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When lightning strikes above treeline

BUENA VISTA – Lightning killed a newlywed climbing one of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks last week.

The Denver Post reported that Kathleen Bartlett and Ryan Pocius had been married less than a week when they were hiking just above treeline on 14,199-foot (5,328-meter) Mount Yale. The Chaffee County coroner said the bride probably died immediately. Pocius was injured but survived.

For all the people who spend time above treeline, not many people get hit. Still, it’s a very real threat. The usual rule of thumb is to rise early, make the summit by noon and then hasten down to the relative safety of trees.

But sometimes lightning strikes early. Fifteen people were struck in late June while hiking Mount Bierstadt, another 14,000-foot peak 40 miles west of Denver. It was just before noon. None were killed, although nine later sought medical attention. A German shepherd named Rambo didn’t fare as well and was killed by the bolt.

All accounts agree on the sudden turn of weather. One person reported perfect weather until about three minutes before the strike. A man said his hiking poles were making a low hum before he was hit. He reported feeling intense pain before waking up face down on the ground, his legs and arms paralyzed. He soon regained their use.

There is no perfect correlation with high ground and lightning. Florida, with a high point of just 345 feet above sea level, leads the United States in fatalities. Colorado is No. 3 in lightning fatalities but some of the highest areas of Colorado, such as the Elk Range between Aspen and Crested Butte, don’t necessarily get the most strikes, according to a report by Stephen Hodanish and Paul Wolyn called “Lightning Climatology for the State of Colorado.”

Wyoming leads the nation in a different if still dubious category: the number of deaths per million. Colorado is No. 2. In this category, Arizona, Montana and Utah also rank in the top 10, according to the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

By any measure, the West Coast is relatively immune to lightning threats. While Colorado had 17 fatalities between 2005-14, Washington state had none and Oregon just one.

Steve Clark is president of a group called the Lightning Data Center. It meets monthly in Denver to talk about lightning. He believes the relative lack of lightning on the West Coast is explained by the more consistent temperatures and greater moisture.

Storms in the Rocky Mountains, in contrast, tend to be drier. That drier air combined with greater temperature differences produces more lightning.

Of every 10 people struck by lightning, only one is killed, he says. But about a third of survivors end up with long-term neurological problems, everything from motor coordination to speech to altered moods and appetite. “They can be singular or in combination,” he says.

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Gas may have caused Aspen deaths

ASPEN – Jeffrey Beard was backpacking with three of his children near the Maroon Bells, outside of Aspen. The first report was that Beard and his son, Cameron, 14, of Colorado Springs, had been killed in a lightning strike.

But Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo said that may have been a premature guess. Toxicology tests have been ordered but were not immediately available.

The Aspen Times reports second-hand reports that the father and son may have succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of using a stove in a tent. Both bodies had bright pink faces with pink patches all over – a common sign of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Two other children in the family, ages 12 and 7, had been camping in a separate tent and were uninjured.

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Hooping it up on Colorado’s 14ers

BRECKENRIDGE – Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks continue to be a magnet for superlatives. Records have been broken and rebroken in a variety of areas. Spurning motorized transport, somebody rode a bicycle between climbing them all, even if they are separated by hundreds of miles. A fellow camped on them all. They have all been skied.

What could be left? How about somebody hula-hooping on each and every one. That’s what Bill Kresge set out to do this summer after first asking his boss at a plumbing and heating company in Frisco to give him two months off.

Kresge, 23, arrived in Colorado recently from Pennsylvania. His first 14er was in his back yard, Quandary Peak near Breckenridge, but then he took a hula hoop up Mount Sneffels, between Telluride and Ridgway. He liked the feeling of his accomplishment. “When I was done, I thought, ‘Man, this could be a thing,’” Kresge told the Summit Daily News. “I don’t think anyone has ever done this before.”

A handyman by nature, Kresge crafted a collapsible model from PVC pipe. Other hikers have guessed it’s everything from a skinny lawn chair to a piece of homemade climbing gear and, even more commonly, a beer bong.

Kresge tells the Daily News that he has been respectful of his limits and the harsh realities of nature. Anytime the sky turns a nasty shade of gray-blue, he retreats, no matter how fetching the summit.

But on the summit, he has a set routine: assemble his hoop, attach a GoPro to the end of a wooden selfie-stick and twirl for 10 seconds. The clips will be assembled into a montage for consumption on YouTube by the end of summer.

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Pesticides may pose new threat to trees

GRANBY – A solution to the bark beetle epidemic in Colorado that began in 1996 may have contributed to a new problem.

A pesticide sprayed on some trees on private lands killed other insects, which were natural enemies of another insect called pine needle scale, according to state foresters. “The concentrated spraying for mountain pine beetles may have contributed to the build-up of this insect (scale), by killing beneficial parasitic insects that would normally keep scale populations in check,” says Ron Cousineau, district forester for the Colorado State Forest Service Granby District.

Cousineau said foresters have never seen pine needle scale this damaging in that part of Colorado. The trees affected include blue spruce in Vail and lodgepole pines in the Fraser Valley and small pockets in Summit County.

He said the areas of heaviest infestation of the scale have been observed within or adjacent to locations that have been heavily sprayed to control mountain pine beetle.

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Painkillers blamed for overdose deaths

SANTA FE, N.M. – Prescription drugs have played a major role in the sharp increase in drug overdose deaths in New Mexico.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports 536 deaths from drug overdoses last year, a 20 percent increase from the prior year. The percentage is 26.4 deaths per 100,000 people, behind only West Virginia and Kentucky.

Rio Arriba County, an impoverished county near the Colorado border, led with 40 deaths, or a rate of 108 per 100,000 population.

Rett Ward, the secretary of the state health department, told the New Mexican that prescription opioids, such as oxycodone, are probably the main cause of the spike, accounting for 41 percent of deaths.

Some people may have started with prescription painkillers and, after becoming addicted, gravitated to heroin, because it can be cheaper and easier to obtain.

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Grizzlies snack on yearlings and ants

JACKSON, Wyo. – Grizzly bear numbers in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have climbed from fewer than 200 in the early 1990s to upwards of 700 and possibly more than 1,000 today. But as the population has grown, bears have spread out. Conflicts have occurred.

One area of conflict has been southeast of Jackson, on the flanks of the Wind River Range, where the Green River – a major tributary to the Colorado River – originates. There, about 50 bear-livestock conflicts occur each year, reports the Jackson Hole News&Guide, citing Forest Service documents.

When they kill livestock, federal land managers typically relocate the grizzly from the area or, if they have a bad record, they are killed. Since 2012, 10 wildlife managers have killed 10 grizzlies.

This year, one grizzly that fed on cattle has been killed and another relocated from the area.

Albert Sommeres, a rancher, tells the newspaper that he estimates that six to eight head of cattle – mostly calves, but also yearlings – have been killed by grizzlies. An additional two cattle were killed by wolves. This was as of early July.

Also writing in the News&Guide, Todd Wilkinson points out that grizzlies will eat almost anything they find that’s edible. But their prey in the Yellowstone area might surprise you. Next to plants, the most common source of food for the grizzly is ants.

Wilkinson warns against assuming that the thriving bear populations will continue to thrive without federal protection. Part of the reason is that other sources of food include nuts of the whitebark pine, which has suffered as a result of warming temperatures.

– Allen Best

For more, go to www.mountaintownnews.net