Well, well. What a weekend! It turned out better than I could have imagined. My buddy and his family and their friends are just fine. Thanks to God for looking over them, for all of you that prayed for them, and for the many, many people that went out in some VERY BAD conditions looking for Jason. A huge thanks to Pat Montoya, the SAR man for Conejos county. If you get lost in Colorado, do it there
. My "new" buddy Matt and his Monte Vista crew for going out unselfishly in truly bad weather. I'm sorry that I have forgotten the names of the rest of The Crew, but if you were with Matt, thanks a million. Jason and I look forward to ripping up some Pow with you boys in the near future. Hey Chad, you were right about the tracks you saw early Saturday morning. Jason and his wife went out at about 830 to try to get up high enough(without losing site of the Station) get a call out. You JUST MISSED THEM!! It's too bad that no one really knew they were missing. This whole thing could've ended at around 9 AM Saturday morning. But, it didn't. Jason had started coming out of the main valley around 2 pm Friday because the WX was starting to look a little iffy. By 2:30, the clouds had descended on them in the openess of the main valley. He was in the middle of the main valley all day, because he had 3 newbies with him. Riding near the trees, or in them, with newbies is not good. Stuck city. Before they could get out of the main valley to the "whooped" out trail that leads you north to the parking lot, they were in high winds, blowing snow, and had about 100' of visibility. When Jason found the trees, he knew that he was not in the right place. He had slowly drifted to the right/east while they were heading north up the valley. From the top of the ridge, he saw what he thought was the road, about a 1/4 mile below them. He knew it wasn't where he parked, but figured any part of the road(there's only one highway going through the Pass)was good enough. After dropping off the ridge, Jason realized it was the train track and not the Highway. He didn't know which way was east, and which way was west(or north and south for that matter!). He went right/east down the tracks for about a mile or so when he saw the Osier station looming just over a small ridge. This was at 3:30 pm. Jason decided to head for the station to wait out the storm. They got in the Cafe building and found a propane grill, propane bottle, popcorn, brown gravy mix, chicken broth, and peach drink mix. Jason said that building was big, open, and "drafty". In the office of that building in the managers safe, they found the keys for all of the buildings. The nearest building was sort of a "bunk house". It had small rooms, beds, and blankets. They took the food, propane, and grill, along with some cooking pans and utencils to the bunk house to set up shop. Early Saturday morning, Jason decided to try to climb the Peak on his sled and get a call out. He siphoned the fuel from the "little" Freestyle(he also had a 550 freestyle as well as a ZX chassis 700 Summit, his 800 151 REV, and his wife's 144 REV) so that he had full tanks for him and Shannon, his wife. Jason knew that the little Freestyle wasn't gonna go anywhere in all of the new snow, hence the "fuel swap". They were out for about 10-15 minutes. Jason realized it was too dangerous to try to climb anything, or to attempt to ride out. So they went back to the safety of the bunk house and waited out the storm. They must have just missed Chad and his group. Jason said they had placed some of the mattresses against the windows of the bunk house to help keep the wind out. Placing 2 against the windows, with a third at a 45 degree angle to hold them up. Twice, the mattresses were blown over by the wind
It was howling all night, and through the day Sunday. At about 7:30 Monday morning Jason decided to climb the hill and try another call. The WX was pretty good. 1/2 to 1 mile visibility, and no snow. He climbed the hill on his sled and not on foot, as some of the reporters stated, and got the call out. Matt and the Crew were already heading to Osier as planned. Matt and the Crew got their first and told them I was right behind them. Walking into that bunk house and hugging Jason, Shannon, their daughter Aspen, Mike, Missy, and Jesse was UNBELIEVABLE
. Good times, my friends, good times. Bottom line is this: Jason did a fantastic job of doing everything right after getting caught in a bad situation. He found shelter within 1 hour of getting lost. They stayed put, other than the short excursion Saturday morning. They didn't run out of gas. He had a survival kit with him. He stayed calm. Props to my buddy Jason! A GPS would have helped greatly, no doubt. Jason knows that and will never ride without it again. Let's all learn from this story. Be smart and ride carefully! IkeJon
