It began with a 15-year-old Aurora boy in May. Then it was five construction workers in Colorado Springs last month. And Friday, a newlywed Denver couple hiking in Chaffee County, six days after their nuptials and on the last day of their honeymoon, fell victim to lightning.
So far this year, about two dozen people have been struck by lightning in Colorado. Some, like newlyweds Kathleen “Katie” Bartlett and Ryan Pocius, were in the high country, but others were along the Front Range at work or play.
“There’s no way to protect yourself when thunderstorms hit,” Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze said Monday of being outdoors when storms roll through. “Especially above tree line.”
Bartlett, 31, was hiking Mount Yale at an elevation of about 12,400 feet when she became the first lightning fatality in Colorado this year during a hike she told Pocius was one of the most beautiful she had ever been on. Pocius, 32, was critically injured but has been released from a hospital and is recovering.
“Over that area, that afternoon, it was just really, really black,” Spezze said. “I knew there was a pretty good storm coming.”
Colorado ranks among the most active states in terms of annual lightning strikes, and this year has seen more lightning than in recent memory under particularly unsettled spring and summer skies.
“It’s much, much more convective this year,” said Stephen Hodanish, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pueblo who studies lightning. “It’s been more than we’ve seen in years.”
Hodanish said research has shown storms producing only a few flashes of lightning — one or two — are the ones that most often lead to fatalities. They make up 70 percent of thunderstorms, he said, including the one that killed Bartlett.
Forecasters say Colorado is entering the most active five weeks of the thunderstorm season, which spans into October.
“It was only two flashes that occurred on Mount Yale,” he said of the day Bartlett was killed. “Storms that are just producing a flash here and a flash there are producing the fatalities.”
Two other people not associated with the newlyweds also were injured in the strike about 11 miles west of Buena Vista near the Denny Creek trailhead.
The Chaffee County coroner’s office said it appears Bartlett died instantly.
“On their trek back down the mountain, a storm quickly moved overhead,” according to a crowdsourcing site raising money for charity in Bartlett’s name. “Nearly at tree line, the couple was struck.”
Bartlett was a special education preschool teacher, the site says, and had recently earned her master’s degree in early childhood development.
“I was blessed to get to spend Katie’s final moments with her, as our new friends gave her chest compressions and I gave her my own life-breath,” Pocius said in a Facebook post Monday in which he called his wife a partner “in every sense of the word.”
“We worked for 40 minutes to try and bring her back to no avail. Yet, everyone should know that Katie was doing something she loved — hiking. … She was so happy that day.”
He added: “Katie is and forever will be my wife and my one true love.”
Since 2005, lightning has killed 21 people in Colorado, according to Weather Service data.
While meteorologists say most flashes occur in the high county and along the Palmer Divide, strikes this year have hit lower elevations along the Front Range, too.
The season’s first notable lightning injury was on May 1 when 15-year-old Brian Tena Cardenas was critically injured by a strike in Aurora.
Since then, lightning has injured construction workers in Colorado Springs, people on Pikes Peak during the iconic Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and 13 hikers on Mount Bierstadt.
Authorities in Pitkin County are still working to determine if a Colorado Springs father and his teen son, who were found dead in their tent at the Maroon Bells this month, were also killed by lightning.
On Saturday, four children were injuredin a lightning strike at Del Mar pool in Aurora.
“We were just making our way down, and the next thing I know, I was waking up on the ground,” Jonathan Hardman, whose dog died when the two were struck on Mount Bierstadt June 28, told 7News.
Hardman posted photos on Facebook after the strike showing his face covered in blood, a gash in his head and a red web of irritated skin on his back and neck.
He credits his dog, Rambo, with taking the brunt of the strike and saving his life. Others on the mountain that day were knocked unconscious, including one person who authorities say was out cold for five minutes.
“Generally, what we all go by is you want to be heading off the peak before noon,” said Roger Wendell, a volunteer coordinator for the Golden-based Colorado Mountain Club. “We encourage really early starts.”
Nevertheless, lightning has hit mountain areas and hurt hikers at times before noon this year, including in the Mount Bierstadt strike.
“We’ve had these situations where these thunderstorms have been getting going by about 10:30 or 11 o’ clock in the morning,” said Todd Dankers, who works at the Weather Service’s Boulder office.
Dankers said hikers should keep there eyes on the sky and seek shelter when a storm is threatening to pass.
“Anything is fair game,” he said of lightning. “If you’re above tree line, there’s nothing to do.”
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JesseAPaul
Lightning deaths
Kathleen Bartlett, killed Friday in Chaffee County, is the first lightning fatality in Colorado in 2015 and the 21st since 2005, based on figures kept by the National Weather Service:
2014: A man and a woman on consecutive July days at Rocky Mountain National Park in Larimer County
2013: Two farmworkers in August in Larimer County
2012: None
2011: A man in August in Custer County
2010: A man in June in Chaffee County
2009: A man in June in Weld County
2008: Four were killed in July: two graduate students in Larimer County, a sheepherder in Mineral County and a teenager in Custer County
2007: A man was killed while jogging in July in Jefferson County; another person was killed in September in El Paso County
2006: Six total were killed: a man in May in Park County; three people in separate incidents in June, two men in Adams County and one man in Jackson County; a teenager in July in Teller County; and a man in September in Montrose County
2005: A man was killed in September in Otero County
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JesseAPaul
