Three Climbers Killed After 400-foot Fall in Washington

On Saturday, May 10, three climbers were killed in a rappelling accident in Washington Pass’s Liberty Bell Group. A fourth member of the team narrowly survived the incident and is currently hospitalized.

Undersheriff Dave Yarnell, of the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office, told Climbing that the coroner’s office had not yet confirmed the names of the individuals, but that the climbing party consisted of all adult males, with the deceased men aged 36, 47, and 63.

The group was attempting to climb Early Winter Couloir (AI3 M4+), an alpine mixed route that ascends a prominent couloir between the North and South Early Winters Spires. They were roughly halfway up the 1,100-foot line at around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday evening, when they noticed a storm coming in and decided to retreat.

Much surrounding the accident is still unclear, but at some point during their descent the team’s anchor point failed, and all four climbers fell at the same time. “We calculated about a 200-foot near-vertical fall,” Yarnell said. “Then they landed on a rocky, partially snow-covered chute, and tumbled another 200 feet or so down this chute, tangled in their ropes.”

Once the group came to a halt, after a total fall of roughly 400 feet, the surviving member of the party managed to hike out to the trailhead, and then drove roughly 60 miles west on Highway 20 to Newhalem, Washington, where he used a payphone to call emergency services. This decision seems to indicate that the climber did not know the area well, because it would have been far faster to drive east, to the community of Mazama, which is just 15 or so miles from the trailhead. “He took the long route,” Yarnell said. “He spent at least an hour or more driving over the Cascade mountain range.”

A Snohomish County helicopter rescue team later extracted the three bodies from the mountain. A coroner’s report found that the deceased men suffered from severe head trauma and multiple leg fractures. The surviving climber initially refused medical attention, but was later taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he is being treated for internal bleeding and a traumatic brain injury. His current condition is uncertain, said Yarnell.

The undersheriff said that the authorities are still investigating exactly what went wrong on Early Winter Couloir, but confirmed the team was equipped with climbing harnesses, ropes, removable protection, and all other technical equipment expected for a party on that route. He also confirmed that all four men were attached to the same rope when they fell, and that their rope was found attached to a single piton, “which was very weathered and old-looking.”

It’s unclear if all four men were rappelling off of a single piton or if their anchor was backed up with additional protection which has yet to be recovered.

What went wrong? What can we learn?

We likely won’t get any surefire answers until the survivor’s medical condition is stable. With the limited information on-hand, it’s hard to make accurate judgements about the quality of the party’s anchor or the method by which they chose to descend the route. That said, any rappel anchor reliant on a single point—particularly a pre-existing piton of dubious integrity—is lacking in redundancy.

Yarnell also said the group did not appear to have a Garmin inReach, ZOLEO, SPOT, or other emergency satellite communicator. “We’ve noticed that a lot of folks that come out here to recreate in the wilderness are not carrying a GPS locator device,” he said. “This greatly increases the amount of time it takes us to know if someone is in trouble, and then for us to put together a rescue mission. When you are going into an extremely remote area like this and you have a problem, communication is everything. It wouldn’t have saved these guys’ lives, but we certainly could have helped the survivor get to aid sooner. Instead he had to drive over an hour in the dark, alone.”

“Make sure you have a plan in place, that someone knows where you’re going,” Yarnell added. “Make sure you sign in at trailhead logs, and if there isn’t a log, consider leaving a note on your car explaining where you’re going, how many are in your party, and how long you’ll be gone.”

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