Father and son Mark and Chris Torrey, who died together Sept. 23 after being inadvertently asphyxiated by a portable propane heater, were bound by blood, bullets and the intricate flies they tied for their backcountry hunting and fishing trips.
Mark Torrey married his high school sweetheart, Gale, three years after they began dating. They raised their son and daughter, Sheena, in the Lakewood home where Mark Torrey constantly had a renovation project in progress.
He installed a splendid oak mantel around the fireplace. He remodeled nearly every room in the house. When Mark Torrey, 51, and his son decided to take the weekend off to go hunting, he had just finished re-tiling the family’s main bathroom.
“They’d just gotten it ready for a plumber to come on Monday,” Gale Torrey said.
She sent her husband and son off to their hunting trip with a kiss, and a promise of homemade elk sausage on their return. With some elk meat left over from the Torrey men’s harvest last year, she wanted to clear out the freezer, knowing that they probably would return with fresh meat.
“If anyone goes on a hunting and fishing trip and gets something, it’ll be Chris and Mark,” she said.
Like his father, Chris Torrey, 26, loved fishing and hunting, though he eschewed handyman projects.
Chris Torrey became a chef and an expert butcher after studying at a culinary school in New York City. He worked at Steve’s Meat, an Arvada shop that specializes in processing wild game. With his employer’s blessing, he left work early Sept. 22, so he could get a head start on the hunting trip.
A family friend arranged to loan his Gilpin County cabin to Mark and Chris Torrey. It is about 10 miles outside Central City, in excellent big game habitat. The Torreys, veterans of tent camping trips, felt lucky to have such cozy shelter with a major winter storm bearing down on Colorado’s high country.
More than 2 feet of snow fell overnight. Temperatures plummeted. When the chilled Torrey men returned from hunting late Sept. 23, they lit a portable propane heater but fell asleep before turning it off. In confined spaces like cabins and tents, propane heaters consume oxygen so swiftly that anyone inside risks losing consciousness. With no oxygen left, the heater can burn out, leaking odorless gas that asphyxiates nearby sleepers.
Law officials found the Torrey men’s bodies at 2 a.m. Sept. 25, hours after Gale Torrey’s elk sausage grew cold on the waiting plates.
In addition to Gale Torrey and Sheena Torrey, survivors include Chris Torrey’s wife, Whitney Torrey, and their 2-year-old son, Joshua Torrey. The family suggests donations to the Mark and Chris Torrey Memorial Fund at Bellco Credit Unions.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
