Number 9 Lauren Sobel
In August of 2020, a New York woman was the lead climber in a group of three at the Mohonk Mountain
Preserve in Gardiner, about 60 miles north of Manhattan. 25-year-old Brooklyn resident Lauren
Sobel had ascended to roughly 70 feet on a rock face and was setting up protection gear for the
others. She was, according to her family, the Lead Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator at the Adaptive
Climbing Group of New York, an organization that made climbing accessible to people of all ages
with physical disabilities. It wasn’t made immediately clear if the experienced climber
was on the mountain in that capacity. While at the second pitch of Triple Bulges, on the
Guide’s Wall, Sobel lost her grip and plummeted roughly 50 feet to the ground and rocks below.
The young woman suffered catastrophic injuries in the fall and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Number 8 Michael Spitz 35-year-old Michael Spitz, a teacher from San
Diego, California, was free soloing a route called Illusion Dweller, in Joshua Tree National Park,
in January of 2022. Free soloing is widely regarded as the most dangerous form of climbing as
it involves taking on rock or ice walls without a safety rope and generally using minimal equipment.
Spitz was an accomplished and confident free solo climber who, according to friends and family,
had only recently begun being more open publicly regarding his endeavors. He’d free soloed roughly
5,000 feet in one day in Tahquitz in addition to completing climbs in Red Rocks and Yosemite. He
enjoyed the simplicity of the practice and “seemed to come alive when things got hard” according to
friend and climbing partner Brian Gillette. Spitz had free soloed the 100-foot Illusion
Dweller in the past and it was reported as being among his favorite routes. He was so comfortable
with it that, on January the 16th, he was warming up on the route while preparing for another climb.
Unfortunately, something went wrong, at around 5:30 pm, when Spitz was nearing the top. The
specifics were still being investigated as of the latest updates but he was believed to have lost
his grip or footing before dropping from the wall more than 80 feet. He succumbed to his injuries
during the night and was found at the base of the Sentinel’s West Face the following morning.
Number 7 Madeline Baharlou-Quivey Denver woman Madeline Baharlou-Quivey, aged 29,
sent out a message for help on October the 11th of 2021, as she was climbing
Colorado’s Kit Carson Peak. The woman was well-equipped for the environment and she’d
reportedly explored similar terrain in the past. However, after straying from the standard route,
she’d gotten cliffed out, meaning she had no possibility of descending or moving farther up.
Baharlou-Quivey’s call for aid reached the county sheriff’s office at around 8 pm, at which point
her GPS coordinates were shared with rescuers. Unfortunately, Baharlou-Quivey had become
stranded just hours before a winter storm struck. The search effort was aided by a Black
Hawk helicopter, but inclement weather conditions and waning daylight severely impeded the mission
on day one. The helicopter ran low on fuel and returned to base, with the plan to make another
pass, but strong winds enveloped the mountain and prevented it from going back in the air.
Ground crews continued to push through gusts of snow and sub-zero temperatures
before they were ultimately forced to turn back as well. They were able to locate Baharlou-Quivey’s
body, at around 3 pm, on the following day and determined through aerial observation that
she’d suffered a fatal fall. Rescue climbers came within 100 feet of her position but the retrieval
attempt was abandoned. Baharlou-Quivey’s mother eventually announced on social media
that her body had been recovered and praised the search and rescue teams’ effort for what
she deemed had been a “nearly impossible task”. Number 6 Lauren Worrell
Lauren “Kimi” Worrell, an American woman living in New Zealand, was descending Castle Rock Pinnacle
in the country’s Coromandel Forest Park, on August the 19th of 2018. Worrell reportedly
had sufficient equipment to set up her own safety line but, on the way down, the 28-year-old clipped
into old webbing. She’d likely done so to save time but, in the moments that followed,
she slipped. Worrell’s partner, Richard Graham, helplessly watched as she fell out of view, nearly
400 feet, to the ground below. After calling the emergency services, Graham noticed that the
"heavily weathered" fixed nylon webbing to which she was clipped had snapped. Worrell suffered
fatal injuries and a coroner would later determine that her death would have likely been prevented
had she chosen to use her own line instead of trusting the one attached to the bolts. Worrell’s
family issued a statement in the aftermath of her passing through which they urged other climbers
to “consider very carefully their reliance on equipment left permanently fixed to rock faces”.
