BUENA VISTA, Colo. — The bodies of five hikers killed by a rock slide of car-sized boulders are set to be removed today, a day after the accident. A teenage girl was left with a broken leg and other injuries.
The Monday morning slide demolished a popular beginners trail below one of Colorado's most photographed mountains. It sent 100-ton boulders onto a viewing area that displays Agnes Vaille falls in Chalk Creek Canyon below Mount Princeton, a 14,197-foot peak.
The teenager was rescued and flown to a Denver hospital. There was no immediate identification of the victims.
Witnesses said some of the boulders were the size of cars.
Rescuers planned to wait until this afternoon to remove the bodies of the five who were killed, said Chaffee County department spokeswoman Monica Broaddus. Engineers from the nearby Climax molybdenum mine were headed to the site to advise on safely getting the bodies out.
The recovery was called off Monday evening because rocks continued to shift when the coroner counted the fatalities, Broaddus said.
"The conditions are considered unstable," she said.
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A female hiker who heard the slide ran down the trail and called for help, said Chaffee County Undersheriff John Spezze.
The area had a rainy summer and a recent snowfall, he said. It was too soon to know whether the weather prompted the slide, which left a football-field-sized gash in the mountainside, he said.
"It was totally unexpected. It caught everybody by surprise," Spezze said.
The trail is one of the first hikes recommended to people new to the area and is also popular with tourists, said Margaret Dean, a regular hiker who has hiked the trail with her 7-year-old grandson.
Dean, a copy assistant at The Mountain Mail newspaper in Salida, said the trail is easily accessible and provides a view of the falls and the Chalk Creek Valley in the Collegiate Peaks, which contains many mountains more than 14,000 feet tall.
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Agnes Vaille, the waterfall's namesake, was a Denver mountaineer who died in 1925 while attempting a difficult winter climb of Longs Peak, elevation 14,259 feet.
The U.S. Forest Service maintains the trail. Spezze said officials have asked the Forest Service for a permanent closure.
The Forest Service says the trail gets medium to heavy usage. The trailhead lies across from Chalk Lake campground and is near the St. Elmo ghost town, a popular stop for tourists in Colorado's central mountains.
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