{"id":51117,"date":"2020-10-07T14:49:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T20:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/missing-hiker-found-dead-in-san-juan-mountains-west-of-lake-city\/"},"modified":"2020-10-07T20:49:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T20:49:00","slug":"missing-hiker-found-dead-in-san-juan-mountains-west-of-lake-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/missing-hiker-found-dead-in-san-juan-mountains-west-of-lake-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing hiker found dead in San Juan Mountains, west of Lake City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=fca3699a-9b52-4eff-868a-544d872e5b5d&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2087\" alt=\"Authorities say Ben Brownlee of Denver was hiking alone when he went missing last weekend. His body was found Tuesday.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Authorities say Ben Brownlee of Denver was hiking alone when he went missing last weekend. His body was found Tuesday.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy of Hinsdale County Office of Emergency Management<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A 26-year-old Denver man who went missing while solo hiking in the San Juan Mountains was found dead late Tuesday, according to authorities.<\/p>\n<p>Ben Brownlee was last seen around 11:30 a.m. Saturday hiking from the Silver Creek\/Grizzly Gulch trailhead, which is located on the east side of Cinnamon Pass, about 18 miles southwest of Lake City.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Hinsdale County Office of Emergency Management, Brownlee spoke with two hikers while coming down a mountain known as \u201cUnnamed Peak.\u201d He told them he had summited and was on his way to climb to the top of the adjacent Redcloud Peak.<\/p>\n<p>Brownlee was reportedly an experienced and avid hiker.<\/p>\n<p>Brownlee was reported overdue late Sunday, and a search and rescue mission was launched Monday morning, which included more than a dozen ground crews as well as several helicopters.<\/p>\n<p>Brownlee\u2019s car was found at the trailhead of Redcloud and Sunshine peaks on Hinsdale County Road 30, a popular recreation area. But search crews, which included family and friends, were unable to locate him Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Around 5 p.m. Tuesday, a private helicopter chartered by his family located what is believed to be Brownlee\u2019s body about 75 to 100 feet below a steep, rocky ridge, southeast of Cooper Creek Peak.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Hinsdale County Office of Emergency Management, the ridge runs between Cooper Creek Trail and Silver Creek Trail.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities planned to recover Brownlee\u2019s body on Wednesday, which will require specialized technical operations to reach the location.<\/p>\n<p>Next of kin has been notified, according to the Office of Emergency Management.<\/p>\n<p>Attempts to reach Hinsdale County spokeswoman Sandy Hines were not successful Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:jromeo@durangoherald.com\">jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>reported overdue late Sunday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1152,28,658,29,199],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-emergency-incident","tag-headlines","tag-hiking","tag-newsletter","tag-san-juan-national-forest"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51117","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=51117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51117"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}