By Jesse Bedayn
A rock climber who fell estimated at 400 feet while the descent of a steep ravine in the mountains of the northern waterfalls of Washington survived in the fall who killed his three companions, hiked in his car in the dark and then went to a salary phone to call for help, the authorities announced on Tuesday.
The surviving climber, who was not publicly identified, got out of a tangle of strings, helmets and other equipment after the accident and hiked despite internal bleeding and head trauma, said the Silf of Okanogan, Dave Yarnell.
Falls like this leading to three deaths are extremely rare, and many details on what have led there are still not known, said Cristina Woodworth, who heads the Sheriff’s research and rescue team. Seven years ago, two climbers were killed during a fall on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
The group of four – including the victims, aged 36, 47 and 63 – evolved the first arrows of the winters, shredded peaks divided by a popular slit with climbers of the northern cascade chain, about 160 miles northeast of Seattle. The surviving climber was hospitalized in Seattle.
The group of four encountered a disaster that evening when the anchor obtaining his strings seems to have failed as they went down to a steep ravine, trying to reach the base of the arrow, said Yarnell.
They dropped on about 200 feet in an inclined gluant, then plummeting another 200 feet before resting, he said. The authorities think that the group had shown itself, but turned around when they saw a storm approaching.
A research and rescue team of three people reached the Fall Sunday site, Woodworth said. The team used coordinates from a device that the climbers had transported, which had been shared by a friend of men.
Once they found the site, they called a helicopter to remove the bodies one at a time due to the rugged terrain, Woodworth said.
This 2021 photo provided by watching monkey flowers along the North Cascades Park Service trail in Washington. (US National Park Service via AP)
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This 2021 photo provided by watching monkey flowers along the North Cascades Park Service trail in Washington. (US National Park Service via AP)
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The stakeholders paid on the recovered equipment on Monday trying to decipher what caused the fall, Woodworth said. They found a piton – essentially a small point of metal which is driven in cracks or ice and used as anchors by climbers – which was always cut in the ropes of the climbers.
Pitons are often left within the walls. They can be there for years, even decades, and they can become less safe over time.
“He looked old and altered, and the rest of their equipment looked more recent, so we hypothesize that it was an old piton,” said Woodworth.
The climbers are fixed by strings to anchors, such as pitons or other climbing equipment. The strings are intended to stop their fall if they were to slide, and generally climbers use rescue anchors, said Joshua Cole, guide and co -owner of North Cascades Mountain Guides, which has climbed in the region for about 20 years.
Generally, it would be unusual to recall a single piton, said Cole, adding that he is still unknown exactly what happened on the wall that night.
“We finally edited, if possible, get more information from the surviving party,” said Woodworth.
Arrows are a popular climbing place. The route that the climbers took, said Cole, was of moderate difficulty and required to move between ice, snow and rock.
But the conditions, the quantity of ice against rock for example, can change quickly with the weather, he said, even from week to week or by day, changing the risks of the route.
Bedayn reported to Denver.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
