Gunnison Colorado is a town that is close to Crested Butte, a beautiful place out in the mountains. Usually, this is a quiet area but this weekend there was news when a local man died on his mountain bike ride. Lawrence Bickford was fifty-eight years old when he was found on May 31st by the Western Mountain Rescue Team. He was found in Signal Peak which is a 14,000-acre area managed by the BLM Gunnison Field Office.
According to Lawrence's wife, who reached out to Gunnison County sheriff John Gallowich, Lawrence had headed out early Monday morning for his normal bike ride. He said that he would be home around noon which obviously didn't happen. As the evening came, Lawrence's wife reported that he had not returned home and the sheriff's department began their search.
By utilizing his phone location, the sheriff said that they were able to find his truck by the Signal Peak Trails at Escalante... but there was no sign of Lawrence.
Their search continued deep into the night. Finally, after using another type of phone locator they found Lawrence and his bike close to one of the Signal Peak Trails around 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning.
The sheriff disclosed that it would have been much more difficult to find Lawrence without the phone locator due to the terrain surrounding him.
As of now, no cause of death has been determined. An autopsy is set to be performed but the sheriff said that there were no signs of violence.
Do you think that there was any foul play involved, or that Lawrence's death was from a normal bike accident?
Sources:
https://crestedbuttenews.com/2021/06/local-mountain-bike-rider-dies-on-signal-peak-ride-last-monday/
https://gunnisontrails.org/signal-peak-trail/