Published November 11, 2026 04:48AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The mine shaft is still open and breathing, an eight-foot-wide hole in the Earth with no flowers set beside it, no memorial, only blocked now by a black mesh fence and a red sign inscribed with four words: Stay Out Stay Alive. It is set back under the shadows of towering spruce and fir, 90 feet up a moss-covered hill off an old mining road in the San Juan Mountains, where I have come on a late summer afternoon to retrace the last steps of Jennifer Nelson.<\/p>\n
I hold onto a lodgepole and creep over the weathered fence, just far enough to see the mine\u2019s exposed flat rock walls disappear into the ground, enough to see that if anyone were to fall in, they wouldn\u2019t be able to climb out. The canopy of trees drowns out all light, but down the slope, the sun bathes grey rock on the trail.<\/p>\n
It is easy to understand why Jennifer loved this area, why she had come here on October 20, 2025, the last day of her life. I had made the short drive from her home in Ridgway, Colorado, and up the Million Dollar Highway over Red Mountain Pass, weaving my way through the San Juans until I reached a narrow dirt lip on an old mining road. I parked next to a grizzled hiker who looked exhausted. \u201cHowdy,\u201d he had said, pulling off his boots on the bumper of a 4Runner. I waved and slipped around a green gate that keeps vehicles off the trail.<\/p>\n
My boots crunched the gravel, and there was no other sound, except for the distant hum of an electrical substation nearby. The trail was framed with views of the Red Mountains, and as I glanced over my shoulder back at the highway, I saw the rooftops of the historic Idarado Houses, built more than 100 years before for miners and their families in the abandoned ghost town of Eureka, Colorado.<\/p>\n
The trail, too, was littered with rusted relics from mining camps: a half-buried oil can with chipped teal paint, an oxidized metal tool tray and, tucked away in a meadow, a buck-and-pole corral, once used to shepherd mules and horses that hauled silver and copper down the mountain. I had been told the mine was hidden in the trees, only a quarter-mile up, and I realized I had walked right past it. I carefully backtracked, looking for any sign, and when I finally spotted the top of the black fence in the timber up above the trail, my heart jumped into my throat. I thought of Jennifer.<\/p>\n
At 54, she had already collected a lifetime of adventures in the backcountry, and when she arrived here for another hike on a Monday afternoon in October, she found a reprieve from life as the owner of a pet-sitting business and member of Ridgway\u2019s planning commission. She needed these walks, both for peace of mind and for her ailing back, which always felt better after she finished a trek in the woods.<\/p>\n
The mountain had spotty cell service, and she could walk uninterrupted while her dogs trotted alongside her. Earlier that day, over lunch, she had told her husband, Jeff Rivera, that she was headed up to the trail. She\u2019d take Mia, their border collie mix, and another dog she was looking after for a friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe careful,\u201d he told her, but he otherwise wasn\u2019t worried: she knew the trail like the back of her hand, and Jeff thought it was just another day in the life Jennifer had dreamed of living when she moved from Denver to the San Juans a decade earlier. He went back to work that afternoon, but by the time he returned home again that evening, Jeff thought she would already be home, too. He texted Jennifer: \u201cWhat do you want for dinner?\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no answer, and by 5:30 P.M., he grew worried. It was starting to get dark. Jeff hopped into his Ford F-150 and sped up the Million Dollar Highway, hoping to see Jennifer pass him on her way down, but when he arrived at the trailhead, he found her Toyota Tundra empty.<\/p>\n
He squeezed past the green gate and ran up the mountain. The temperature had dropped, and he could see his breath as he screamed her name. Jeff had seen a lot as a volunteer firefighter in Ridgway, but nothing could prepare him for this. Without a cell signal, he ran back down the trail to call 911, to tell the police that his wife was missing.<\/p>\n Grant Kleeves was at home eating dinner<\/strong> when his pager went off. He had been a member of the Ouray Mountain Rescue team for a decade, serving now as a lieutenant, and his evenings were often interrupted with calls to search for missing people in the backcountry. This message was no different: a woman had failed to return from a hike on Red Mountain Pass, so Kleeves met his team at the clubhouse to grab equipment before making the trek up the mountain.