Dane Steadman (25), Jared Vilhauer (42), and I (41) traveled to the Western Kokshaal-too mountains of Kyrgyzstan for the month of September. We choose this time frame based on two factors: 1) the temperatures are significantly cooler than in m...
On December 4, Nathaniel Masahi Takatsuno (22) fell to his death while free soloing Leonids, a three-pitch 5.9 on the Wedge at El Cajon Mountain. Climber Michael Sandler witnessed the accident. In his report to Accidents, he wrote, “As we were wa...
On Wednesday, September 28, Chelsea Walsh (33), a documentary filmmaker, and Gavin Escobar (31), an ex–Dallas Cowboys football player, died in a fall at Tahquitz Rock (Lily Rock). The Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit (RMRU) responded to the accident...
On March 26, Tina Fiori (51) fell approximately 60 to 80 feet to the ground from a sport route called Turkey Terror (5.9) on the Wailing Sax Wall. Matt Himmelstein (55) was climbing with Fiori and one other climber. He later reported on Facebook ...
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department reported that on the morning of January 18, Michael Spitz (35) was found dead by by two hikers at the base of Illusion Dweller (5.10b) in Joshua Tree National Park. The Riverside County Coroner’s Office es...
On August 13, a 911 caller reported that a male climber had fallen from Matthes Crest. The initial report stated the climber, part of a team of five, had taken a long fall and potentially sustained an open leg fracture. After the SAR team was noti...
On June 22, at approximately 9:15 a.m., Yosemite dispatch received a 911 call from two distressed and stranded climbers four pitches up the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak (5 pitches, 5.6). The climbers humbly said they were “incompetent, exh...
On April 23, the Yosemite Search and Rescue team (YOSAR) responded to a call from two climbers stranded near the top of Pacific Ocean Wall (28 pitches, VI 5.9 A3+) on El Capitan. The climbers were uninjured, but after weathering a multi-day winter...
On June 28, at 10:59 a.m., Yosemite Dispatch received a report of a 42-year-old male who had taken an approximately 50-foot climbing fall on The Prow (V 5.8 C2) on Washington Column. The climber’s plan had been a multi-day, aid-solo ascent. On the...
On August 1 at 1:58 p.m., Yosemite Dispatch received a 911 call from Jack Evans (male, 20s) stating that his climbing partner, Anna Parsons (female, 21), had taken a fall of approximately 80 feet on the third pitch of Snake Dike (8 pitches, 5.7). ...
At 10:30 a.m. on May 14, Climber 1 (male, 27) and Climber 2 (male, 26) arrived at Kombucha Crag, a waterfront cliff north of San Francisco. They both had over four years of climbing experience, indoors and outdoors. After several hours of climbing...
On April 1, climber X (female, 45), was top-rope soloing Landslide (5.8), an 80-foot sport route on the extreme right of the popular Scale Wall, a limestone cliff in Auburn State Recreation Area, northeast of Sacramento. A group of climbers includ...
Around 9:30 p.m. on Friday, October 7, two climbers (both male, mid-20s) left the San Francisco area for a fast ascent of Mt. Shasta by the Clear Creek route up the southeast side, a 16-mile round trip with 7,800 feet of elevation gain. In late su...
In a 24-hour period beginning on June 6, four incidents saw five climbers injured and a climbing guide killed on Mt. Shasta. A storm over the prior weekend doused Shasta with rain, snow, fog, and freezing temperatures, creating very firm and icy c...
In the afternoon of May 21, a mother (62) and daughter were descending the Avalanche Gulch route. They were unfamiliar with the route and attempted to descend the climber’s left side of the Red Banks, a steep, reddish band of cliffs. The narrow ch...
On May 15 at 10 a.m., the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office called U.S. Forest Service ranger Nick Meyers to inform him of an inReach SOS activation near Red Banks, a series of cliffs that form a prominent landmark on the Avalanche Gulch route. No ...
During all of 2022, there were a total of 11 SAR incidents on Mt. Shasta, about half of the running average of 20 incidents per year since 1992. Eight of the incidents were rescues, one a self-rescue, and one a false alarm (false inReach activatio...
After three days of sunny weather, I, Jacob Weintraub (24), and my partner, Randy Lee (37), had finished a double carry beyond the icefall at the end of the Northeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier. We camped at the base of the West Rib route. On M...
On May 17 at 9 p.m., one member of a three-person climbing team fell into a crevasse on the Southeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier, at around 8,400 feet, below the North Buttress of Mt. Hunter. The team was on skis and unroped at the time of the f...
On June 11 at 9:45 p.m., NPS rangers received an SOS activation near 19,500 feet. It was reported that a 49-year-old male climber had fallen from the summit ridge and had sustained a head injury. The injured climber stated that he was unable to de...