{"id":75904,"date":"2017-11-22T15:41:04","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T22:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/death-of-cyclist-in-dolores-under-investigation\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T17:23:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T17:23:39","slug":"death-of-cyclist-in-dolores-under-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/death-of-cyclist-in-dolores-under-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of cyclist in Dolores under investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=01c62523-35b5-475f-ab92-149a69763cac&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1941\" height=\"1057\" alt=\"Sheriff and coroner vehicles park near the site of a bike crash on County Road 31.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Sheriff and coroner vehicles park near the site of a bike crash on County Road 31.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Nicholas Jones\/Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office is investigating the death of a Mancos cyclist who apparently crashed his mountain bike in Dolores on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Emergency personnel were called to the 19000 block of County Road 31 about 3:40 p.m. after a passerby reported an unconscious man by the side of the road, Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin said. Wesley Widener, 68, had suffered a head injury and died after apparently going off the road and hitting a rock. The cause of the accident remains under investigation.<\/p>\n<p>Nicholas Jones, owner of the Lizard Head Cyclery in Dolores, visited the scene with sheriff\u2019s deputies and the Montezuma County coroner on Wednesday morning to help with the investigation. He said Widener was an experienced mountain biker who would not have gone off the road under normal circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI rode with the guy,\u201d he said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t get that close to the edge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nowlin said there were no tire tracks to show that a vehicle had struck Widener. Jones suggested he could have been \u201cspooked\u201d by a car that came too close to his side of the road. It\u2019s a common occurrence for cars to get within a few feet of cyclists while traveling fast down the hill, he said, adding that one car had nearly struck him while he was examining the site with deputies on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Widener was an avid mountain biker who had been a regular customer at Lizard Head ever since it opened, Jones said. He remembered one year when Widener broke his collarbone but still competed in a bike race.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was a tough old guy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>As of Wednesday, the Montezuma County coroner\u2019s office had not released an official cause of death for Widener.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>dies after Tuesday crash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,657,13,28,52,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-75904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-cycling","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-law-enforcement","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75904","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=75904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75950,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75904\/revisions\/75950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75904"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=75904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}