At approximately 1 p.m. on May 28, a 20-year-old male was leading the sport climb Peachy Canoodle (5.9) at Upper West Bolton. My partner, Ben Mirkin, and I were climbing out of sight, but within earshot. The climber fell after clipping the third o...
We were climbing at a remote location in the hills of Bolton, in search of new ice lines. Bone Mountain is an obscure cliff that takes about an hour and a half to reach in summer and about two hours of skinning in the winter. I was very familiar w...
My climbing partner and I went to the Dakota Crags in the La Sal Mountains on October 21. It was a beautiful day for climbing, and we wanted to begin on some easy routes. We looked at the guidebook as well as a phone app to determine which routes ...
Just after sunset on December 4, two male climbers (ages 32 and 36) called 911 to report they were stranded halfway down 400-foot Castleton Tower because their rappel ropes had become stuck. Starting near sunrise, the pair had climbed the Kor-Inga...
On June 23, my friend and I went to Mars Wall to do a few after-work pitches. I had taught her how to lead belay and taken some short practice falls with her a few weeks earlier. I (female, 28) had not been climbing very much in the months leading...
Around 10:30 a.m. on January 12, a group of three climbers arrived at the base of the Stairway to Heaven (WI5) in Provo Canyon. The first pitch of this long climb is about 190 feet long, with a ledge system that bisects the pitch a bit less than h...
On November 6, my partner (male, 25) and I, John Sigmon (32), set out to attempt the north ridge of Pfeifferhorn before a storm came in and potentially snowed out the route. It was both of our first times on this climb, and we were aware of report...
Salt Lake County Search and Rescue (SLCOSAR) was called out in the afternoon of October 19 for an injured climber in Little Cottonwood Canyon. The very experienced climber (male, 59) had been leading the first pitch of Crescent Crack (5.7 trad) wh...
On August 7, Avery Guest (female, 20) was climbing with her partner for the day, Jake Bowles (21), at Hellgate Cliffs, a limestone area high in Little Cottonwood. It was Avery’s second time climbing/belaying outdoors. Jake is an experienced climbe...
Salt Lake County Search and Rescue was called out at 12:30 a.m. on July 16 for a pair of climbers (father and son) who had been stranded while trying to descend from a multi-pitch route near Steort’s Ridge. Their rappel rope had gotten stuck, and ...
On April 8, Wade Joseph Meade, 29, an experienced climber, and his partner, Tyler Grundstrom, who has been climbing about 10 years and is also an EMT, had decided to explore the Whipple Fork area, high in Big Cottonwood Canyon, for first-ascent po...
Step, step, swing. A serpent of white ice slithers down a bullying headwall above, forcefully compelling, drawing me: gravity’s inverse. Down here, though, the portal to the unknown is but scraps and slivers of ice. Engaging. Fatigue from last ni...
On December 27, 2019, I took a long fall while attempting a sport climb at the southern tip of the Smith Rock Group, belayed by my father, who had no outdoor climbing experience. My parents were visiting me in Bend for the holidays, and we had gon...
A group of three was climbing Wherever I May Roam (5.9), a popular multi-pitch sport route, on the afternoon of August 8, and they decided to rappel before completing the climb. The team reportedly did not find the middle of their rope and tied a ...
On July 25, an experienced climber from Kennewick, Washington, slipped and fell to his death while traversing a glacier high on the slopes of 10,495-foot Mt. Jefferson (likely on the Whitewater Glacier route). David Freepons, 68, who had decades o...
On December 4, a climber, Caroline Sundbaum, 32, of Portland, fell 15 feet into a fumarole on Mt. Hood, injuring her shoulder. Sundbaum, whose two climbing partners had continued up the mountain ahead of her, had sat on her pack to rest at the t...
The body of Austin Mishler, 27, an experienced climber and wilderness guide, was found October 29 in a crevasse at about 9,400 feet on Mt. Hood’s north side. The Bend resident likely fell while soloing in technical terrain, and he ended up in a cr...
At 9:42 a.m. on Sunday, July 26, the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office was notified of an accident on Mt. Hood. A married couple (both in their early 30s) had fallen about 700 feet (initially reported as 1,000 feet) and had suffered injuries. Oth...
On June 18, Scott Miller, a 25-year-old skier from Utah, missed a turn while descending from the summit and took a long fall that ended in a fumarole below. He had planned to ski Mt. Hood and Mt. Shasta en route to a job posting in Northern Califo...
On May 23 at approximately 12:30 p.m., search and rescue coordinators were notified of an injured climber who had been in an avalanche. In the early morning hours of May 23, Danielle (23) and Shelby (28) set out to climb the Leuthold Couloir, on t...