Climber Dies After Rappelling Accident in Red Rock
Search and rescue teams responded to two climbing emergencies in Nevada’s Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area on Saturday, January 18, one of which involved a fatal fall. The first rescue, which began in response to a distress call received at 2:50 p.m., concerned a four-person party stuck while descending the Mescalito formation in Pine Creek.
One of these climbers was Joe De Luca, who told Climbing that he and his wife were out with two friends taking them up their first multi-pitch, Cat in the Hat (5.6). While rappelling the route, the group’s ropes—two 70-meter lines tied together—became stuck, leaving them unable to descend. De Luca, who had cell service, gathered his party on a wide, sunny ledge atop the pillar of intersecting route Cookie Monster, roughly 400 feet off the ground, and called for help from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department Search & Rescue (LVMPD SAR) team. Two SAR volunteers responded by climbing up to assist the party, but before they reached De Luca, at roughly 5:30 p.m., he heard “a scream, followed by a rope whistling.”
De Luca looked up, and roughly 100 yards across the canyon, saw a woman falling. “I saw her hit [the cliff] three times, and then her body stopped,” he said. He estimated the female climber fell approximately 120 to 130 feet in total, falling 50 feet past her partner, who had already rappelled the pitch. “It was evident to me that the chance of life was zero, or at least very low, if we didn’t do something quickly,” De Luca said.
He yelled across the canyon to make contact with the uninjured climber, then called emergency services. The two SAR volunteers he’d called earlier were still making their way up Cat in the Hat, and were still out of sight and earshot below. “The rescuers heard the fall, but couldn’t communicate with the climber,” De Luca explained. “I couldn’t hear [the rescuers] either, but I had cell service and could communicate with the climber.” De Luca was able to serve as an intermediary between the SAR volunteers and the stranded climber while a new rescue plan was coordinated to reach the other party across the canyon, who were on the 700-foot Community Pillar (5.9).
Other LVMPD SAR team members were able to reach the fallen climber via helicopter, but she was declared dead at the scene. That climber was 30-year-old Micah Manalese, of Aliso Viejo, California.
LVMPD teams were not authorized to confirm the specific circumstances of the accident, but did tell Climbing that it appeared to be “the result of human error.”
One individual who spoke with Climbing and knew the deceased said that Manalese had fallen after mistakenly attaching her GriGri to the “pull” strand of a Reepschnur. While this information is unconfirmed firsthand, others familiar with the victim gave similar reports on Mountain Project. Based on De Luca’s visual observation of the fall—that neither the anchor nor rope failed, and the rope pulled through the entire system—he also concluded that a misused Reepschnur rappel was most likely what occurred.
A Reepschnur rappel, also sometimes called a rope block, carabiner block, or knot-block rappel, allows a party to rappel a full double rope length on a single rope strand, by using a knot—backed up with a carabiner—to “block” one side of the rope at the anchor, ensuring that it can only be pulled one way. This means a party can descend on one side of the rope, then pull the other side to retrieve the rope from below. The technique is commonly used when part of a rope is damaged and can’t be used for a standard two-strand rappel, or if rappelling with a single rope paired with a thin tag line. It can also be used to rappel on a device that can only accommodate a single rope strand, such as a Petzl GriGri.
When executed correctly, a Reepschnur is a safe and useful technique, with the key caveat that only one of the rope strands can bear weight. Attaching to and lowering off the wrong side—the “pull” strand—will result in an instant fall as the entire rope pulls through the anchor.
Manalese’s experience level with traditional and multi-pitch climbing skills is unclear, but a recent post on her Facebook indicated she’d been climbing outside for at least 10 years. The time and conditions when the accident took place may have been what resulted in the critical error. It was 5:30 p.m., roughly a half-hour after sunset (Manalese and her partner had just turned on their headlamps), on a north-facing wall on a relatively cold day, with temperatures around 45°F and quickly dropping. It is likely the climbers were in a hurry to descend in the dark and cold.
De Luca said he was later told that Manalese had a SPOT satellite communicator on her person, which broke in the fall, but that her stranded climbing partner did not have one, and had no cell service to call for rescue. With that in mind, had De Luca’s party not been in the canyon, Manalese’s partner may have been stranded overnight on the wall, in temperatures below freezing. While coordinating with other climbers to help him retrieve his stuck ropes, De Luca said that to his knowledge no other parties visited the canyon for the following three days.
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