<\/p>\n
An unattended Landcruiser rolled off a cliff at Mesa Verde National Park Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
No one was injured in the incident, said Chief Ranger Jesse Farias, which occurred about 4 p.m. at the Fire Temple Ruin overlook on the Mesa Top driving loop.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he got out to view the ruin, he failed to put the vehicle in park,\u201d Farias said.<\/p>\n
The 2001 Landcruiser began to roll, and would have just hit the vehicle in front of it, but a lip in the asphalt caused the steering wheel to turn enough that it rolled off the edge. It plummeted down a 60-to-80-foot cliff then rolled 150 feet down a canyon.<\/p>\n
\u201cFortunately, no one was hurt. It was just property damage,\u201d Farias said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen some pretty weird stuff in 30 years at parks, but never this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The vehicle\u2019s owner, 41-year-old Greg Geiger, is vacationing from North Carolina. A citation was not issued for the accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had some choice words, as you might imagine,\u201d Farias said.<\/p>\n
Geiger said Friday he was glad the damage was only to his car.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was first going through my head was I might have done damage to a national treasure,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m glad that didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Geiger said he was on a cross-country trip, and most of his possessions were in the car when it rolled off the cliff.<\/p>\n
Geiger considered trying to enter the SUV to stop it, Farias said, but decided not to because it \u201cwas past the point of no return.\u201d There were several witnesses.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Bo Dean\u2019s Towing arrived at the scene to extract the totaled vehicle, which was sitting upside down. Tow operators used a 50-ton wrecker with a large boom that is essentially a small crane.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not a run-of-the-mill tow, and will be tricky,\u201d Farias said.<\/p>\n
Park spokeswoman Cristy Brown said the view point was being recovered.<\/p>\n
The accident did not damage the ruin, officials said, and an archaeologist will monitor the towing scene. A mitigation plan will be developed to handle any possible fuel leak.<\/p>\n
Mesa Verde Ranger Operations Supervisor Steve Krisko said a similar crash occurred about 15 years ago, when an employee\u2019s unoccupied car tumbled down a hill. Two or three years ago, a visitor intentionally drove a car off a cliff in the park, but was uninjured, he said.<\/p>\n
As far as lessons learned, Farias advised people to slow down when visiting the park.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople get excited about seeing the ruins, but they need to take their time and be patient and safe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Reporter Jacob Klopfenstein contributed to this story.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018He had some choice words,\u2019 ranger says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,173,29,254],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-70749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-mesa-verde-national-park","tag-newsletter","tag-road-crash"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70749","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=70749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70749"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=70749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}