Number 5 Brad Gobright In November of 2019, veteran climber
Brad Gobright and his partner Aiden Jacobson were rappelling down El Sendero Luminoso at El Potrero
Chico, in Mexico. The two had reportedly met on the day of the climb after 31-year-old Gobright
had asked on Instagram if anyone wanted to join him. Phoenix native Jacobson, aged 26, accepted
the invitation and the ensuing ascent of the 2,500-foot wall unfolded without incident. The duo
simul-rappelled down, a technique that involves two climbers descending on the side of a mountain
using opposite ends of the same rope, with each of them acting as the other’s counterweight. When the
rope was slack and caught in some vegetation, the men misjudged the length they had on each side,
with Gobright thinking that he had more at his disposal. They hadn’t tied stopper knots to the
ends of their respective lines, reportedly because it would cause them to get stuck. Consequently,
when Gobright ran out of rope, it slipped out of the rappel device, sending both he and Jacobson
falling towards the ground. The latter’s impact was softened by a bush and he emerged from the
climbing accident with only a broken ankle. As he later recounted, he last saw Gobright bouncing off
the ledge and continuing to fall. He dropped more than 600 feet, which is taller than the Washington
Monument, and died on impact. Number 4 Peter Garlick
In April of 2021, Australian university student Peter Garlick was ascending Mt. Ngungun,
the sixth tallest peak in Queensland’s Glass House Mountains. 18-year-old Garlick was studying for a
teaching degree at the Queensland University of Technology, where he was also a well-liked
member of the rock climbing group. As reported by his friends, he would often venture through
Queensland’s southeast and New South Wales, looking for walls on which to hone his skills.
At around midday, multiple bystanders, who were later described as “shaken and traumatized”,
watched Garlick drop from the rock face an estimated 130 feet. The circumstances
leading up to the fall weren’t concretely established in the immediate aftermath. The
coordinator of a climbing group nearby provided first aid to the teenager before resuscitation
efforts were taken over by paramedics who’d been called to the scene. Unfortunately,
Garlick passed away from his extensive injuries. Ngungun was closed to the general public for the
afternoon as a helicopter-assisted recovery operation was launched to hoist the teenager’s
body from the mountain. Number 3 Rebecca Ryan
20-year-old Rebecca Ryan, a junior at the University of Vermont, was exploring a popular
rock-climbing destination known as Lower West Bolton with two friends, in 2017. In the past,
Ryan, an avid adventurer, had kayaked off the coast of Alaska, skied alpine trails and picked
her way over glaciers. While at Bolton, Ryan and her companions decided to climb a coarse-grained
rock that formed a buttress 90 to 120 feet high. The group was not using the permanent bolts on
their route, called Harvest Moon, and opted for top-roping, a climbing technique that involved
fixing an anchor at the apex of the wall. Climbers can also lower themselves in such settings,
with a harnessed belayer on the ground controlling the rope. The group made several climbs and were
ready to leave when Ryan went up one more time to clean the anchor. It meant resetting the
rope at the top, so that all their gear could be collected and ropes pulled down from the ground
after a final descent. It also meant that Ryan would’ve threaded the rope through a piece of
equipment and rappelled without assistance. A miscommunication occurred between Ryan and one
of her climbing partners, whose identity wasn’t released. It resulted in them removing belaying
equipment and the university student expecting to be assisted on the way down, likely after
realizing she’d left the piece of gear which she needed to rappel at the bottom. Ryan didn’t
hear those below shouting at her to remain at the top, leaned back and fell to her death.
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in the comments section below. Number 2 Christopher Clark
25-year-old Christopher Clark and two companions were climbing at Colorado’s
Rocky Mountain National Park, over Memorial Day weekend, in 2022. Clark, from Land O’ Lakes,
Florida, was a student pilot at the Sheppard Air Force Base. He was climbing alongside Michael
Grieg and Lillian Martinez, who were both from Albuquerque. On May the 29th, at around 9 am,
an avalanche and a rock fall were reported at the Dreamweaver Couloir on Mount Meeker. The slide was
witnessed by several other climbers in the area while Clark, Grieg and Martinez were caught in it.
To reach them, throughout the day, rescuers often worked in winter-like conditions, in terrain above
11,500 feet. 27-year-old Grieg was airlifted from the mountain and subsequently hospitalized at the
Medical Center of the Rockies while Martinez, also in her 20s, suffered minor injuries. Clark was
pronounced dead and an investigation was launched to determine the cause, initially believed to have
been blunt force trauma. Number 1 Daniel Bush
Sydney rock climber Daniel Bush and a partner were on a cliff face in Australia’s Blue Mountains, in
April of 2013. 27-year-old Bush’s partner ascended first and then belayed him on a top rope. Looking
back on the events that followed, Bush would remember feeling confident and claim “I made a
bigger move than I normally would have”. In doing so, he slipped and the rope didn’t catch him,
resulting in a drop of over 130 feet. The fall, captured in a harrowing video by the
man’s helmet-mounted camera, resulted in him shattering both his ankles. Bush remained
conscious throughout his ordeal and initially thought that he was going to die. Upon realizing
that the impact hadn’t been fatal he looked at the damage to his legs and found that his
right foot was “mangled beyond recognition” while his left was “dangling around on a bit of skin”.
Bush spent an agonizing three hours at the bottom of the rock wall before rescuers reached him. In
the aftermath, he was told that there was a 40% chance his left leg would require amputation
below the knee after it had become severely infected. Bush’s insurance claim was denied and
he launched a crowd funding effort for surgery and, if needed, a prosthetic limb.
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