{"id":16111,"date":"2025-10-15T02:33:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T08:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/car-plunges-200-feet-off-red-mountain-pass\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:54:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:54:54","slug":"car-plunges-200-feet-off-red-mountain-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/car-plunges-200-feet-off-red-mountain-pass\/","title":{"rendered":"Car plunges 200 feet off Red Mountain Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A man suffered minor injuries Oct. 9 after plunging over Red Mountain Pass in his pickup truck, according to the Ouray County Sheriff\u2019s Office. (Courtesy of Ouray Mountain Rescue Team)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A pickup driver suffered minor injuries after plunging 200 feet off Red Mountain Pass on Oct. 9, according to the Ouray County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

The vehicle, a Ford F-150, rolled 200 feet into the Uncompahgre Gorge near mile markers 88 and 89, according to the Ouray County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

The driver was the sole occupant of the vehicle, the Ouray County Rescue Team said.<\/p>\n

The driver failed to maintain his lane, causing the truck to travel off the right shoulder and down a cliff, according to Colorado State Patrol. The vehicle landed upside down in the riverbed.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office said the driver was out of his vehicle \u201ccollecting belongings\u201d at the bottom of the gorge when emergency responders arrived. The items had likely been thrown from the vehicle during the crash.<\/p>\n

The rescue shut down Highway 550 for about eight hours on Oct. 9, according to State Patrol.<\/p>\n

State Patrol said the incident remained under investigation, and the driver\u2019s name had not been released as of Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"A
A man suffered minor injuries Oct. 9 after plunging over Red Mountain Pass in his pickup truck, according to the Ouray County Sheriff\u2019s Office. (Courtesy of Ouray Mountain Rescue Team)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A
A man suffered minor injuries Oct. 9 after plunging over Red Mountain Pass in his pickup truck, according to the Ouray County Sheriff\u2019s Office. (Courtesy of Ouray Mountain Rescue Team)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Two people died in a similar incident <\/a>on the same stretch of highway in early August.<\/p>\n

Louis Michael, 42, of Farmington, and his passenger Leoba Valdez, 79, of Aztec, died of blunt-force trauma, according to an Ouray County coroner\u2019s report. They drove off the road near mile marker 88 in a Honda Civic on Aug. 5. The vehicle tumbled 320 feet down the mountain and landed upside down in the canyon, according to State Patrol.<\/p>\n

A third passenger, a juvenile girl, was taken to the hospital with unspecified injuries after being trapped in the car for several hours.<\/p>\n

The coroner\u2019s report said that Michael had 40 times the legal limit of THC in his system at the time of the crash.<\/p>\n

epond@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

escapes with minor injuries, officials say<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,87,254,1384],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-red-mountain-pass","tag-road-crash","tag-u-s-highway-550"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20021,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16111\/revisions\/20021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16111"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}