The second attempt at jumping Highway
6, near Lovelace, Colorado ended in a mission for
Summit County Search and Rescue.
Sheriff Joe Morales said
he came across a young male snowboarder who appeared
to be building a jump to cross the highway.
"He hadn't done anything illegal yet, but we
felt he was going to. I told him, 'You can't
build a jump here' - that it was against the law,
and he nodded his head affirmatively and packed up
his snowboard."
After that exchange,
Morales realized he was blocking traffic, and moved
to a different spot to make his road-maintenance contacts.
When he looked back to where the boarder had been
after about a five-minute lapse, he said, the boarder
was gone and an avalanche had been triggered.
"There were tracks
into the slide debris, and none coming out."
Sixteen rescue workers swept the backcountry ski terrain
with probes. "There was enough chance that someone
was buried that we had to check." Fortunately
their search showed no one to be in the snow.
Last week, a 20-year-old
skier failed to complete a jump across Highway 6 at
the same spot and, according to Morales, suffered
back injuries. He was attempting to cross the
60-foot-wide right of way from about 40 feet above
the highway..
"Skiing or boarding
in the out-of-bounds terrain above the pass is legal,
but crossing the highway isn't. People have
been doing this (jumping the highway) forever."
