A 52-year-old man died and another person got injured after falling 1,000 feet off a steep mountain in Denali National Park, Alaska. On April 25 it happened while they were climbing Mount Johnson, known as the Escalator.
Robbi Mecus died from his injuries, while the other climber, a 30-year-old woman from California, was severely injured. She was rescued and taken to a hospital in Anchorage, according to the media reports. Another climbing group saw the fall and called for help around 10:45 pm.
The statement read, ‘The reporting party then descended to the accident victims and confirmed one climber had died in the fall. The responders dug a snow cave and attended to the surviving climber’s injuries throughout the night’.
Subsequently, a helicopter for rescue and two rangers specialised in mountaineering reached the location and successfully saved the injured woman.
It added, ‘Together, the ranger and injured patient were short-hauled out to a flat glacier staging area, and then loaded into the helicopter for the flight to Talkeetna’. It added, ‘The patient was transferred to a LifeMed air ambulance at the Talkeetna State Airport for further care’.
Later the helicopter and rangers returned to the mountain to recover the body of the dead climber. An investigation into the incident is currently underway.
Denali National Park and Preserve is located approximately 386km north of Anchorage. In 2022, Australian climber Matthias Riimi, aged 35, was reported dead four days after going missing on Denali.
During the same year, a Japanese climber passed away after falling through an ice bridge into a crevasse on Mount Hunter. In June 2022, Fernando Birman, aged 48, a climber from New Jersey, lost his life at an elevation of 19,700ft while attempting to summit the mountain.
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