SEATTLE, WA — A rockfall swept through a camp high atop Mount Rainier Wednesday night, killing a climber and leaving two others injured, according to a park spokesperson. The incident happened at about 10,000 feet along the Liberty Ridge route on the north side of the mountain.
Click Here: Putters
Park officials were alerted to the incident at around 8 p.m. Wednesday by 911 call, but rangers couldn’t respond until Thursday morning. Five people and the deceased climber were flown off the mountain by around 4:45 p.m.
The climber was identified Friday by the Pierce County Medical Examiner as Arleigh W. Dean, 45, of Alaska.
Both climbers suffered head, back, and chest injuries. The more seriously injured climber had multiple broken bones, and was flown by helicopter to Harborview Medical Center in serious but stable condition. The other climber went to a hospital in Morton, and was able to walk around, public information officer Kevin Bacher said. Twenty-four park rangers helped with the rescue.
The climbers were in three separate parties and were climbing Rainier independently, which means they were not using mountain guides.
Rockfalls are a constant danger on Rainier. The area near the summit is made of up loose rocks, snow, and ice that’s always moving. Bacher could not say definitively if warm spring temperatures contributed to the rockfall, but said warmer weather does generally increase the risk of falling debris.
The Liberty Ridge route is considered the most advanced climbing route to the summit, according to International Mountain Guides, which is based at Mount Rainier. In May 2014, six climbers fell thousands of feet to their deaths while climbing Liberty Ridge at an elevation of about 13,000 feet.
Twenty other climbers have been killed along the Liberty Ridge route, according to National Geographic. Wednesday’s death was the first fatality along that route since the 2014 incident.
“It is considered the premiere guided route on Mt. Rainier and is the most technically demanding of the instructional based climbs we offer on the mountain. All prospective climbers must have past experience and the training conducted throughout the climb will be focused on fine-tuning pre-existing skills to minimize risk and increase efficiency on the route,” IMG says on its website.
The climbers were about 4,000 feet from Mount Rainier’s summit. May and June are typically less popular months to summit the mountain, with July and August being the peak part of the season, according to IMG.
About 10,000 people attempt to climb Rainier each year, Bacher said, but only about 5,000 make it. The Rainier death comes after news that 11 people have died climbing Mount Everest in May alone.
“Other than the obvious tragedy that happened yesterday evening, everything went really smoothly today, we had no additional injuries,” Bacher said. “Part of the reason everything worked so well, there were five guys up on the mountain working together. They were one team, sharing resources up there, and they came down the mountain as a single team.”