Tim Judge hiked up Mount Olympus early Sunday morning. There he found a piece of quartz and wedged it into a crack between some rocks along the trail where two weeks ago he came across the body of a man.
For Judge, it was his way of marking the spot with a humble memorial to honor Michael W. Pratt, 77, a man he did not know but who he will not soon forget.
From the trailhead, Mount Olympus rises steeply, some 1,400 feet in a little more than a mile. Judge likes to do the hike because he says it is good conditioning, and early in the morning it is usually a solitary hike that allows him time to his own thoughts.
It takes about 50 minutes to reach the summit which, at 8,808 feet, rewards hikers with sweeping, unobstructed vistas of Estes Park. Mount Meeker sits to the south, the peaks of the Continental Divide are due west and Lumpy Ridge, the Mummy Range and the Signal Mountains are to the north.
In 1908, one of Estes Park’s pioneers, Enos Mills, captured the view in a now famous black and white photo that enticed people from all over to come and see the area for themselves.
Mount Olympus is not a hike for novices, and while Judge is not a novice hiker, this was the first time he had encountered finding someone who had died.
At first, he was riveted in his tracks, then his background and training kicked in.
Judge is a professor in the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and he holds the titles of Chair of the Department of Management and Human Resources, Executive Director of the Fisher Leadership Initiative, and the Joseph A. Alutto Chair in Leadership Effectiveness.
He teaches a class titled High Stakes Leadership. The course description reads like the promo for an adventure movie: “consider the unique challenges involved in high stakes leadership – situations when leadership can mean the difference between life and death.”
Every year, Judge brings undergraduate business students to Estes Park for “an outdoor, team-based, high stakes experience” designed to teach self-leadership, managing emotions, risk assessment, leadership emergence, decision-making, trust, communication, teamwork, and active followership.
Judge also happens to be a certified Wilderness First Responder. Last summer he completed a nine-day intensive WFR training program offered at the YMCA of the Rockies.
Judge started out on his hike a little before 8 a.m. on Sunday, May 26. Part of the way up, he found the body of a male laying on the trail. The individual was not moving. “The first thing they teach you to do is to size up the scene and do an initial assessment,” said Judge. “I called out, ‘Sir, sir, can you hear me?’ And then I yelled again, ‘Sir, can you hear me?”
Despite his training, the shock of coming across a body made time stand still. “It took me a few minutes, I just stood there, staring,” said Judge. He then checked for a radial pulse and looked for signs of respiration. “The man was cold, and it seemed that rigor had set in,” said Judge.
A few other signs told Judge the man had probably been outside overnight. There was a water bottle not too far from the body, and a broken bike helmet. There was also a sleeping bag, although the area is not a great camping spot.
Judge said things seemed out of kilter. Pratt’s clothing seemed to be wet from rain. And there had been no sign of how he might have gotten to the trailhead. There was no vehicle parked at the trailhead.
After assessing the situation, Judge called 911. He met deputies from the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office at the trailhead and over the course of the next five hours he led paramedics, officers from the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, personnel from the Larimer County Coroner’s Office, and members of the Larimer County Search and Rescue team up the mountain.
Because of the steep, rocky terrain, it was challenging for the rescue team to figure out how to bring Pratt’s body `down the mountain. “I was very impressed with the response of the professionals, they were very coordinated,” said Judge who teaches business students how to manage and lead in a crisis.
The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office reached out to Judge and invited him to attend a stress debriefing meeting this week. Judge said he welcomes the opportunity to process the experience because when he returned to his house after the events of the day he was surprised at the flood of emotions and sense of exhaustion he experienced due to the adrenalin his own body had released.
Unsure of how he would feel, it took Judge two weeks to prepare himself to hike back up to the site on Mount Olympus. And even then, he was hesitant.
One of the fundamental precepts of wilderness medicine they teach you in WFR–or “woofer” training–is “the doctor isn’t coming,” said Judge. The training course is intended to equip people to be able to provide medical intervention in a remote setting where immediate medical care and communication is not available.
Judge took the course and became a certified WFR so he could better address some of the minor medical issues his students experience on their expeditions, things like blisters and dehydration. But to become a certified WFR, Judge had to learn a lot more about wilderness medicine than how to care for blisters.
Finding a body not only tested Judge but it provided him with an understanding for how complicated it can be to get help to an injured hiker or someone in distress in a way that a textbook never could.
“I went up with the search and rescue people. They were pondering how they were going to get him down because the trail is so narrow and steep and carrying a litter was not feasible,” said Judge. The search and rescue team called in additional people and used ropes in order to drag the litter down the steep incline, Judge explained..
Judge was profoundly moved by his experience, and undoubtedly the lessons he learned from this wilderness response will find their way into the classes he teaches.
Speaking about respecting the dignity of the man who died, Judge said, “I just hope he was at peace and didn’t suffer. I hope he was where he wanted to be.”
It is somewhat serendipitous that of all the hikers who might have come across Pratt’s body, it was Judge. Not only did Judge have the skillset as a first responder, but he and Pratt shared something in common.
Pratt had been a paramedic climbing ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park and had himself been involved in many difficult rescues and recovery operations.
Pratt was a longtime resident of Estes Park. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut on December 30, 1946, and was the youngest of three children born to Lyndon Upson Pratt and Louise Armstrong Pratt.
After graduating from Wethersfield High School in Wethersfield, Connecticut, Pratt studied English at college in Middlebury, Vermont and Franconia, New Hampshire.
In his 20s Pratt worked on the Appalachian trail doing maintenance and hut tending. Later in life he held jobs with the forest services and park services as a park ranger, paramedic, and dispatcher. On several operations, Pratt worked alongside Jim Detterline, a fellow mountaineer, rescuer, and park ranger who is credited with 428 ascents of Longs Peak.
After retirement, Pratt continued his service in Rocky Mountain National Park as a volunteer. He enjoyed writing and published articles, and also self-published books of poetry. He cared deeply about others and spent time volunteering in the Sonoran Desert to place water for immigrants.
He is survived by his brother John H. Pratt (Beckie) of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and sister Mary L. Phelps (Frank) of Indian Trail, North Carolina as well as three nieces, two nephews, sixteen great nieces and nephews, and one great-grandniece.
According to the Larimer County Coroner, the circumstances of Pratt’s death have not yet been determined but foul play is not expected. The exact cause of death is pending autopsy results which are expected to take several more weeks.