A man was left stranded on a mountain by his colleagues in a work retreat gone badly wrong

Chaffee County Search and Rescue South led a team of searchers for a lost worker.

A Colorado man was rescued after getting stranded overnight on a 14,230-foot mountain during a work retreat, according to local authorities.

The man — who was not named — was left to summit Colorado’s Mount Shavano by himself last week after around 14 of his colleagues made their way back down the mountain without him, the southern division of Chaffee County Search and Rescue wrote in a Facebook post.

“In what might cause some awkward encounters at the office in the coming days and weeks, one member of their party was left to complete his final summit push alone,” the group said.

“We see it all the time of, you know, someone’s a little faster, someone’s a little slower, especially on the fourteeners,” the rescue group’s president, Danny Andres, told local outlet 9News.

A fourteener is a mountain over 14,000 feet high, at which the air is thinner than at sea level.

B-17 was unable to reach out to the company, which was not named.

According to the rescuers’ Facebook post, the man reached the peak of the mountain at 11.30 a.m. but became disorientated as he made his way back down.

His colleagues had removed items they had left along the trail as markers, and he found himself on a steep boulder and scree field, the post added.

The man then sent a pin to his colleagues — who told him he’d gone wrong and that he’d have to retrace his steps to find the right trail, it said.

Around 3:30 p.m. he sent another pin, messaging to say he’d reached the ridge he needed, it added, but soon after that “a strong storm passed through the area with freezing rain and high winds, and he again became disoriented, losing cell phone signal as well.”

By 9 p.m., Chaffee County Search and Rescue South said it had been alerted and activated two teams, a drone pilot, and a helicopter.

Chaffee County Search and Rescue South posted this image from the search. 

Weather conditions on the mountain made it hard, the group said, and the helicopter, “despite flying several search patterns throughout the area did not detect any sources of artificial light apart from search teams anywhere on the mountain.”

By 9 a.m. the next morning they had found nothing, and a call went out to nine further search and rescue groups statewide.

Search and rescue teams say they looked all night for the missing worker. 

But just as those groups set out, the man regained cell service and managed to make a 911 call, Chaffee County Search and Rescue South wrote.

The man was in bad shape, saying he’d fallen more than 20 times and had ended up in a gully, unable to get up. But the call allowed the group to locate him and perform a complex rescue, they said.

“This hiker was phenomenally lucky to have regained cell service when he did, and to still have enough consciousness and wherewithal to call 911,” the post said.

In recent years, company retreats have come under increasing scrutiny for overzealous team-building exercises, some of which have pushed the limits and, at times, undermined their own purpose.

There have also been notable injuries, like when employees walked over hot coals during a 2022 retreat, and hedonistic excess, as multiple former WeWork staffers told B-17 in 2019.

Industry experts recommend planning a mix of group activities combined with downtime and work-related sessions.