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A Boulder man was killed on Tuesday, Dec. 4th in the Wild Basin of Rocky Mountain National Park by a falling tree.
From Press Reports and John Cordsen of the Estes Park Gazette
A 68-year-old Boulder man was killed and his hiking companion injured Tuesday afternoon in a freak accident in Rocky Mountain National Park. William N. Hudson, of Boulder was killed, and Carl Cox, 68, was injured while hiking along the Sandbeach Lake Trail in the Wild Basin portion of the Park after being struck by a falling tree.
Winds were blamed for the tragic accident. They were estimated to be between 20 to 30 miles per hour with gusts in the range of 40 to 50 miles per hour at the time of the accident. A dead Douglas fir tree, approximately 30 feet from the trail, had its top break off 15 feet above the ground, glanced off three standing trees before landing on the trail. The tree was approximately 10 inches in diameter at the point it hit the hikers. The victim was hit by the tree, pushed to the ground and hit his head on a large rock on the right side of the trail.According to reporter Vanessa Miller with the Camera in Boulder, only moments after Cox heard a “cracking boom” while hiking down the trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, he found himself face down on the ground, unsure of what hit him.
Cox said he and Hudson had never seriously considered the dangers of the fallen trees they’d seen strewn along paths they crossed Tuesday as they walked toward Sandbeach Lake.But at about 2:30 p.m. — after the two men had reached the lake and were about a mile-and-a-half from the car they’d left at the Sandbeach Lake trailhead — the towering Douglas fir fell with a gust of wind and landed on both of the men as they walked.“‘Snap,’ I heard a crack, I started to move forward, and — ‘wham’ — I was on the ground,” Cox said from his Gunbarrel home.After taking a few seconds to make sure he wasn’t seriously injured, Cox started shouting for Hudson. Cox said he kept calling for his friend, who didn’t answer, until he saw the man’s face.“I’ll never forget it,” Cox said. “He was lying there with both eyes open — but not a flicker.”
Cox hiked out to the Wild Basin Lodge to report the accident. Rocky Mountain National Park Dispatch was notified around 3:30 p.m. and rangers were sent from Estes Park to hike to the location of the accident.Upon arrival Park rangers and a nurse/paramedic, who is a member of the Allenspark Fire Department, determined Hudson had suffered fatal injuries and severe trauma. Eleven rescuers made up of Park rangers and members of the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group of Boulder hiked in to recover the victim. The Boulder County Coroner’s Office Wednesday afternoon ruled that Hudson died of a broken neck.Cox said he initially declined a trip to the Estes Park Medical Center. A short time later, though, as the adrenaline faded and his back began to ache, Cox said he knocked on the ambulance window and said, “I’ll take you up on that.”
Cox was diagnosed with a compression fracture in a vertebra of his spine, and he’s being fitting today with a back brace.
Rangers closed a portion of the Park Wednesday to investigate why and how the fir fell. Park spokesman Larry Frederick said the tree might have been killed by a previous beetle attack more than a decade ago.“I think this was a freakish incident,” Frederick said. “There are lots of high winds in the Park, and we can’t eliminate the possibility of this happening ever again along any trail in the Park.”The tree that fell was located along a ridge and stood beside other dead timber, Frederick said. But, he said, rangers don’t plan to cut down “a bunch” of old trees to eliminate the possibility they might fall, too. That would be too expensive and time consuming, and crews would have to do extensive work all over the 265,770-acre park, Frederick said.
Although downed trees have resulted in fatalities nationwide, Frederick said he can’t recall it happening before in Rocky Mountain National Park.“The fact that it hit two hikers in the same party is very rare,” he said. “Five seconds one way or the other and these gentlemen would have had an interesting story and an enjoyable hike.”Reporter Vanessa Miller with the Boulder Camera/Prairie Mountain Publishing contributed to this story.
Eli notes: Hiking into Black Lake today on Dec. 5th, there were dozens of new trees down across the trail. They all looked very recent, likely in the last few days.
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