Let's start with the good news: A man was successfuly rescued from the top of a mountain by emergency crews.
And then here's the bad: He'd been abandoned there during a hiking retreat with his coworkers.
The Chaffee County Search and Rescue shared on social media that the man was left by his coworkers to “complete his final summit push alone.”
The cause for his abandonment is as yet unknown, but first responders cheekily noted that the decision to leave the man “might cause some awkward encounters at the office in the coming days and weeks.”
The unidentified man was part of a group of 15 people hiking Mount Shavano, a 14,000-foot mountain in the southern Rocky Mountains.
The 15 people were coworkers and on an office retreat, taking the “standard route” to the top of the mountain, search and rescue officials shared. According to AllTrails, that consists of an 11-mile hike, which takes, on average, about nine hours to complete.
The group had started their hike at sunrise on Aug. 23, and the man eventually summitted the mountain solo around 11:30 a.m., later than the rest of his coworkers.
Even though he was able to make it to the top, he became disoriented while descending. The man had left behind items on his way up to help him find his way back down and they had been moved by another group of hikers, resulting in him making a wrong turn into a steep boulder field.
It was at this point that he texted his location to his colleagues, who told him he had the wrong route and tried to give him directions down the mountain, the search and rescue office shared.
Continuing on, the man sent another pin with an updated location to his coworkers around 3:30 p.m. After sending it, a storm hit, bringing freezing rain and strong winds, resulting in the man being disoriented again and losing cell phone signal.
The Chaffee County Search and Rescue team was notified at around 9 p.m. that the man was overdue, and two teams and a drone pilot were quickly dispatched.
The search and rescue teams were also hit with stormy weather, complicating their efforts. After 12 hours of searching, there was still no sign of the man, resulting in a second, more extensive search involving more agencies.
More than a day after the hike began and after the expanded search, the man “regained enough cell service to make a call to 911,” the search and rescue team shared.
He told first responders he had fallen at least 20 times, was “very disoriented,” and was “unable to get back up” from the last fall he took.
Rescuers used the call to find his location and then began “reaching and extracting” him. The final rescue involved using ropes to enter the gully where the man had fallen, the search and rescue team shared.
The man was transported to a local hospital and is receiving treatment. His condition was not shared.