At around 10 p.m. on Aug. 3, a group of hikers called 911 from Lake Constantine in the White River National Forest near Mount of the Holy Cross to report that a member of their party had gone missing after separating from their group on a hike to the 13,276-foot summit of Whitney Peak earlier that day. After they spent the afternoon searching to no avail, they called for help. Vail Mountain Rescue Group dispatched a team of searchers who hiked up the Fall Creek Trail to Lake Constantine. Reaching the reporting party at 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 4, the team bivouacked with the group and waited for first light to commence search operations. Early that morning, after a Flight For Life crew overflew the northeast ridge of Whitney Peak and failed to locate any signs of the missing hiker, the VMRG rescuers followed boot tracks up a gully to the ridge, where the 46-year-old subject had last been seen at noon the previous day. Just after 8 a.m., as a second team of rescuers started up the Fall Creek Trail to join the search, the missing hiker, who had spent the night lost in the Fall Creek drainage after taking a wrong turn off the ridge trail the previous day, self-rescued, and reunited with the reporting party at the lake. All rescuers were out of the field by noon on Aug. 4. Thanks to Vail Dispatch, Eagle County Sheriff’s Office, Flight for Life, and the all-volunteer members of Vail Mountain Rescue Group who participated in this mission — the latest of more than six-dozen callouts since January.
