An investigation into the incident is ongoing, officials said.
A 52-year-old man died and another was seriously injured after falling 1,000 feet down a steep Alaskan mountain in Denali National Park. According to The Independent, the two-person climbing team was ascending a technical route on Mount Johnson when they fell from the peak on April 25. Park officials said Robbi Mecus died from injuries sustained in the fall while climbing a route on Mount Johnson known as “the escalator.” They added that the roughly 5,000-foot route involves navigating a mix of steep rocks, ice and snow.
The other climber, a 30-year-old woman from California, was seriously injured. She was rescued on Friday and taken to an Anchorage hospital, park officials said, according to the outlet. Another climbing group on the route witnessed the fall and alerted the Alaska Regional Communications Center at about 10:45 p.m., the National Park Service said in a statement.
“The report then went to the victims of the accident and confirmed that a climber had died in the fall. Rescuers dug a snow cave and treated the surviving climber’s injuries overnight,” the statement read.
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On Friday, a rescue helicopter and two mountain rangers arrived in the area and managed to rescue the injured woman. “Together, the ranger and the injured patient were transported to a flat glacier area and then loaded into the helicopter for the flight to Talkeetna,” according to the release. “The patient was transferred to a LifeMed air ambulance at Talkeetna State Airport for further care,” she added.
The helicopter and guards returned to the mountain later to recover the body of the climber who died. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Meanwhile, Denali National Park and Preserve is about 240 miles (386 km) north of Anchorage. In 2022, Australian climber Matthias Riimi, 35, was presumed dead four days after going missing on Denali. In the same year, a Japanese climber died after falling from an ice bridge into a crevasse on Mount Hunter. In June 2022, Fernando Birman, 48, a climber from New Jersey, also died at an altitude of 19,700 feet while trying to reach the top of the mountain.
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