{"id":45362,"date":"2021-08-06T22:54:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T04:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/3-hit-by-rockfall-while-trying-to-recover-hikers-body\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:24:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:24:48","slug":"3-hit-by-rockfall-while-trying-to-recover-hikers-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/3-hit-by-rockfall-while-trying-to-recover-hikers-body\/","title":{"rendered":"3 hit by rockfall while trying to recover hiker\u2019s body"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=e6d7fb49-273e-58ef-b6cd-94a1aff57a46&#038;function=cover&#038;type=preview&#038;source=false&#038;width=2000\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1196\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>ASPEN \u2014 Three people trying to recover the body of a hiker on a Colorado mountain were injured Wednesday after being hit by a \u201cmassive rockfall\u201d likely triggered by other climbers above them, authorities said.<\/p>\n<p>The most seriously injured Mountain Rescue Aspen member on Capitol Peak was flown to a Denver-area hospital for emergency surgery, after a rock knocked the rescuer &#8220;roughly 20 feet through the air in a \u2018rag doll,\u2019 or somersault motion,\u201d the Pitkin County Sheriff&#8217;s Office said. The other two members were treated and released from the hospital in nearby Aspen.<\/p>\n<p>The incident delayed the recovery of the body of Kelly McDermott of Madison, Wisconsin, which was spotted by a search helicopter earlier Wednesday. McDermott had been reported missing after failing to return from a climb of the 14,137-foot (4,309-meter) mountain on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>His body is located in a precarious spot about 500 feet below the Knife Edge, a ridge which leads to the final climb to the mountain&#8217;s summit. Because of the location, it may take some time to recover his body, Undersheriff Alex Burchetta told The Aspen Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ASPEN \u2014 Three people trying to recover the body of a hiker on a Colorado mountain were injured Wednesday after being hit by a \u201cmassive rockfall\u201d likely triggered by other climbers above them, authorities said. The most seriously injured Mountain Rescue Aspen member on Capitol Peak was flown to a Denver-area hospital for emergency [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45362","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=45362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86461,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45362\/revisions\/86461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45362"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}