![]() Neither runner knew the area, but old-timers will tell you that even a blind man could find his way out of Conejos Canyon: on the south side, runner’s left, cattle graze in open meadows along the river. Shirtless, with blond anime hair and ripped muscles, he looked more like a California lifeguard than a Tennessee farm kid.Ĥ:30 p.m. He wore only red running shorts, blue trail shoes, and an Ironman watch. Joe left his phone and wallet at the ranch house. The workout would be routine: an hourlong run, likely along Forest Road 250, which bisects the ranch and continues into the national forest, following the Conejos River upstream. He suffered from asthma as a three-year-old but had kicked it by age 12. Neither was totally acclimatized to the altitude-the ranch sits just below 9,000 feet. Joe, a competitive runner, open-water swimmer, and obstacle-course racer, and Collin, a member of the varsity cross-country team at Division I Tennessee Tech, had been running together often during their trip. Map of Rio Grande National Forest and Rainbow Trout Ranch areas of Colorado. Go missing out here and your fate relies, in no small part, on which of those nine counties you were in when you disappeared. While its eastern plains stretch across the agricultural San Luis Valley, its western third rises into the 1.8-million-acre Rio Grande National Forest, which sprawls over parts of nine counties. Three new marijuana dispensaries in the tiny town of Antonito lure New Mexicans across the nearby state line.Ĭonejos-Spanish for “rabbits”-is one of the poorest counties in Colorado. Sheep graze in the sunshine potatoes and barley are grown here and trucked north to Denver. The ranch is in Conejos County, which is bigger than Rhode Island, with 8,000 residents and no stoplights. The boys had seen Las Vegas, San Francisco, and the Grand Canyon before heading to Joe’s aunt and uncle’s dude ranch, the Rainbow Trout Ranch, in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado. Jwas the eve of Joseph Lloyd Keller’s 19th birthday. The Cleveland, Tennessee, native had been spending the summer between his freshman and sophomore years at Cleveland State Community College on a western road trip with buddies Collin Gwaltney and Christian Fetzner in Gwaltney’s old Subaru. ![]()
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