The wind was blowing a little but skies were clear when two families on a backcountry adventure parked and unloaded their snowmobiles near the Cumbres Pass on Friday.
They hadn’t seen nor heard a weather report. If they had, they might have known that the pass on the Colorado and New Mexico border was in the path of a storm poised to whip the high country.
The wind picked up, but it remained clear, Shannon Groen, 31, recalled today. So after lunch, the group continued to run snowmobiles around a meadow.
Within hours, they found themselves wandering through a thick screen of wind-lashed snow that obscured their route to safety.
“We knew we had to find shelter because it does get dark up there quicker,” she said today by cellphone as the family drove home to Farmington, N.M. “We came over a hill and saw the Osier train station. We stopped for a minute, and then went past it to see if we could find the main path. We went up a hill, but we couldn’t see it.”
Groen, her husband, Jason, and daughter Aspen — along with friends Mike and Missy Martin and their son, Jessie — spent the next 2½ days in a cabin near the station waiting for rescuers.
They were able to slide open a window at the train station, which is located in southern Colorado, just north of the New Mexico border. Once inside, they lit a small fire in a standup ashtray so they could see. They found blankets, propane, a grill and some keys.
They ate the lunch they had brought with them, then went to a nearby cabin and tried to open it with the keys. When that didn’t work, they broke in through the front door, Shannon Groen said.
“It was a kind of a bunkhouse. There was lots of stuff in there.”
They had bouillon, popcorn, candles. With blankets to keep warm, they weathered a storm that would have killed them had they been outside, said Patrick Montoya, head of the Conejos County Search and Rescue squad.
It was the squad that found them in that cabin Monday morning after the Groens were able to make a 911 call on their cellphone.
“They did an excellent job of finding shelter and staying put. That saved their lives,” Montoya said.
Weather conditions were so bad that New Mexico authorities closed the road to the pass on their side of the border, putting an end to the rescue attempt from that direction.
But in Colorado, Montoya said, the Colorado Department of Transportation was able to carve a 10-mile corridor through snow piled 5 feet high on the road up to the pass.
The path through mountainous drifts made it possible for rescuers and their snowmobiles to get into the area.
Conejos County has some of the most traveled backcountry trails in the state, Montoya said.
His rescue squad stays busy.
“Usually, it is people who get caught up in storms. Occasionally we get people out there who break down. We are fairly active all year around.”
The area is remote, and there is no one on duty to advise visitors to leave the area when severe weather is coming in.
“You should check the weather conditions before you leave, and when you are snowmobiling, keep an eye on the cloud and wind situation. When it starts coming in, start heading for the truck.”
He added: “I’m sure they’ll never make that mistake again.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
