U.S. Forest Service officials in Colorado are calling it the conundrum on Conundrum Creek: how to remove six cows that wandered into a wilderness cabin high in the Rocky Mountains and froze to death, stiff as boards, when they couldn’t get out.

For officials, here’s the beef: Environmental restrictions won’t let them use machinery of any kind to remove the frozen carcasses. They can’t use flatbed trucks because the cabin is eight miles from the nearest road. And they want to remove the carcasses before they thaw and become free meals for the local bear population, drawing the predators near hikers who flock to a local hot springs.

“Like I say, it’s a conundrum,” U.S. Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a real problem. We don’t know how we’re going to get them out of there.”

Officials are trying to decide whether to burn the old ranger cabin and its contents or even use explosives to dislodge the cows. The cabin is located near the Conundrum Hot Springs, an arduous hike from the Aspen area in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness area.

From The Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-frozen-cows-20120418,0,6867597.story