CARBONDALE — John Baker, a Carbondale architect and occasional community activist, will be the first to admit that he nearly cashed in his chips recently when he took a header over the handlebars of his mountain bike, landed squarely on his head, and broke two vertebrae in his neck.
And it all happened on the way back down from a camping trip with friends to the Heart Lake area in the Flat Tops Wilderness, north of Glenwood Springs, far from immediate help.
But help was there nonetheless, in the form of his camping companions, a couple of passing families on all terrain vehicles, a survival expert known only as “Mystery Mark,” and a rescue crew from Vail Mountain Rescue.
On Thursday, following emergency surgery to repair the damage to two cervical discs and fix a broken clavicle, Baker reported: “I’m fully operational!”
Read Baker’s story, including details of the rescue, at
