EGNAR – A 31-year-old Florida man was found early Monday near the Dolores River after a motorcycle crash and a four-hour search involving multiple law enforcement agencies, according to a news release from the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office.
San Miguel County Dispatchers received a call at 2:30 a.m. reporting a crashed motorcycle and blood, but no driver, on the side of the road on Colorado Highway 141 about seven miles north of Egnar, about 50 miles northwest of Cortez. The call prompted an extensive overnight search in blizzard conditions Monday.
Egnar Fire and EMS and a Dove Creek ambulance initiated a search, and were joined by San Miguel County sheriff’s deputies and search-and-rescue personnel and the Colorado State Patrol.
Emergency responders found the injured man at 6:47 a.m. Monday along the roadway, about 80 yards from a shed where he sought shelter and stayed until dawn, according to a news release. The shed was about 4.5 miles from the crash site.
Deputies noted what appeared to be a bed made from bags of dog and horse food in the shed.
San Miguel County Deputy Sheriff Chris White said in the release the man was lucky to be alive.
“He was fortunate to have found shelter after a bad accident and cold, windy, winter conditions,” White said. “This is another situation where the person, even with severe injuries, was ‘self-rescue’ capable. He got himself where he needed to be.”
The driver told deputies he was traveling alone, en route to Boulder when he found he was going too fast to round a corner and slid into a guardrail. That area is noted to have a sudden speed-limit drop from 65 mph to 35 mph. The man told deputies he did not see the sign indicating the speed limit drop. The crash is believed to have happened some time after 9 p.m. Sunday.
The driver told deputies he waited on the side of the road for assistance from passers-by until temperatures started falling, the wind picked up, and it started to snow. He decided to walk along the road in an effort to find shelter.
Overnight temperatures were reportedly as low as 17 degrees with winds gusting up to 40 mph.
Dove Creek EMS took the man to Monticello, Utah, for care.
In the release, San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters commended the efforts of all involved.
“All of the responders, many of them volunteers, deserve a tremendous amount of kudos for coming out in the middle of the night and working through a blizzard to find this man, and I thank them.”
