “You have the skill set, you just let it get a little bit ahead of you.”



Community Editor Lauren Glendenning can be reached at 970-748-2983 or lglendenning@vaildaily.com.