A man hiking near St. Mary’s Glacier in Clear Creek County, Colorado, died Thursday after plummeting from a ridge.
The Alpine Rescue Team, a non-profit organization based in Evergreen, was notified around 2:20 p.m. that a man had fallen “a significant distance and was unresponsive,” spokesperson Jake Smith said in a phone call Friday.
A roughly 25-member team began searching for the unidentified man. Teams were able to reach the hiker and determined that he had died.
Smith said the man had fallen halfway down a steep slope into a “cliffband” and had to be lowered about 300 feet down to the bottom of the slope. The recovery took about four hours, Smith said.
It’s not clear what led to the fall.
“We don’t have the full picture of what happened. He was hiking. We suspect he was probably on the ridge line up above where he had fallen. There’s a big snow cornice that forms up there,” Smith said. “I don’t know if he was on the edge or part of it broke off or if he decided to descend and misjudged how steep the slope was.”
Smith said the equipment the man had was micro spikes on his shoes to give him better traction, but it was “not good enough equipment for that terrain.”
NBC News reached out to the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office for comment.
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