A US Army MH-60 Black Hawk assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment came down during a training flight in the Colorado Front Range on August 25, 2026. All four crew members aboard escaped injury.
The Gilpin County Sheriff’s Office said it was notified shortly before 11:30 local time and that the aircraft was on the east side of Thorodin Mountain, north of Golden Gate Canyon State Park and about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Denver.
The US Army Special Operations Aviation Command (USASOAC) said in a statement distributed through the sheriff’s office that it was aware of an aviation mishap involving “four Special Operations Aviation Soldiers and an MH-60 Blackhawk helicopter” during routine training operations near Denver, and that, as of the statement, no injuries had been reported.
Aircraft belonged to elite 160th SOAR
The 160th SOAR operates the MH-60M, the special operations Black Hawk variant, in assault and Direct Action Penetrator configurations across its four battalions, and the Army has released neither a tail number nor a unit assignment below regiment level.
The regiment is headquartered at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, with subordinate battalions there and at Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. The Army has not said where the August 25 flight originated or what the training sortie involved.
Thorodin Mountain summits at 10,482 feet (3,195 meters) on US Geological Survey mapping. The aircraft came down on the peak’s eastern flank. High-elevation operations reduce the power margin available to rotorcraft, though neither the Army nor the sheriff’s office has connected terrain or altitude to the event, and no cause has been offered.
The event follows the loss of a US Army AH-64E Apache near Salado, Texas, on August 12, 2026, which killed both crew members.