<\/p>\n The unit arrived with three trucks and an all-terrain vehicle in tow, cracking open the green gate to prowl the trail. A search team on foot canvassed hundreds of yards on the flanks of the trail, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jennifer through the beams of their flashlights. The trail snakes up the mountain for more than two miles, and there were obvious places to check, including a small pond and larger mines that often served as tourist attractions for hikers. None of those places turned up a clue. A drone was launched into the dark sky, and Kleeves hoped its thermal-detection capabilities could turn up a lead. But the temperatures had dropped to about 30 degrees that night, and the batteries were dying quickly.<\/p>\n Jeff raced back down the mountain to Ridgway in his Ford, and when he arrived back at his house, he grabbed a winter coat and some gloves before heading back up to the trail. He parked next to Jennifer\u2019s truck and decided he wanted to let the rescue team do their jobs. It was dark and quiet, and he stared up at the trees, waiting, hoping Jennifer and the dogs might all of a sudden appear behind the people up on the mountain looking for them.<\/p>\n After nearly four hours of searching, Kleeves and his teammates backtracked toward the vehicles at the front of the trail to make a new plan, to launch a second tier of the search. It was in the wee hours of the morning now, and they\u2019d need to get more people involved, Kleeves thought, to cast a wider net across the area. A 4Runner drove ahead of Kleeves, beaming light into the treeline. About a quarter-mile from the trailhead, Kleeves\u2019s headlamp caught a glint of something near a berm. He craned his neck and shone light back toward the reflection and saw the green glow of a dog\u2019s eyes. Kleeves believed the dog had popped its head up to look at the commotion of the rescue down on the trail. Kleeves whistled and caught the eyes of a second dog.<\/p>\n Kleeves and his team walked up the slope toward the animals. The team\u2019s headlamps caught the dark shadow of a gash in the ground, and as they stepped closer, they recognized it as an unmarked mine shaft. Near the opening, a backpack and hat rested on the ground, and a lone trekking pole leaned against a fallen tree. The dogs stared silently at the volunteers as they stood at the edge of the mine. Kleeves shone his light into the hole, and about ten feet down from the surface, he could see a body floating in water, face down.<\/p>\n Below, toward the trailhead, Jeff was within earshot of radio chatter, so Kleeves didn\u2019t want to be careless when his team radioed that they needed assistance on the hill. Even though this appeared to be a terrible accident, his team wanted to treat it like a crime scene and not touch anything. Soon more police and paramedic vehicles hauled up the highway. Jeff knew something terrible had happened, and eventually the county coroner walked over to his truck window. \u201cThey found her in a mine shaft, and she drowned,\u201d he remembered the coroner telling him, but Jeff was in such disbelief that he thought maybe he didn\u2019t hear the words right, that maybe it wasn\u2019t actually Jennifer in that shaft.<\/p>\n Soon reality set in, and Jeff\u2019s fire chief drove up to the trailhead to pull him away from the scene. Jeff gathered the dogs into the truck, and he could tell they were still shaken. He held Mia, the only witness to Jennifer\u2019s final moments, and as the sun came up, he sat in his living room with the fire chief. Jeff began to talk to Jennifer.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the hell were you doing there?\u201d he kept asking, and as the days passed, he replayed all of the scenarios in his head. Jennifer\u2019s backpack was left to the side of the mine, but he didn\u2019t know why she would have taken it off. Investigators noted that the dogs were not wet when they were found several hours later. Jeff wondered: did one of the animals fall in, prompting Jennifer to jump in after it? He knew a moose had been spotted in the area. Did it spook her when she was sitting at the edge and cause her to fall in?<\/p>\n Other details that didn\u2019t add up rattled in his brain: the dog leashes were nowhere to be found at the scene. And he believes Jennifer had her phone in her hand after she had fallen into the water. Investigators found the phone on the west edge of the shaft; the ground around the phone had been obviously disturbed, as if Jennifer had desperately clung to the earth before falling in. There was also a two-foot branch, broken on both sides, found in the water alongside her body; up above, a log hanging over the edge of the mine had a middle section missing. It appeared to match the wood that was in the water. A Ouray County Sheriff\u2019s Deputy who investigated the scene, Brady Suppeland, explained what he believed happened in his report on the incident:<\/p>\n \u201cMy initial instinct of what likely occurred was Jennifer likely had followed the dogs off trail up to that location for an unknown reason, and had fallen into the water unable to pull herself out,\u201d Suppeland wrote. \u201cIt is possible the section of tree in the water broke while Jennifer was standing or holding onto it causing her to fall in, or it broke as she tried to use it to climb out. It appeared she had extensively tried climbing out where her phone was located as the dirt had been pulled from the hillside into the hole. There was some exposed tree roots in this area that would have given her something to grip to get her out of the water and onto the edge of the shaft, but not enough to pull herself all the way out. It appeared as she was attempting to manipulate her phone while hanging on the edge of the opening.