PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – A rock climbing accident caused four climbers to fall hundreds of feet while descending a steep gully in Washington’s North Cascades mountains over the weekend. Three were killed in the fall.
The fourth, Anton Tselykh, 38, survived the fall and was able to extricate himself from a tangle of ropes, helmets and other equipment before hiking back to his car in the dark. He was then able to drive to a pay phone and call for help, authorities said Tuesday.
It took Tselykh, who suffered internal bleeding and head trauma, at least a dozen hours to make the trek to the pay phone, Okanogan County Undersheriff Dave Yarnell said.
Authorities haven’t yet been able to interview the survivor, who is in a Seattle hospital, said Okanogan County Coroner Dave Rodriguez, so much is still unknown of the fall and Tselykh’s journey.
Meanwhile, the climbers who were killed have been identified as Vishnu Irigireddy, 48, Tim Nguyen, 63, and Oleksander Martynenko, 36.
The accident took place in the North Early Winters Spires, jagged peaks split by a cleft that is popular with climbers in the North Cascade Range, about 160 miles northeast of Seattle.
The group of four met with disaster that night when the anchor used to secure their ropes was torn from the rock while they were descending, Rodriguez said. The anchor they were using, a metal spike called a piton, appeared to have been placed there by past climbers, he said.
They plummeted for about 200 feet into a slanted gulch and then tumbled another 200 feet before coming to rest, Yarnell said. Authorities believe the group had been ascending but turned around when they saw a storm approaching.
A three-person search and rescue team reached the site of the fall Sunday, Woodworth said. The team used coordinates from a device the climbers had been carrying, which had been shared by a friend of the men.
Once they found the site, they called in a helicopter to remove the bodies one at a time because of the rough terrain, Woodworth said.
On Monday, responders poured over the recovered equipment trying to decipher what caused the fall, Woodworth said. They found the piton basically a small metal spike that is driven into rock cracks or ice and used as anchors by climbers that was still clipped into the climbers’ ropes.
“There’s no other reason it would be hooked onto the rope unless it pulled out of the rock,” said Rodriguez, the coroner, noting that pitons are typically stuck fast in the rock. Rodriguez added that when rappelling, all four men would not have be hanging from the one piton at the same time, but taking turns moving down the mountain.
Pitons are often left in rock walls. They can be there for years or even decades, and they may become less secure over time.
“It looked old and weathered, and the rest of their equipment looked newer, so we are making the assumption that it was an old piton,” Woodworth said.
Rock climbers secure themselves by ropes to anchors, such as pitons or other climbing equipment. The ropes are intended to arrest their fall if they should slip, and typically climbers use backup anchors, said Joshua Cole, a guide and co-owner of North Cascades Mountain Guides, who has been climbing in the area for about 20 years.
Generally, it would be unusual to rappel off a single piton, said Cole, adding that it is still unknown exactly what happened on the wall that night.
“We eventually, if possible, would like to get more information from the surviving party,” Woodworth said.
The spires are a popular climbing spot. The route the climbers were taking, said Cole, was of moderate difficulty and requires moving between ice, snow and rock.
But the conditions the amount of ice versus rock, for example can change rapidly with the weather, he said, even week to week or day to day, changing the route’s risks.
Falls like this leading to three deaths are extremely rare, said Cristina Woodworth, who leads the sheriff’s search and rescue team. Seven years ago, two climbers were killed in a fall on El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in California.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
