The Start of an interesting trip.

Last Thursday, I headed up to Indian Peaks with five friends, and high hopes, to do what was planned as a four day backpacking trip. The trip did not start well.

Before we even got out of Boulder, my friend Luke's dad called, saying his bike broke and he needed a couple tools. So we promptly delivered those, and were on our way only a half hour late.

And we opted to stop for lunch at Chipotle for burritos, a bit of a tradition on these trips. As Kris and I were walking back to my car after lunch, we heard the unmistakable "screeeeeech THUNK!!!" of a car crash. And, sure enough, two seconds later, we got a call saying "we've been in an accident." Fortunately, nobody was hurt, which is even more fortunate given that the woman who hit Luke was pregnant (8 months or so?).

Any way, we headed off up the canyon, but right as we turned onto Canyon, we got passed by three emergency vehicles, which we proceeded to follow up the canyon to Nederland.

But we didn't reach Ned right away. One of the emergency vehicles was a dive team, which stopped at the reservoir at the top of the canyon. The number of police, fire, and rescue cars at the reservoir was astounding. We ended up stopped for about half an hour as what we hoped would be a rescue was under way.

We finally did get to the trailhead, despite the delays, but Kris and I were wondering if the trip should even continue, or whether there would even be a trailhead, given the array of mishaps that had already happened.

Turns out, the trip went ok. The tableau at the reservoir was a search and rescue operation for a fisherman at Barker who had jumped in after his pole. His friend had jumped in after him, but had to let him go after the fisherman started pulling his would-be rescuer under. Regrettably, the search and rescue did not involve a rescue in time: the fisherman had succumbed to the cold and drowned soon after jumping in.

Moral of the story: if your rod falls into water that cold, don't go in after it. It's not worth your life. Hypothermia can strike within minutes in water of that temperature, and the muscles will seize up long before then.

More on the rest of the trip in the next post.