Family brings Yates body home after March avalanche

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Family brings Yates body home after March avalanche

Body found a day after rodeo memorial
Yellow ribbons were available at the ticket gate Saturday to memorialize former Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo chair Rob Yates, who died in an avalanche in March.
Yates

Family brings Yates body home after March avalanche

Yellow ribbons were available at the ticket gate Saturday to memorialize former Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo chair Rob Yates, who died in an avalanche in March.
Yates
Cortez cowboy aids injured bareback rider

Once paralyzed and feared he may never walk again, Jason McClain showed hospitality to a bareback rider injured in a separate incident Friday at the Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo.
A spectator at the Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo last weekend, McClain, a 38-year-old Cortez bull rider, came to the rescue of another injured cowboy who suffered a concussion during Friday’s bareback event. Stock contractor Jerry Honeycutt said McClain was neither obligated to pick the injured cowboy up from the hospital nor subsequently open his home so the bareback rider could rest.
“It’s that kind of comradery that I like best about a rodeo,” Honeycutt said. “It’s the people. Jason didn’t have too to help, but he knew that bareback rider was here by himself.”
Seriously injured at an Idaho rodeo three years ago, McClain said his only memory of the incident was a black, white-faced bull paralyzed him for three days. Doctors believed he might never walk again, much less compete.
“I broke my neck,” McClain said. “It was pretty bad.”
Despite his injuries, McClain said he continues riding bulls, adding not much enters his mind when sitting in the chute, other than to hold on tight.
“If I get in a jam, sometimes I close my eyes and wish for the best,” said McClain.
McClain admitted it takes “some type of crazy” to get on the back of a bucking bull, but it’s a profession he wouldn’t trade.
“It’s everything I ever wanted to do, and the only thing I’ve ever done,” McClain said. “I just love it.”
With some bulls weighing close to 2,400 pounds, McClain was quick to advise any young person considering becoming a professional bull rider to “try roping” instead.
“It’s very dangerous,” he said. “If you’re going to do it, then you have to give it everything you got. You have to get on every bull knowing it could be your last, because it might be.”
Honeycutt said witnessing a cowboy or stock animal suffer an injury was the worst aspect of a rodeo.
“Rodeo is a tough and dangerous sport,” Honeycutt said. “People lose their lives.”
tbaker@cortezjournal.com

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