\u201d<\/p>\n Jennifer had tried texting Jeff during her last moments, but the messages didn\u2019t go through.<\/p>\n \u201cHel,\u201d she wrote at 5:36 P.M. A little more than an hour later, she tried sending her final plea.<\/p>\n \u201cH welp.\u201d<\/p>\n They had just celebrated their six-year wedding anniversary. Jeff was a widower when they started dating; his first wife of 30 years, Dawn, had passed away from cancer in 2016, and in the years after, Jennifer had helped him begin to heal. Everyone seemed to gravitate toward her: she was warm and kind, with an inviting smile and a quiet, steady laugh. Jeff shared her love for the Denver Broncos, classic rock, and animals, and they both felt lucky to live on the edge of the San Juans, at nearly 7,000 feet, in Ridgway. They looked out their window every morning and marveled at 14,150-foot Mount Sneffels, and they went to work each day to make their small town better. Jeff worked for the city and the fire department, while Jennifer sat on the planning commission.<\/p>\n Nearly every weekend, Jennifer would nudge Jeff to take her to the mountains, always reminding him that, after being born and raised in Denver, she had moved to Ridgway to be closer to nature and there was no time to waste. They were always camping or hunting or looking for antler sheds, and sometimes they would disappear for days at a time. Just a few years earlier, a family member had reported them missing after they didn\u2019t return from a camping trip for a couple days. They eventually emerged from the woods to find locals had been worried and looking for them; they laughed about it later, because they were simply enjoying themselves in the forest without cell service.<\/p>\n Now Jennifer wasn\u2019t coming back. Officials told Jeff he could identify her body at the rescue team\u2019s barn later that morning, but he couldn\u2019t bring himself to do it. First, the team had to pull Jennifer out of the mine. The shaft\u2019s walls were flat stone and wet. There was a tree overhanging the pit, so the team rigged up two rope systems: one for Kleeves to lower himself into the hole to get a rope around Jennifer, and one to act as a crane to lift her out.<\/p>\n Kleeves considered himself a serious climber. He climbed four or five days a week and had been doing it for 20 years. But he doubted even he could negotiate his way out of the shaft had he fallen in. \u201cIt was sobering, because usually I figure I can climb out of just about anything,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd dropping down into there was one of those where I was like, \u2018That is\u2026absolutely terrifying.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He had a hard enough time keeping his footing when his team lowered him into the hole. He swayed back and forth, his feet slipping off the shaft\u2019s slick walls. He finally anchored himself to the slick surface. He wrapped a rope around Jennifer and tied it, and his team above, with a body bag waiting, lifted her into the air.<\/p>\n The shock of Jennifer\u2019s death<\/strong> coursed its way across the state, to the Denver offices of Colorado\u2019s Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety, where a core tenet was to protect the public from the dangers of abandoned mines. The director of the active and inactive mines reclamation program, Jeff Graves, had grown up drawn to the outdoors and to the history of mines, and for nearly two decades, he felt lucky to be able to marry his interests working for the state. But this was the worst part of the job, when someone was seriously injured or killed in a mine.<\/p>\n The state kept no official list of casualties, but the memories haunted him, including eight years before, when a 15-year-old had skipped class with some friends and rappelled into an abandoned clay mine in Jefferson County. The rope snapped, and the boy fell 60 feet to the bottom of the hole. He was trapped, with a broken leg. Rescue crews worked for three hours to pull him out while a news helicopter hovered overhead, and Graves watched it unfold on his television.<\/p>\n \u201cIn any instance when we\u2019re not able to get out there before something like this happens, it\u2019s difficult,\u201d he says, and what made Jennifer\u2019s death even more difficult was that there were thousands more of the kind of unmarked shafts that she had died in. Before Jennifer\u2019s death, the state was unaware of the mine that she had plunged into; it had not been logged in the program\u2019s inventory or targeted for closure, simply because nobody from the office knew it existed.