{"id":92749,"date":"2019-07-26T20:52:55","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T20:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/60-year-old-man-rescued-from-weminuche-wilderness\/"},"modified":"2019-07-26T20:52:55","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T20:52:55","slug":"60-year-old-man-rescued-from-weminuche-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/60-year-old-man-rescued-from-weminuche-wilderness\/","title":{"rendered":"60-year-old man rescued from Weminuche Wilderness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"La
La Plata County Search and Rescue worked Thursday to extract an injured hiker from Chicago Basin in the Weminuche Wilderness, north of Durango.<\/span>Courtesy of San Juan National Forest<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A 60-year-old man required a helicopter rescue Thursday after falling and injuring his head on a hike in the Weminuche Wilderness.<\/p>\n

La Plata County Search and Rescue President Ron Corkish said the man fell around 5 p.m. Wednesday in an area known as Chicago Basin, which is accessed by the Needle Creek Trail.<\/p>\n

The Needle Creek Trail is a popular hiking trail, but it is in a remote part of the Weminuche Wilderness. The trail is most commonly accessed by hiking 10 miles from the Purgatory Flats trailhead or getting off at the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad\u2019s stop at Needleton.<\/p>\n

Corkish said it was too late in the day to get the man out of the area, and no one in the vicinity had an emergency beacon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m surprised someone didn\u2019t have one,\u201d he said. \u201cWe get kind of spoiled by people having those devices, and when they don\u2019t, it takes a long time for extraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, two medical professionals were also recreating in the area and cared for the man overnight. Corkish said the man spent the night in and out of consciousness.<\/p>\n

Two other hikers walked out of Chicago Basin on Wednesday evening to wait for the D&SNG the following morning.<\/p>\n

The hikers were able to flag down a pop car, which radioed search and rescue personnel around 8:20 a.m. Thursday.<\/p>\n

Corkish said crews were ready to go into the field, but emergency responders decided the better option was to fly the injured man out with a Flight for Life helicopter.<\/p>\n

Search and Rescue obtained permission from the U.S. Forest Service to land a helicopter in the wilderness area. The man was taken out around 9:40 a.m., Corkish said.<\/p>\n

The injured man was alert, but disoriented. Corkish said he did not believe the man\u2019s injuries were life-threatening.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d been through a lot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Corkish did not have the man\u2019s name or where he was from immediately available Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

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

and hit head Wednesday evening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6185,5985,5736,5735,6186],"tags":[1152,1807,1924],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-92749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emergency-incident","category-la-plata-county-search-and-rescue","category-local-news","category-news","category-weminuche-wilderness","tag-emergency-incident","tag-la-plata-county-search-and-rescue","tag-weminuche-wilderness"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92749","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=92749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92749"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=92749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}