A climber was rescued after spending nine hours stranded on a 6-inch ledge in California's Sierra Nevada, rescuers say.
Just before 1:30 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 22, Mono County deputies notified the Mono County Sheriff Search and Rescue Team about a climber who had become stranded after getting off route in the Mendenhall Couloir, the team said in an Aug. 24 Facebook post.
"As an all-volunteer team, we're kind of always on call, we're all kind of doing something different when calls happen, and so everyone doing something different on their Saturday, and we get this notification that there's a climber stuck," Mitchell Quiring, the rescue team's public information officer who helped with Saturday's rescue said in a phone interview.
Mendenhall Couloir
is a steep alpine climbing and mountaineering route located on the east face of Laurel Mountain, directly above Convict Lake near Mammoth Lakes. The route is a "long, complex alpine gully with loose rock, route-finding, exposure, and significant objective-hazard potential," rescuers said.
Those conditions apply to the proper route, rescuers said, adding that "traveling off-route quickly leads to increasingly vertical, unprotectable 5th-class terrain with no viable means of continuing either up or down."
"With thousands of feet of vertical exposure below, any fall would almost certainly be fatal," rescuers said.
Quiring described the man as "a very experienced climber," who was following the main route alongside a climbing partner.
"They had been moving at different speeds. And so that partner kind of took off," Quiring said.
Without his partner, the man "just kind of had his head down and was doing what he thought was right," Quiring said. The climber believed he was following the correct path but instead went off route into the wrong gully.
Quiring said about 100 feet into the gully, the climber "realized: 'I am completely stuck, and if I try to go down and I slip, I'm going to die.'"
"And he would have. He had about 2,000 to 2,400 feet of direct exposure under him. No place to stop if you were to take a fall," Quiring said. "It would have just been tumble, tumble all the way down."
So, the man found somewhere to grip above him and maneuvered one foot at a time to a 6-inch ledge.
"And he just dug deep and said, 'I'm not going to die today. I'm going to wait, and I'm gonna fight, and someone's gonna help me,'" Quiring said.
The stranded climber used his Garmin InReach to send an S.O.S. and waited on the narrow ledge for nine hours as rescuers worked to reach him.
The 'very technical' rescue
"It's terrain we're somewhat familiar with, given that this is not the first person to be rescued in that zone, but this is the first person to be rescued in the style that we rescued them," Quiring said.
Usually, this kind of rescue would call for a helicopter.
"But the conditions that day, hot and very windy, created very tough to impossible flying conditions for helicopters and made us have to go this very technical route," Quiring said.
One-by-one, rescuers were ferried to a saddle on the north side of Laurel Mountain at 11,000 feet, then they began to work their way up the summit, the rescue team said.
Upon reaching the summit, the team then began to move "downhill through the complex terrain of the Mendenhall to locate the subject using guidance" from other rescuers.
The team made visual and voice contact with the man and realized they had to work quickly, according to Quiring. The man was alternating between standing on each foot, suggesting his legs may be cramping, rescuers said.
"There is no, 'Hangout here for the night, and we'll see you in the morning,'" Quiring said. "This is a, 'We need to do this now, and we need to get them secured as soon as possible.'"
Rescuers began their operation just as night fell.
They first built a rope system above the stranded climber and lowered a rescuer to him, the team said. After securing him, the rescuer and climber descended together to a safe ledge.
Then, rescuers installed a second safety rope, which allowed the climber and rescuers to climb back to the top of Laurel Mountain. The group eventually hiked down to waiting vehicles that took them back to town.
The rescue ended at 4:43 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 23.
Quiring, who has been part of the rescue team for about eight years, said though they "do a fair amount of technical rescue every year," this was different.
"This one, I would say, is among the more rare and more serious rescues we've ever had," Quiring said.
'Make good decisions together'
Reflecting on the rescue, Quiring urged climbers to recognize that the Mendenhall Couloir is not a route for beginners. Anyone interested in climbing it should gain more experience before attempting the route.
"Then, I think the second thing I would suggest is go with a partner and just try and read as much as you can about the route beforehand and stick together," Quiring said. "If you go out with somebody, stay with that person, and try and try to talk through stuff and make good decisions together."
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Stranded climber rescued after 9 hours on 6-inch Sierra Nevada ledge
