A 28-year-old man died as rescuers carried him down a darkened trail from Blodgett Peak after he fell as far as 100 feet on Saturday.
“He was found in a big boulder field. He had taken a pretty big fall,” said Brian Kinsey, incident commander with the El Paso County Search and Rescue team.
Rescuers recovered the body in “very treacherous terrain,” said El Paso County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Jacqueline Kirby.
The man, who is from the Denver area, was visiting family in Colorado Springs. He told them he was taking a hike and planned to be home by 3 p.m.
When he didn’t return on time, the family went to the parking lot at the Blodgett Peak trailhead and found his car, Kirby said.
When they couldn’t locate him, they called the El Paso County Fire Department.
Firefighters went to the area, and when they saw the terrain, they called search and rescue, Kirby said.
Responders located the man by pinging his cellphone, which gave them a geographic location.
They found him at about 4 a.m. Though badly injured and unconscious, he was still alive.
Medical helicopters couldn’t reach the area in the dark, Kinsey said, and rescuers had to carry him about 2 miles to the trailhead parking lot.
The man died on the trip down.
