{"id":25428,"date":"2024-10-05T23:37:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-06T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/separate-mountain-bike-crashes-north-of-durango-leave-one-injured-one-dead\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:17:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:17:26","slug":"separate-mountain-bike-crashes-north-of-durango-leave-one-injured-one-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/separate-mountain-bike-crashes-north-of-durango-leave-one-injured-one-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Separate mountain bike crashes north of Durango leave one injured, one dead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Durango
Durango Fire Protection District medics tended to a patient at Purgatory Resort on Saturday. (Shane Benjamin\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango Fire Protection District responded Saturday to two separate reports of mountain bike crashes involving one person injured and stranded at Junction Creek and another found unresponsive at Purgatory Resort.<\/p>\n

Emergency responders located and rescued a person, who is approximately 50 years old, at Junction Creek. DFPD Battalion Chief Jim Anderson said the person fell of a trail and tumbled 130 to150 feet to the creek.<\/p>\n

A man at Purgatory Resort, described to be in his 50s or 60s, was pronounced dead at the scene.<\/p>\n

DFPD received a call about the man at Purgatory Resort around 2:30 p.m. The man appeared to have crashed his mountain bike, Anderson said. The man reportedly displayed some seizure-like symptoms when he rode by others. After his bike tipped over and he fell to the ground, he was found to lack a pulse.<\/p>\n

A fire engine, medic unit and EMS safety captain were dispatched to the scene where crews treated the man for cardiac arrest. Anderson said a helicopter was requested from Flight For Life Lifeguard 5 Base at Mercy Hospital, but the request was canceled when the patient did not respond to treatment and was declared dead.<\/p>\n

Purgatory spokeswoman Theresa Graven said the man reached the bottom of chair lift 1 when he fell off his bike because of what appeared to be a medical incident. Purgatory Bike Patrol initially responded, then transferred care to DFPD once crews arrived.<\/p>\n

Anderson said emergency dispatch was alerted to the Junction Creek crash shortly before 1 p.m. Four fire apparatuses and seven or eight crew members were sent to the crash site.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur crews went in, packaged the patient, and then set up a rope system to bring them back up to the trail and then used the wheel to get them back out to the ambulance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It took about 20 minutes to rescue the patient from the creek side. Once the patient was placed on a transportation device for rougher terrain that resembles a mountain bike with a steel platform, it took another 20 to 30 minutes to transport the patient to an ambulance, Anderson said. The patient was subsequently transported to Mercy Hospital.<\/p>\n

Multiple bystanders were already on the scene when crews arrived, he said. They were unable to call 911, lacking adequate mobile phone service, but were able to send a text message.<\/p>\n

Crews found the patient using Global Positioning System coordinates, Anderson said.<\/p>\n

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

Incidents involved rescue from Junction Creek, potential medical issue at Purgatory Resort<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1480,1152,28,712],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-fire-protection-district","tag-emergency-incident","tag-headlines","tag-purgatory"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25428","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=25428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78932,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25428\/revisions\/78932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25428"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}