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BREAKING NEWS: 2 HIKERS STRANDED ON LONGS PEAK
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Home › Forums › General Forums › General Lightweight Backpacking Discussion › BREAKING NEWS: 2 HIKERS STRANDED ON LONGS PEAK
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Sep 13, 2013 at 12:06 pm #1307613
more at link …
http://www.backpacker.com/articles/17837
Two hikers are stranded on Longs Peak, awaiting rescue amidst Colorado's flood chaos.
Connie Yang and Suzanne Turell sent a series of emergency texts from 13,400 feet at around 9:07 AM yesterday, according to Yang's sister, Winnie. The two hikers indicated that they were off-trail and attempting to wait out an ice storm on the mountain's south ridge.The status of rescue efforts remains unclear. Emergency personnel in the area are stretched thin due to the ongoing damage from yesterday's historic flash flooding in Boulder, Lyons, Estes Parks, and other areas of Colorado's Front Range.
friends and family are appealing for help directly to anyone
http://helpconnieandsuz.tumblr.com/
I received a series of texts from my sister, Connie Yang, and her girlfriend, Suzanne Turell, from Suzanne’s cell phone the morning of Thursday, September 12, 2013, between 9.07 and 9.12am. It is now 1.48am on September 13.
Connie and Suzanne have plenty of backcountry experience — they go on such trips for several weeks at a time every year — and would not get in touch unless it were really a dire emergency. I called the backcountry office after receiving these texts, and the rangers have been trying to get in touch with them, but no one’s heard from them since the last message I received, so I can only assume that their battery died. They do not have crampons or ice axes with them.
There have been a couple of attempts to get search teams out, but the roads are impassable due to all the heavy flooding in Colorado — the area is in a state of emergency — so it’s been nearly impossible for anyone to even reach the trailhead, and visibility has been too poor for a helicopter to go in.
At this point our objectives are:
– that the forest rangers put a sizable party together and do their very best to get to Connie and Suzanne as soon as possible;
– that the rangers authorize the military to help their effort, particularly the Special Forces school at Fort Carson;
– that the National Guard send a helicopter at the first opportunity knowing the weather is going to get worse over the weekend.
Please get the word out any way you can; call AP, Reuters, local CO news, senators, etc.Sep 13, 2013 at 12:15 pm #2024570Wonder what they were doing up there in this weather.
Sep 13, 2013 at 12:38 pm #2024572turns out they are equipment designers/engineers for NEMO
looks like they are safe …
Great news. Connie and Suzanne are off the mountain. Forest rangers are working to get them out of an area cut off by destroyed roads. We're awaiting more details, and will post them as soon as we have them. Thanks everyone for your support and thoughts. We hope more good news is coming to Colorado residents in the days ahead.
https://www.facebook.com/nemoequipment/posts/561740327208117
Sep 13, 2013 at 12:41 pm #2024573They started backpacking a week ago, before we had any clue as to how bad this was going to get. They have a tent, but apparently no robust "winter" clothing. The ground search has begun, but the Nat'l Guard chopper can't get into the area yet, due to wind and rain. The Park has been closed, so there won't be any other hikers up there to help them. Just hope the ground search team can get to them quickly.
Edit–Wow, Eric, what a quick emergency response that was! Glad they're OK and safe.
Sep 13, 2013 at 2:26 pm #2024602Gary: how's your part of Boulder?
I went to CU and can't believe some of the photos I'm seeing, although I do remember Boulder Creek getting fairly high at certain times of the year.
Sep 13, 2013 at 8:22 pm #2024684Steve, I live up near the crest of the Davidson Mesa, at roughly 76th and So. Boulder Road, so I am high enough to have avoided the deluge. But 2 nights ago, I got hit by maybe 5" of serious rainfall over an hour, and the clay soil just couldn't absorb any more, one basement window well filled up and flowed into my basement bathroom. No major loss, but it put me into disaster survival mode. Many roads and bridges are closed in the city and the county, so the authorities asked us to stay home, so as to not impede the response efforts with extra road traffic. I enjoyed a somewhat sunny afternoon here today, and things seem to be drying out, sort of.
I live beneath the direct path between Rocky Mountain airport, where all the logistics for the Boulder/RMNP area are staged, and the hardest hit mountain communities. A few hours ago there was an army surveillance chopper that flew by, followed a half hour later by 3 heavily loaded Chinooks. There was a decent weather window just before sunset. They were probably moving food and water to the isolated towns to the NW of me, in the foothills, and maybe also evacuating people. It's a mess up there, but your tax money is being well spent for this. Those people are hurting right now.
Here's a patio photo of Longs Peak I took around sunset (sorry for the damn powerlines). You can see that the mountain creates its own weather, and those 2 ladies that were stranded would have been doing their bivy in the middle of that cloud to the right of, or behind, the summit, at 13,600'. Bad juju, but I'm thrilled that the response team got to them so quickly.
Now it's 9:30 PM, and choppers are still flying overhead. It's a busy sky tonight, while the rain subsides.
We're going to be OK here, I expect. Or at least most of us, we hope…
edit–for punctuation
Sep 15, 2013 at 9:31 am #2024873,My younger brother decided to visit us during a great time: A 100 yr flood!!!! Last time this happened, it was 1904.
Roads in and out of Boulder were more or less closed.
At least we are not like Estes Park, Lyons or Jamestown and have to be evaced by the national guard. :O
We are on a third flood place well east of the major flooding.
Did take a quick trip to downtown before the roads were closed earlier innthebweekend and here are some photos. The first four photos are from the downtown area just before some roads were closed. The last photo is a brief glimpse of the foothills from Casa Mags just before it clouded over again.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmags/sets/72157635505987140/This song comes to mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbrjRKB586sWell..hopefully it will not happen!!! :)
Sep 15, 2013 at 9:45 am #2024875I just got word that my first cousin and her husband from Jamestown are safe and sound. We'd been trying to find them for a couple of days.
Sep 15, 2013 at 10:22 am #2024877Good thing for NEMO too — don't want to loose your directors of product design and engineering at the same time.
Sep 15, 2013 at 10:34 am #2024879Nature is Metal.
Sep 15, 2013 at 10:47 am #2024881http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RNDNlhYl58
this one might be slightly more optimistic Mags
Sep 18, 2013 at 8:59 am #2025779Sep 18, 2013 at 9:07 am #2025781"This song comes to mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbrjRKB586s"I was thinking of this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6BesY5Doec
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