ASPEN – Tuesday was a tough day for Dave and LaShawn Montoya.
After rescuers searched the rugged backcountry around Pyramid Peak for two days, including during one of the nastiest winter storms of the season, they had found no sign of the Montoya’s 23-year-old climber son, Ryan.
“That was a bad day,” Dave Montoya said Wednesday. “We were pretty much thinking we’d lost him.”
Dave Montoya, a pastor from Paradise, California, spoke about 3 p.m. Tuesday with a Pitkin County sheriff’s deputy, who updated him and said Mountain Rescue Aspen volunteers planned to head back out to the 14,026-foot peak again Wednesday. The deputy said he’d call back at 5 p.m. for a final update, Dave said.
When the phone rang, Dave received the unexpected.
“He calls and says, ‘We found him and he’s alive,’” Dave said. “My wife just fell apart – in a good way. We were ecstatic.
“We went from the bottom to the top in a few seconds.”
Ryan, who was climbing solo, had indeed emerged – relatively unscathed – from the East Maroon Portal under his own power. A person out running saw him on Maroon Creek Road about 4:15 p.m., then ran down the closed road to alert Mountain Rescue volunteers, who brought Ryan back to their command post at the T-Lazy 7 Ranch on a snowmobile, authorities said.
From there he was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital, then flown Tuesday night to the University of Colorado Hospital.
“The doctors said they definitely wanted to send him there to make sure he doesn’t lose any of his fingers,” Dave said.
Ryan’s injuries include frostbite – mainly on his right hand – a fractured pelvis and a dislocated elbow, Dave said. Ryan is recovering and wasn’t ready to talk, his father said.
“Folks were telling us this just doesn’t happen,” Dave said of his son’s improbable survival. “It was just a moment of great relief and thanksgiving to God. We were elated.
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