A 17-year-old plunged his car off the summit of Pikes Peak this afternoon, in authorities said appeared to be a suicide attempt.
The teen's 1985 Nissan Maxima plunged more than 1,000 feet down the ravine strewn with boulders and skree. He pulled himself from the wreckage, but it took hours for local rescuers and military helicopters to make the daring rescue.
"We've had rain, we've had snow, we've had lightning popping around us all day," Steve Sperry, spokesman for El Paso County Search and Rescue, said by cellphone shortly after the teen-ager was lifted from the mountain by a Chinook helicopter, after a Blackhawk helicopter had been unsuccessful in the windy, high-altitude terrain.
He was taken to Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs in stable condition, Sperry said. He would not identify the teen-ager except to say he was from Colorado.
Witnesses in the parking lot saw the teen's car plunge off the north side of the parking lot at about 1:15 p.m.
Police say the incident was a suicide attempt stemming from a relationship between the boy and his girlfriend that had recently ended.
Pikes Peak rises to 14,110 feet above sea level west of Colorado Springs. Called "America's Mountain," where the song "America the Beautiful" was inspired, the upper portion of the mountain is a federally designated historic landmark.
