ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Two climbers died and two more were critically injured on Mount McKinley after a fall in Denali Pass Wednesday night, bringing the death toll for this year’s climbing season in the Alaska Range to seven in less than a month.
The National Park Service says mountaineers at the 17,200-foot high camp saw the four-person rope team fall from the pass, at nearly 18,000 feet, at about 11 p.m. Wednesday. Air National Guard pararescuemen from the 212th Rescue Squadron reached the falling climbers, confirming that two had died in the fall.
The other two climbers were placed in rescue litters and lowered to the high camp for emergency medical treatment. One patient was stable and responsive with a broken leg and head injury, but the other one was unresponsive with forced breathing, forcing ANG medics to work throughout the night maintaining an airway.
A Denali National Park helicopter reached the high camp early Thursday morning, separately evacuating the injured climbers to the Kahiltna base camp where they were placed aboard LifeMed air ambulances.
Reaction in Talkeetna to Deaths of Two McKinley Climbers
Denali National Park spokesperson Maureen McLaughlin says climbers report conditions on McKinley are worse than normal, requiring extra caution, but not unprecedented. When the climbers fell, they were traversing from Denali Pass to the high camp along a 45-degree slope of snowpack, which McLaughlin says is hard to cross.
“Haven't had much precipitation up there recently, haven't had much new snow,” McLaughlin said. “Very hard pack, very wind-scoured, very difficult to get stable footing, and if one starts to fall, it is almost impossible to stop a fall.”
The fall happened in the same area where unroped Italian climber Luciano Colombo, 67, fell to his death as he was attempting the same traverse on May 16. He was the third climber to die during this year’s climbing season, following the May 1 avalanche that killed Houston, Texas resident Chris Lackey, 39, on a nearby mountain, the Moose’s Tooth, and the May 12 death on McKinley of 38-year-old Swiss climber Beat Niederer.
Two more climbers, 33-year-old Jiro Kurihara of Canada and 28-year-old Junya Shiraishi of Japan, died last weekend after an avalanche on Mount Frances, a nearby technical peak. They were last seen Saturday at the Kahiltna base camp, before rangers found their bodies Tuesday and recovered them Wednesday morning.
McLaughlin said despite the high number of early-season deaths, park officials aren’t considering closing the mountain -- a step she can't recall them ever taking.
The names of the climbers involved in Wednesday's fall have not been released, pending notification of next of kin.
Contact Todd Walker at twalker@ktuu.com