<\/p>\n When Colorado launched the abandoned mine program in 1980, it estimated there were 23,000 mining sites that posed a physical hazard and needed to be addressed. Graves estimates that, across Colorado, between 40,000 and 50,000 sites still require some type of remediation for safety. \u201cWe don\u2019t know where all of those are,\u201d Graves tells me. \u201cWe have an idea, at least where in general sites are, based on where historic mining took place in Colorado, but specific locations of every single mine in Colorado? \u2029We certainly don\u2019t have that information, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to collect that data. It\u2019d be a monumental task to do that. So we just kind of chip away at that process in areas where we know there\u2019s been historic mining.\u201d<\/p>\n One of those areas is in the western part of Boulder County, where Graves invites me in August to tour an abandoned mine site. He steers his blue Ford Ranger onto an old gravel road. A teal Yeti bike is clipped to the back of the rig, and a softball-sized purple fluorite rock rolls along the floor of the cab. He parks near a mountainside once rollicking with mining camps.<\/p>\n Graves wears a few days of scruff, with a blue-collared shirt tucked into grey canvas pants. His logging boots crunch on pine needles as he hikes up the mountainside. His colleague, Rachael Nickless, an environmental specialist with the program, is among those who have joined us, and as we approach the mine, Graves ducks under a branch and imagines how prospectors might\u2019ve picked this area, likely sticking dynamite in the ground to see what flew up.<\/p>\n \u201cThink about what took place here,\u201d he marvels, and soon we see the remnants of a towering ore bin structure, its timbered-planked walls still standing on rough-cut posts lodged into the slope. Derelict cables dangle from the top. A massive steel wheel-drum, once the cog to move thousands of pounds of minerals, sits idle. A fence has been erected around the structure, but through the boards, I can still see inside. There\u2019s an opening that drops more than 100 feet into the ground. Around the corner, I notice a bright orange sign attached to the fence, with three skulls and a warning:<\/p>\n \u201cAbandoned mines WILL kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n In the 46 years that<\/strong> the abandoned mine program has existed in Colorado, about 14,000 mines have been remediated. Graves has more than a dozen project managers spread out across the state, developing relationships with agents from the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service and private landowners themselves; often, the team relies on a hodgepodge of information, using geological surveys, remote sensing tools, and old-fashioned tips from the public to find and assess abandoned sites.<\/p>\n A mine can be remediated in a variety of ways and can be as simple as backfilling a shaft with soil and rock that is near the surface of the opening. Polyurethane foam is often used to seal open holes; officials also use steel grating as fencing over horizontal and vertical mines, which keeps humans out but gives access to wildlife for habitat.<\/p>\n Erosion and vegetation can obscure openings from being discovered, but even sites that have been worked on can require maintenance years later. The mine Graves shows me was once pumped full of polyurethane that didn\u2019t hold, and the week before, he and Nickless had traveled to the site and weighed the options to refill it or fence it off. He points up the mountain: in 2013, a 1,000-year rain event swept through the area, causing erosion at other sites that had been addressed. \u201cThese sites are always changing,\u201d he says. \u201cFires, floods, they\u2019re dynamic sites that evolve.\u201d<\/p>\n The only thing he knew that wouldn\u2019t change would be people\u2019s curiosity\u2014or sometimes, blindness\u2014to these places, and not just in Colorado. The problem was felt in every corner of the country. \u201cAs many as half a million abandoned mines are believed to exist, and the location of many more is still unknown,\u201d the Bureau of Land Management concedes on its website<\/a>. \u201cUsually, sites have no signage at all to warn people about their presence or their dangers.\u201d<\/p>\n Jennifer\u2019s death rattled officials with abandoned mine programs in states across the country, where tens of thousands of mines remain potential death traps for adventurers in the backcountry. Fatalities are rare, but serious accidents in recent years have provided a stark reminder of the sheer volume of unmarked mines and the hazards they can pose. In Pennsylvania in 2024<\/a>, a 64-year-old grandmother died after falling 30 feet into a sinkhole connected to an abandoned coal mine. In California in 2023<\/a>, three hikers had to be rescued after falling into a shaft; in 2019 in Arizona<\/a>, a runner was injured and stranded after falling into a mine; in Utah<\/a>, a self-described \u201cadept rock-climber\u201d had to be rescued in 2020 after rappelling into a shaft, and in 2024, a 62-year-old man planned to do the same\u2014outfitting himself with a helmet, harness, and rope\u2014but the edge of the mine gave way as he tried to climb in. He fell 50 feet into the mine and suffered traumatic brain injuries.