A longtime Aspen resident and community supporter died in a bicycle accident on Castle Creek Road on Sunday.
Gideon Isaac Kaufman, 77, was involved in a single bicycle crash, according to a Pitkin County Coroner’s Office news release.
An initial investigation determined the crash did not involve a vehicle, said Parker Lathrop, chief deputy of operations and public information for the sheriff’s office. Kaufman died of blunt force trauma, and the manner of is an accident, according to the coroner’s office.
The Pitkin County Sheriff's Office responded to a call about a bike accident at mile marker 9.3 on Castle Creek Road at about 11:04 a.m., Lathrop said. The cyclist was transported to Aspen Valley Health about 10 minutes later, he said.
The accident was the second bike-related fatality on Castle Creek Road this year. In September, 64-year-old Michele Mulrooney Jacoway of Beverly Hills, California, died after losing control of an e-bike that veered into a ditch off Castle Creek Road.
The September accident occurred at mile marker 6.
The sheriff’s office often responds to bike accidents, especially on winding roads like Castle Creek or Maroon Creek roads, but oftentimes they don’t result in fatalities, Lathrop said.
“Fatality is the outlier,” he said. “We do get bike crashes on all of our roads. They’re windy, they can be narrow, there’s elevation gain or loss so people are going fast … we see some pretty injured people because they can go fast going down Independence Pass or fast coming down Castle Creek Road, so when someone does crash it’s usually pretty, pretty serious.”
Kaufman was a lawyer who helped start the Aspen Jewish Congregation in the 1970s.
