2 young men who died on Colorado peaks identified
A 23-year-old man from Boulder and a 21-year-old man from Arizona were killed in fatal falls in the Colorado high country on the same day last month.
Peter Kubiniec and John James Coffee died in separate accidents on Monday, July 22.
Both men's bodies were lifted from their remote locations by helicopter on Wednesday the 24th. Weather and difficult terrain complicated both recoveries.
Boulder's Kubiniec was reported missing the following morning when he failed to return from a lengthy trek across the Continental Divide. The person reporting him overdue told authorities that Kubiniec intended to hike from Brainard Lake over Pawnee Pass to to Crater Lake and Lone Eagle Peak in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. He planned to return across to Apache Peak.
Just after noon Tuesday, hikers found Kubiniec deceased in the area of Lone Eagle Peak. Lone Eagle is a scenic, pointed summit just below 12,000 feet in elevation.
Grand County Search and Rescue suspended its recovery operation mid-afternoon Tuesday. Efforts resumed the following morning with the help Colorado Search and Rescue (CSAR) State Coordinators and a Colorado Division of Fire Protection and Control (DFPC) Helitac and crew out of Canon City. The aircraft delivered a four Rocky Mountain Rescue Group (RMRG) technical rope specialists to the location, according to the Grand County Sheriff's Office.
The Grand County Coroner's Office stated Kubiniec died of multiple blunt force injuries suffered in a fall.
Coffee, a Prescott, Ariz. resident, tumbled approximately 800 feet from a ridge between a pair of 14,000-foot peaks about 20 miles southwest of Telluride. Coffee fell southward while traversing a difficult section between El Diente and Mount Wilson, as described by the San Miguel Sheriff's Office.
The office's social media post described Coffee as an experienced hiker.
Aircraft from three agencies participated in the search. Ground crews came from both San Miguel and Dolores counties.
Coffee's obituary states he was his final year of a cyber intelligence and security program at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Coffee discovered a love for climbing during his first year at the school and had scaled Humphreys Peak, the highest mountain in Arizona, Mount Whitney in California, and 41 fourteeners in Colorado.
"He knew the risks of climbing," the obit reads, "as he had been climbing Mount Whitney a few months earlier when two experienced climbers had died there. At the time he told his parents that if he died climbing, not to feel sad, because he would have died doing something he loved."
Coffee was awarded a posthumous degree by the university.