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve closed about 7,000 mines, and there\u2019s probably 10,000 remaining,\u201d says Steve Fluke, who runs Utah\u2019s abandoned mine program. Utah officials find between 200 and 300 mines per year, Fluke says, and while they\u2019ve launched a campaign in schools to teach kids about the dangers of mines, there\u2019s only so much they can do to protect the public from the hazards of these relics.<\/p>\n Many states are also strapped for resources and perpetually fighting for funding. Colorado\u2019s abandoned mine program budget sits at about $13 million, Graves says, with only about $250,000 devoted to finding and closing hardrock mines; there\u2019s historically been more money available for coal mining closure projects. \u201cThe area where Jennifer was found is a hardrock area. We\u2019re pushing Congress to address more hard rock,\u201d Graves tells me.<\/p>\n After he shows me the remains of the massive ore bin, he walks further up the mountain, carefully studying the ground and pointing out craters in the landscape that never quite became mines. \u201cThere are thousands of these across Colorado,\u201d he tells me, as if we\u2019re looking at some kind of monument of the Wild West. We both imagine settlers running around this forest, digging holes into the ground, some deeper than others, and then we think of all the other places across the West where folks were doing the same.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you see in the West, in terms of infrastructure, towns, everything\u2019s a result of mining,\u201d Graves says. \u201cI mean, eventually, people would have ended up here. But probably not in a lot of these mountain communities, because it was hard to make a living here. You\u2019re not gonna farm here. So the only way you made a living was to mine. And so that\u2019s what drove expansion West, was that desire to find gold.\u201d<\/p>\n Graves looks at an old can and guesses its age\u2014maybe an artifact from the 1940s?\u2014and the possible remnants of a teacup, which might suggest this was once a site where miners would bring their families.<\/p>\n We cross a creek near the highway to look at another mine across the water, a shaft exposed after the floods of 2013 swept through the timber and opened it up. The day he came to investigate, teenagers were walking out of it, leaving behind trash. Photos of the mine were posted on Facebook by enthusiasts and explorers. Graves and his team have sometimes discovered mines and shut them down by monitoring that activity, but often people who want to visit abandoned sites remain discreet.<\/p>\n \u201cThey kind of got onto us, and then made sure that in their group discussions, nobody tells people where the site is,\u201d he tells me. \u201cWe had a way of tracking it and our efforts to kind of get in front of it ended up getting us shut out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n He stares at the steel grate over the shaft opening and guesses some kind of metallic material, maybe gold or silver, was once mined here in the late 1800s. Mine closures could take months at a time, because officials conduct environmental studies and consider historic preservation of sites.<\/p>\n While we study the mine across the creek, Nickless stays by the truck down on the highway, where she notices another mine, a horizontal shaft in the side of a hill that was closed by their team at some point.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s one over here too!\u201d Nickless screams, her voice echoing across the creek and through the pines. Graves turns around and squints at the mine.<\/p>\n \u201cOh my God,\u201d he says, as if he were looking at the shaft for the first time. \u201cWho even knew? Like I said, they\u2019re everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n In Ridgway, Jennifer\u2019s death<\/strong> remains a mystery with enduring questions. Why had she traveled the 90 feet off the trail toward the shaft? How\u2019d she fall in? And why hadn\u2019t the mine been found earlier and closed off?<\/p>\n The town has roughly 1,000 residents but is brimming with character; it is known as a hub for local artists and a beacon of history. Built as a railroad town, it once connected the mining communities of Telluride and Ouray. The John Wayne film True Grit<\/em> was shot in Ridgway, and Jennifer had known the owners of the True Grit Cafe on North Lena Street. She knew everyone, really; her pet-sitting business had more than two dozen loyal customers, and locals felt close to her because of how she took care of their dogs, cats, and horses.