Worst Team-Building Exercise Ever

It appears that there was some sort of team-building exercise in Colorado, and abandoned one of their cow-orkers on top of a 14,000 foot peak.

A Florida man on a corporate retreat became separated from his co-workers during a hike in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado last Friday, leaving him missing in the wilderness for a day and forcing him to brave a bitter storm overnight before being rescued, search and rescue authorities said.

(emphasis mine)

It's always a Florida man, isn't it? 

“He’s lucky to be alive,” Evan Brady, the public information officer for Chaffee County Search and Rescue South, said of the man, Steve Stephanides, of Apopka, Fla.

At sunrise last Friday, Mr. Stephanides, 47, and 14 of his co-workers at Beazley, a London-based global insurance firm, started on a popular trail hike to the summit of Mount Shavano, a 14,000-foot peak about 75 miles west of Colorado Springs, Chaffee County Search and Rescue South said in a statement. During the trek, Mr. Stephanides stopped for a break while his co-workers continued on the route, Mr. Brady said.

Sorry, at 14,000 feet if someone needs to take a break, you do not leave them alone.

………

As he tried to find his way to the correct trail on Friday, Mr. Stephanides sent his co-workers at least one more location pin from his phone, but became further disoriented. About 9 p.m., Chaffee County Search and Rescue South was alerted about Mr. Stephanides’s status as a missing hiker and used search teams and a drone pilot to try to find him. Ten local volunteer and professional search teams, as well as helicopters, were deployed to assist.

But rescue efforts were thwarted Friday night because of a “brutal” storm that rolled into the mountain range, Mr. Brady said.“Teams encountered high winds and freezing rain, which made reaching the summit unsafe, and presented many difficulties for the drone operator,” the county’s statement said.

I am by no means a wilderness maven, but even I know that leaving someone alone on a rather tall mountain is a recipe for disaster.

So, for that matter is someone going off on their own in such an area is foolhardy.

Buddy system, folks.