Wyoming, Tetons, Mt. Wister. On August 19, David Walton and Paul Zeiger were making an ascent of the north face of Mt. Wister. Walton was leading, and the party had gone up several easy leads to a small ledge in the couloir at the base of the north face. From this point Walton led a considerably more difficult pitch of about 50 feet and set up a belay for Zeiger, who made several attempts to follow Walton but after considerable struggle, Zeiger’s arms gave out, and he had to return to the ledge. Walton decided that it was useless to continue up this route and came down. He attempted to get the rope down to Zeiger to belay him out of the way of Walton’s descent, but Zeiger was unable to get the rope. After a short delay, Walton told Zeiger he had found a rappel point and began setting up the rappel. Zeiger could not see the rappel anchor but saw Walton get into the rappel and take two steps when his rappel rope came loose. Walton fell about 300 feet to the base of the face and slid about 200 feet over snow and rock before stopping; his entire rappel rope and rappel anchor came down with him. Zeiger worked his way down to Walton and found that he had been killed. Zeiger then returned to the Jenny Lake Ranger Station to report the accident.

Source: F. Douglas McLaren, District Ranger, and H. Paul Zeiger.

Analysis: The cause of the accident was probably due to the misjudging the anchor point for the rappel, as the rope used to anchor the rappel rope was still intact. Either the rope slipped off the anchor point or the rock came loose.