<\/p>\n Ridgway has always been resilient; locals sometimes refer to it as \u201cThe Town that Refused to Die.\u201d Over the years, not only has it survived forest fires, the Great Depression, and the eventual loss of its once-booming railroad industry, but its citizens have also staved off plans to submerge the town under water with a proposed reservoir project in the 1970s. It would have to be resilient again: the town\u2019s mayor, John Clark, had lived in Ridgway for 44 years but had rarely seen the town grapple with a tragedy as confounding as Jennifer\u2019s death. \u201cIt\u2019s just been a shocker,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n On a Wednesday evening in August, Clark rides his bike to town hall, a simple one-story lodge with green carpet and landscape photographs of the mountains that surround Ridgway. He has a thick beard and dark-rimmed glasses. I\u2019m the only attendee at the monthly planning commission meeting. John sits in the center, and to his left is Michelle Montague, the group\u2019s acting chairperson.<\/p>\n The windows are open, and the laughter of kids playing in a nearby park creeps into the room. A few minutes before roll call begins, I introduce myself to everyone, and Montague waves and points to the chair next to her. \u201cJennifer sat right there,\u201d she says. Everyone grows silent for a moment. Jennifer was proud of Ridgway and its celebrated history, which was inextricably linked with mining, and in her role on the planning commission, she was known to fiercely hold outside developers\u2019 feet to the fire if she believed their projects would change the soul of her town.<\/p>\n The planning commission has carried on without her, and as the meeting begins, the commissioners discuss a bevy of topics, about the local summer concert series and farmers market, about targeted coding updates and historic development preferences. They pull out maps and talk about mixed-use projects, about vacant lots in town next to power facilities and sewer plants, and what might be built next door. \u201cRidgway\u2019s pretty eclectic,\u201d Montague tells the commissioners. \u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what this looks like, and I think that there have to be some parameters so that someone can design something and bring it in, because otherwise it\u2019s not just wide open, like, \u2018Do whatever you want.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The meeting wraps up and afterward, the commissioners mingle. Jennifer had told one of them in the fall of 2025 about how excited she was for the next part of her life, and a few days after she died, they held a moment of silence for her before their meeting. \u201cIt\u2019s really strange,\u201d Montague tells me after the meeting. \u201cWhen you lose someone, they\u2019re just like, gone. Just not here anymore. And I haven\u2019t heard any follow- up on what happened with the mine, if they closed that off.\u201d<\/p>\n I told her a few hours before I had hiked up to the mine and that it had not been covered but had a fence installed around its perimeter. Montague relays this to Clark as he packs his belongings and prepares to depart.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been no reclamation done on that mine that Jennifer fell in,\u201d Montague says. \u201cLike, that could happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s probably on someone\u2019s list,\u201d Clark says.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to be too psyched if I fall in there and think, \u2018Oh, it was on someone\u2019s list,\u2019\u201d she replies. \u201cMaybe they should just put a cell phone in there so if you fall in, you can call for help.\u201d<\/p>\n In September 2026, Glenn Boyd, the Ouray County coroner, released the results of Jennifer\u2019s autopsy, announcing she had drowned and that her death was an accident. There was a frothy fluid in Jennifer\u2019s airways and watery fluid with wood debris found in her stomach, and hypothermia was determined to have also contributed to her death. The shaft\u2019s water was just 30 degrees. Jennifer had also suffered minor blunt force injuries: scratches, bruises, and focal subcutaneous hemorrhages of the head, neck, and extremities.<\/p>\n \u201cHer cell phone data showed that Mrs. Nelson attempted to text her husband for help twice, but the messages were not delivered,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n Those unsent messages tore Jeff up. He had found photos from that day on Jennifer\u2019s phone, taken of the dogs near the treeline on the trail, but the messages reminded him of how much she must have struggled in the water.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/MineScenic2.jpg?width=3840&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\"\/)
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