Luckily for Barbara and Amador Garcia, Cortez fireman Tim Crites was following them when their vehicle slid off Highway 145 just south of Dolores, disappeared over the edge of the road and plummeted 60 vertical feet onto the ice of Lake McPhee Monday night.

"If it hadn’t been for that witness and his quick call for help, I’m sure this would have turned out a lot worse because where they ended up on the lake is not visible anywhere from the road," said Trooper Steve Nowlin, the Colorado State Patrolman investigating the accident.

The emergency call set in motion a dramatic two-hour rescue effort for the seriously injured couple, who were transported to Southwest Memorial Hospital and treated for multiple fractures, lacerations, contusions and other injuries.

Amador Garcia was released Tuesday, but his wife was still listed in critical condition as of Wednesday afternoon, according to a hospital spokesperson.

The couple owns Garcia’s Jewelry and Merle Norman Cosmetics in Cortez.

The frigid night-time ice rescue took place west of the highway bridge that spans the McPhee reservoir inlet. It involved Dolores Fire and Rescue, Southwest Memorial ambulance crews and the Cortez Rescue Task Force, a group specializing in difficult emergency situations.

"Our biggest concern was the danger that the patients would become hypothermic," said Gary Caughey of Dolores Fire and Rescue. "That, and the conditions were pretty tough."

With floodlights illuminating the scene, dozens of rescue personnel worked feverishly on slippery ice covered in fresh snow to transport the victims to safety. After extricating the couple from their crumpled vehicle, crews loaded the two onto separate patient sleds and carefully pulled them along the south shore to a narrow lake crossing.

Safety ropes were quickly rigged, and rescue workers maneuvered the sleds across the ice and carried them up a slick, rocky incline along the south fence of the Dolores sewer treatment plant, where Southwest Memorial ambulance crews were waiting.

"Everyone pulled together really well and did their jobs as trained," said Charles Davidson, also of Dolores Fire and Rescue. "It’s lucky that ice where they hit is always in the shade; otherwise the momentum of rolling 260 feet could have caused them to break through."

The two were wearing seatbelts, which probably saved their lives, Nowlin said, by preventing them from being ejected onto the nearly sheer vertical incline of jumbled, jagged boulders.

"The roads were very, very slick that night because of the fresh snow on top of ice," he said. "They were traveling uphill, started to slide, locked up the brakes and spun around twice. After hitting the shoulder broadside, the truck rotated a quarter-turn and then flipped end-over-end down the embankment and onto the frozen lake."

Nowlin said that charges are pending against Amador Garcia for careless driving causing bodily injury.