Details emerge in deaths of Aspen couple on fourteener

The Aspen Times

Reports of a “minute-long scream,” a rockfall and the sounds of a man and woman shouting to each other have helped the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office piece together more information about the Sunday deaths of an Aspen couple on Capitol Peak.

Ryan Marcil, 26, and Carlin Brightwell, 27, died Sunday. Their bodies were discovered in an area below the Knife Edge, a 100-foot stretch of narrow ridge with precipitous drops on either side.

Brightwell and Marcil told friends they planned to hike in to Capitol Lake on Saturday and climb Capitol Peak on Sunday. They were last spotted, according to a Mountain Rescue Aspen post Tuesday on 14ers.com, about 11:30 a.m. at 13,900 feet on their way to the 14,131foot summit. Another person later posted a photo on the site reportedly of the couple in that area of the mountain on the way up.

They were supposed to be back in Aspen by Sunday afternoon, although their plans were tentative and friends thought they might have stayed to witness Monday’s solar eclipse, according to the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office and social media posts Tuesday.

Jesse Steindler, a commander with the sheriff’s office, thinks the fall may have occurred during the early evening Sunday.

That’s because the sheriff’s office received three reports from people camped at Capitol Lake on Sunday night who heard screams, a rockfall and a man and woman shouting to each other, Steindler said.

One man said he walked down to the lake about 6:30 p.m. and heard a woman scream for a full minute, he said. That man thought the scream came from high on the mountain and, perhaps, the Knife Edge area, Steindler said.