Late in the afternoon on October 13, JLC (22) fell approximately 30 feet while leading the traditional route Breaking Rocks Is Hard to Do (5.9). JLC stated that he had been climbing for several years and had led the route before. He was 15 feet ab...
Andrew Gatlin (24) and I, Peter Magnin (24), hiked in to climb at the North Side of Looking Glass Rock during the morning of September 21. We decided to attempt Invisible Airwaves. I started leading and was a majority of the way up the 80-foot fir...
On November 1 at approximately 2 p.m., my partner and I were climbing in the Little Amphitheater when two climbers came around the trail in a hurry and obvious state of distress. Climber 1 (male, early 20s) was shirtless with his hands on his head...
Late in the afternoon on May 9, Dylan Pappas (21) fell to the ground while climbing Chicken Bone (5.8), a ten-bolt sport route. A member of his climbing party had led the climb before him and left the draws in place. The third bolt was clipped wit...
In 2018 there were 23 reported climbing-related accidents. Injuries included five traumatic head injuries, one spinal fracture, several long-bone fractures, three open fractures of the lower legs, and minor ankle, wrist, shoulder, and hand injurie...
On October 10, three climbers finished the second (last) pitch of Baby (5.6). The leader (male, 31) was using a half-rope system, with each follower tied to an end of each half rope. The leader arrived at the bolted rappel station, clove-hitched h...
On December 27, at approximately 9 a.m., my brother Don Heinz (51) and I (46) were climbing Arm and Hammer (WI3+) with two friends. It was a cold day (10° F), but there had been a recent stretch of warm weather and rain. We’d talked about cancelin...
Rappelling the second pitch of the route King Slut (5.11) in the Organ Mountains is an absolute nightmare. In November, I (male, 34) was rappelling on a single 70-meter, 7.8mm half rope with a second rope on my back. Before I began navigating down...
On April 7, seven avalanches occurred in Tuckerman Ravine. All were human triggered. At least five people were caught in one of the avalanches.In the week leading up to April 7, there were two rain events. The first was March 29–30, delivering 0.7...
On February 25, after climbing two-thirds of the way up Hillman’s Highway and not finding a ton of good snow, our group transitioned for an icy ski descent. There was a small ribbon of wind slab on the skiers’ right side of the slide. My two partn...
At about 1 p.m. on February 24, a climber took a long sliding fall while ascending near the top of Right Gully in Tuckerman Ravine. The subject slipped on very hard, icy snow and was unable to self-arrest with an ice axe. The resulting high-speed ...
On February 23, a local climbing guide, age 64, took his client to Mt. Willard, a popular area for moderate, multi-pitch ice climbs. The weather was warm, and by early afternoon freezing rain was falling. At around 1 p.m., the guide short-roped hi...
At 2 p.m. on March 28, Parker Kempf (28) dislodged a large sandstone flake (approximately three cubic feet in size) at the overhanging start of Is It Soup Yet (5.10b) in the Moderate Mecca area. This resulted in a ground fall of roughly six feet, ...
On August 2, a 13-year-old girl was climbing with a camp group at Robinson Park in Sandstone, about an hour and a half north of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, when she got her knee stuck in a wide crack 40 feet above the ground. Climbers in her group wer...
On June 10, Jason Harbin (47) and I (45) climbed the Keeper (5.9), a relatively new (2017) sport route at Camelot. We stick-clipped the high first bolt and I led the route with no issues. Jason (12 years of climbing experience) opted to clean the ...
On April 27, Seamus Hehir (26) fell approximately 50 feet after incorrectly setting up a rappel to clean the route Suppress the Rage (5.12a) at Sunnyside wall. According to his belayer, Jake McCrary (32), Seamus hit a boulder at the base of the cl...
Hao Yan, 23, had come to Idaho from the East Coast to fight forest fires, and in June he decided to attempt 12,662-foot Borah Peak. Climbing solo, he started before dawn but got lost on the approach, and by the time he reached the main difficultie...
On November 10, in very cold temperatures, Sam Warren (20) and his partner were rock climbing at Main Cliff on Ragged Mountain. Sam, a 5.10 sport climber and beginner trad climber, was attempting to lead Tower Crack (5.7), an offwidth crack in an ...
On October 20, Alex Kissinger (28) and I (27) started up the Yellow Spur (six pitches, 5.9+). At around 4 p.m. we reached the top of the fourth pitch, where the belay stance is a small, exposed ledge no bigger than a small nightstand table. There ...
IT'S EARLY SEASON on El Cap. A climber looks up to see his partner peel off the rock and fly past him. When the climber rappels down, his fallen partner is barely responsive. Yosemite Search and Rescue arrives soon and evacuates the fallen climber...