Leave Room for What We Do Not Know

Two students from Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, CO, Kaden Matsuda, 19, of Ridgway, and Jackson Donlon, 20, of New York, were found dead in a basin of West Apostle Mountain in Chaffee County on Wednesday, October 28. They had gone on a weekend trip into the mountains of Chaffee County.

The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office says an autopsy will determine the cause and manner of death. Investigators do not suspect foul play.

The two students were Matsuda, 19, of Ridgway, CO, who was studying to be a wildland firefighter, and Donlon, 20, of New York, who was studying to be a mountain guide. The fact that the two were studying to do certain things in the outdoors should not be used as evidence of poor judgment on their part in deciding to go on this trip.

The two students left campus on Friday, October 23. Family and friends said they planned to hike Ice Mountain, at the far north end of the county. The sheriff’s office described plans to camp near the mountain and attempt a climb over the weekend. A text to friends included a map marking Ice Mountain, Winfield and the trailhead area.

Friends said the students planned to return Saturday if they did not feel safe, or Sunday if they felt confident. We do not have an account from them of the decisions they made afterward.

On Monday morning, October 26, college officials called the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office when the two students failed to return to campus. Deputies found Matsuda’s vehicle at the trailhead. About 8 inches of snow lay on the ground, with none beneath the vehicle. There were no fresh human tracks.

There were 3 or 4 feet of drifted snow in some areas of Ice Mountain, the Sheriff’s Office said. Rain and snow had coated the mountain in ice. Several feet of snow, ice and rugged terrain prevented searchers from traveling on foot to some areas of the mountain.

The tent was found on Tuesday. Heavy snow had collapsed it. Sleeping bags, a stove and some clothing remained inside, with no footprints around it. It is a hard detail to read. It does not explain what happened to the students.

About 60 searchers took part. The effort used helicopters, drones, search dogs and avalanche beacon technology. Members of Chaffee County Search and Rescue, Flight for Life and even several college faculty members trained in mountain rescue were on hand to search for the missing students. The two bodies were found Wednesday afternoon ahead of more snow expected to fall in the area this weekend, according to Sheriff Andy Rohrich.

I am proud of the efforts of our Search and Rescue team to find these two young men before the upcoming weekend storm. However, finding their bodies is not the outcome that I had hoped for. I can only imagine the pain and suffering of their families and friends right now.

The area is within my own county, Chaffee, but I am not on scene. I do not have personal knowledge of the search for the students. My years as a land surveyor give me no standing to reconstruct a trip I did not witness.

Experience should make a person careful about the limits of an account. It should not serve as permission to speak over the people gathering the facts. For now, the students’ names and the findings of the sheriff’s office with respect to their disappearance must suffice.

The sheriff’s office believed the students were well equipped and had prepared for the trip. I would like to see this fact included in any subsequent accounts of the incident and would object to any column that left out this key fact and then tried to portray the two students as careless in their preparation for the trip.

Colorado Mountain College said, “We are devastated by the loss of Kaden Matsuda and Jackson Donlon, two members of our Colorado Mountain College community.”

The sheriff’s office said it was not worried about avalanches during the search, describing this as the first big snow of the season. I would not take that statement beyond the search it describes.

There will be time to read the full findings of the investigation into the deaths of the two students in the future. For now, however, we can acknowledge the difficulties that the searchers faced in trying to find the two, and note that the sheriff’s office is still trying to determine how the two died.