Five hikers died on Monday when they were buried by rubble from a rock slide in the Colorado Rockies southwest of Denver but a 13-year-old girl was rescued, an official said.
Mountain rescuers had been dispatched in an attempt to save the hikers, before they were confirmed dead.
The Chaffee County sheriff's department was alerted late Monday morning by an emergency-911 call from a woman reporting she had been struck in the head by a falling rock and that there five to seven people trapped in the avalanche, county spokeswoman Monica Broaddus told Reuters.
The five hikers caught in the rubble are confirmed dead, said Chaffee County spokesman Dave Cotten. He did not immediately release more details.
Another victim, described as a 13-year-old girl, was plucked from the rubble by a sheriff's deputy who was one of the first to arrive on the scene, Broaddus said. The girl was flown by helicopter to a Denver-area hospital about 130 miles away, the spokeswoman said.
The bodies of the hikers could not be recovered on Monday and efforts to pull them out will begin on Tuesday, reported local television station KCNC, a CBS affiliate.
No further details on the circumstances of the slide or the condition of the girl were immediately available.
The avalanche occurred in a rugged backcountry area popular with hikers in the Pike and San Isabel National Forest and near the 14,000-foot tall Mount Princeton, one of the so-called Collegiate Peaks in Sawatch Range of the Rockies.
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