Red Slate Mountain in Sierra Nevada deaths

[HikerBox]

https://ktla.com/2019/10/31/2-women-kil ... ra-nevada/

Sounds like rockfall deaths during an ice climb - does anyone know anything about the route they were on or the mountain in general?

[Teresa Gergen]

The Mono SAR report is included in this thread:
http://www.highsierratopix.com/communit ... d8#p151848

[brichardsson]

https://ktla.com/2019/10/31/2-women-kil ... ra-nevada/

Sounds like rockfall deaths during an ice climb - does anyone know anything about the route they were on or the mountain in general?

Probably the North Couloir. Can't believe they were climbing this time of year, from the pics the route looks like crap. and that's not a judgement, just a statement of fact. they appear to have been very well prepared, but man you couldn't pay me to be out in conditions looking like that.

[seano]

Probably the North Couloir. Can't believe they were climbing this time of year, from the pics the route looks like crap. and that's not a judgement, just a statement of fact. they appear to have been very well prepared, but man you couldn't pay me to be out in conditions looking like that.

Definitely North Couloir, a Sierra classic. Many such were first climbed decades ago, and melt down to bare dirt rather than forming ice these years. Last winter was a big one in the Sierra, with enough snow for fall alpine ice to form, and to tempt people to try the increasingly ficlke ice climbs.

[brichardsson]

Update, it does in fact appear that they were killed by a massive rock fall event. The article says pretty definitively that they did nothing wrong. And, it was in fact the North Couloir.

https://rockandice.com/climbing-news/tw ... ing-right/

[Candace66]

...does anyone know anything about the route they were on or the mountain in general?

Im a bit late to this. So we've already got clarification about which route they were on. And conditions on it.

In contrast, I climbed Red Slate Mountain as a day hike on August 18th, 2002. By using the McGee Creek Trail to McGee Pass, then climbing the fairly easy SE ridge to the summit.

The first sentence of my unpublished trip report reads: "Despite Secor's dismissive description ("this peak is a big pile of rubble"), I had a great outing on this mountain; in fact I considered hiking it again..."

OTOH, I also documented a large rock fall. It occurred while I was still on the trail, below McGee Pass but above Little McGee Lake. This would have been about a mile southeast of Red Slate's summit, as the crow flies.