U.S. Olympic Coach Killed in Fall on Capitol Peak
On Friday afternoon, July 10, a climber was killed after slipping and fallling over 500 feet while descending 14,130-foot Capitol Peak in central Colorado. The climber, 47-year-old Jimi Raymond Flowers, the U.S. Paralympic swim coach from Colorado Springs, had successfully summited the mountain, the hardest and most rugged of Colorado’s 55 Fourteeners or mountains above 14,000 feet high.
While descending rocky terrain at about 13,000 feet on an exposed ridge between K2, a spur point northeast of Capitol Peak, and 13,300-foot Mount Daly, Flowers apparently slipped on a snow patch. Doug Ingram, his climbing partner and USOC director of international games, watched him slide downward at a high speed, bumping over cliff bands and snow-filled couloirs before stopping at 12,500 feet among boulders. Adam Crider with the Pitkin County Sheriff’s office said, “He literally slipped and fell and couldn’t catch himself. Most climbing accidents occur during descent because climbers are fatigued and have a relaxed mindset.”
Doug Ingram called his wife on a cell phone at 2:45 p.m. from the mountain and she alerted Mountain Rescue Aspen. The rescue team was ferried by a Flight for Life helicopter and dropped off one at a time on a flat area a mile-and-a-half from the accident site. A paramedic reached Flowers at 6:25 p.m. and began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) even though Mr. Flowers was not breathing and had no pulse. Shortly afterward CPR ceased, he was prounounced dead, and the operation became a recovery effort. The partner was flown out by helicopter, while three rescuers bivouacked near the body.
On Saturday, July 11, at 6 a.m., Mr. Flower’s body was evacuated by a cable attached to a hovering helicopter. He was transported to a landing sport where he was put into the helicopter and taken to Aspen Valley Hospital.
The death of Jimi Flowers, survived by his wife Sue and two young children, hits hard at the United States Olympic Committee and the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. USOC acting CEO Stephanie Streeter said today, “Jimi was an incredible coach who developed numerous Olympic and Paralympic champions. He was passionate about swimming, dedicated to helping others and was such an inspiration to athletes, colleagues, and all who knew him.”
Melissa Stockwell, a U.S. Paralympic swimmer who lost a leg in a roadside bombing in Iraq, told The Denver Post, “He's one of the greatest men I've ever known. He had a way of believing in people. My husband said he was a walking exclamation point. You couldn't be around him and not laugh or smile.”
Capitol Peak is often considered Colorado’s toughest Fourteener. It stands alone on the northwest edge of the Elk Range west of Aspen. The mountain is tough even by its easiest route with lots of scrambling on rocky terrain and the famous 100-foot-long Knife Edge Ridge, an exposed bit of Class 4 climbing that sometimes requires a rope and steel nerves.
I haven’t been able to find out what equipment Mr. Flowers was carrying but it appears from the accident reports that he wasn’t using an ice axe, which he could have used to arrest his fall. After a heavy snow season, conditions in the Colorado Rockies are still spring-like. Lots of the high peaks are plastered with snow and ice so it would be smart to carry an ice axe and crampons to avoid this situation. I’ll keep an ear to the rock and see if I can find out any other details about the accident.
Photograph above: Morning light washes across the Knife Edge on Capitol Peak. Photograph © Stewart M. Green
Comments
“the hardest and most rugged of Colorado’s 55 Fourteeners or mountains above 14,000 feet high.”
Whether or not capital is “the hardest and most rugged” is debatable. There are several other 14,000 foot peaks in the state (like the Maroon Bells, Crestones, and Little Bear that are considered more difficult. Also there are 54 ranked 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado, not 55.
None of the ones you mentioned are considered to be harder…perhaps more dangerous, but that would be due to rock fall. Also there are anywhere from 53-58 14ers in CO depending on who you ask.
Thanks for your commments about the number of Fourteeners that are in Colorado. How many there are comes down to the age-old argument and the criteria used to answer the question: “What is a Fourteener?”
I use a looser Fourteener definition than the standard one which requires a minimum of 300 feet of elevation difference between a peak’s summit and the low point between it and another peak. If this strict definition was applied it would eliminate a number of peaks like North Maroon Peak and El Diente Peak.
I include these two peaks along with Challenger Point in the Sangre de Cristo Range, which rises a scant 301 feet above its saddle with Kit Carson Peak, in my list of Fourteeners.
Some peak-baggers I know consider every point above 14,000 feet worthy of climbing and don’t consider anyone who simply climbs the “approved list” as having climbed all the Fourteeners. As Gerry Roach notes in his excellent guidebook Colorado’s Fourteeners, “If you are a real fourteener aficionado, you will climb every fourteener on both lists.”
I am friends of people who were close to Jimi and know the details of the accident.
He had an axe with him when he fell, but the snow was too soft for it to hold. Friends who had climbed with him said he was a brilliant climber, had climbed other mountains as difficult as Capitol very successfully, and always thought of his family as he took each step.
The accident did not happen on the descent. It happened after K2 when they were almost to the summit.
Such a sad accident – this could have been any one of us. That snow can be bullet-proof well into the summer months, especially in the early hours, making self-arrest extremely difficult if not impossible.