Bodies of missing Colo. couple discovered on Aspen mountain
The bodies of a missing Aspen couple have been found near the summit of a Colorado mountain where two other people have died this summer.
Ryan Marcil and Carlin Brightwell were recovered from Capitol Peak near Aspen on Tuesday evening, Jesse Steindler with the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office told the Aspen Times. A search helicopter spotted their bodies on the mountain’s north face hours earlier.
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“Given where the bodies were found, it is probable they fell off somewhere near (Capitol's summit),” Steindler told the newspaper. “Generally speaking, they were found below the summit.”
The couple ventured Saturday to a camp on the mountain, according to reports. They’d planned to scale reach the mountain’s 14,130-foot peak on Sunday.
They didn’t return, however, but friends told the Aspen Times they thought Marcil and Brightwell might’ve stayed to watch the solar eclipse on Monday.
“Because the plans were somewhat tentative and there was no confirmed medical emergency, it was decided that the urgency to initiate a search was not great,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement to the newspaper. “By Monday evening when the couple had not yet returned the urgency increased.”
Someone posted on 14ers.com — a website dedicated to climbing Colorado’s mountain ranges — that they saw the couple reach the peak early Sunday afternoon.
“They indicated they were pretty worn out and wanted to decend as quickly as possible, hence I doubt they stayed for another five to six hours on the summit,” user keikurausu wrote Wednesday night. “Right before we started out decent Ryan said give me five minutes when Carlin indicated she was ready to go. Still can't believe such a tragedy happened and condolences to family and friends.”
The couple, in their mid- to late-20s, had been in a budding relationship after they started dating more than six months ago, friends told the newspaper.
Brightwell originally came from Cincinnati, where one of her former teachers said she was a bright person.
“She was bubbly, joyous. I'm going to miss her,” high school teacher Carole Litchy-Smith told Cincinnati’s WCPO. “She really had, she had an energy, a really strong energy.”
Theirs were the third and fourth deaths this summer on Capitol Peak, which is part of the Elk Mountains range and just west of Aspen.
A 25-year-old climber was killed in July by a boulder he was holding on the mountain, according to the Aspen Times. And a 35-year-old man fell on the mountain’s east face on Aug. 6.
