Rocky Mountain National Park will continue sending rangers on solo backcountry patrols but will require them to file travel plans and communicate any route changes, according to reports released today looking into last summer’s death of a veteran ranger.
Jeff Christensen, 31, suffered a fatal head injury in a tumble while descending from the saddle between two high peaks on July 29, but was discovered only after a massive eight-day search because his travel plans were not known, officials said.
The first death in the park’s 90-year history involving a ranger on backcountry patrol subsequently spurred a rare serious-incident investigation and the new rules.
“A lot of that may not have prevented an accident, but it would have helped with the search,” said park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson. “It’s one of those things where any of those procedures in place may not have helped him with the injuries he had.”
Searchers may have passed within 30 feet of where Christensen’s body was found, according to the parks report, and that a dog team might have noticed him if the wind had been different.
As a result of the investigation, officials indicated that rangers still will conduct solo patrols, even though they advise park visitors to travel with somebody whenever going into the backcountry, but they are looking into providing staff with newly available personal-locator beacons.
A tumble – perhaps caused by a misstep or loose rock – caused Christensen to hit his head on a rock and fracture his skull near his left temple, but he apparently remained conscious enough to walk a short distance down the hillside and wrap a T-shirt around his head to staunch the bleeding.
When three hikers discovered his body on Aug. 6, his handheld radio was next to him. It was later determined to be functioning despite a cracked screen, although officials could not determine whether the battery had any power left at the time of the accident.
Among the changes proposed in a formal action plan is for rangers to carry backup batteries for their radios.
A park law-enforcement specialist who reviewed radio-transmission tapes discovered several unexplained quick “clicks” but no voice transmissions about the time that the coroner estimated Christensen had fallen.
Christensen had been dropped off at the Mount Chapin trailhead about 11 a.m. with the intent of hiking from Chapin Pass to Lost Lake through the Mummy and Hague ranges.
Although in his fourth summer as a ranger, he had been in that area only once before, two years earlier, and was described in the report as being unfamiliar with the alpine terrain.
A colleague indicated that his planned route would cover about 22 miles and would take an exceedingly long time, particularly since Christensen said he hoped to finish the patrol in five hours.
As a result, he told the unnamed colleague that he would hike a shorter route along the ridge connecting Chapin, Chiquita and Ypsilon mountains and then return to the Lawn Lake trailhead later in the afternoon.
