Monday, February 14, 2005
By John Ingold
As Joe Sullivan drove toward a sharp curve on notoriously dangerous Red Mountain Pass south of Ouray, he carefully turned the steering wheel to the right to make the turn.
Nothing happened.
Sullivan's minivan - which carried his wife, son and daughter, as well as a friend of his daughter's and her dad - was sliding on a patch of ice at one of the worst imaginable places. The van skated straight toward a drop-off with no guardrail to stop its momentum. Beyond, a nearly 60-degree slope plummeted hundreds of feet from the edge.
Those inside braced for the worst. Terry Holman, sitting in the front passenger seat, said he thought about his daughter sitting behind him and the likely outcome.
"I thought we were done for," Holman said. "It didn't give you a whole lot of time to think. I never dreamed of going off Red Mountain Pass and living through it."
But that's exactly what happened.
Sullivan's trusty Pontiac minivan plunged 400 feet down a steep slope at about 4 p.m. Saturday. Some of those inside shouted as the vehicle tumbled down the mountainside, Sullivan said. The van rolled, maybe just a couple times, maybe more.
"I'm not sure," Sullivan said. "I shut my eyes."
And when it came to rest at the bottom of the ravine with the driver's side facing down, everybody - improbably, miraculously - was more or less OK.
...
Oletski said a few cars a year usually drive off Red Mountain Pass, which reaches an elevation of 11,018 feet. He said he's never seen someone come out of such a crash so well.
"This is the first time I can remember something like this where someone wasn't hurt badly or didn't die," Oletski said. "It truly is a miracle."
Which is perhaps why it was so fitting that Sunday evening, just 24 hours after the crash, the Sullivan family did what they always do on Sundays. They went to church.
DenverPost.com - LOCAL NEWS
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