A Seattle man died after falling 3,000 feet from a climbing route at Denali National Park in Alaska, the National Park Service said on Wednesday.
Alex Chiu, 41, was ascending the West Buttress route of Mount McKinley on Monday, one of the park’s most frequently climbed routes, while not attached to a rope, the agency said in a statement. He was ski mountaineering, which involves climbing mountains while wearing or carrying skis before skiing back down.
The two other members of his expedition saw him fall onto a rocky face covered in glacial ice, officials said. While they lowered over the edge as far as they could, they could not see or hear him after the fall.
The mountaineers descended the route to ask for help. But high winds and snow prevented ground and air search teams from quickly reaching the area where he had fallen.
Clearer weather early Wednesday allowed two rangers to depart Talkeetna, a village south of the mountain, on a helicopter search to recover Mr. Chiu’s body. When it was found, it was transferred to the state medical examiner, the agency said.
The vast majority of climbers on Mount McKinley, whose name was changed from Mount Denali by President Trump this year, attempt the route that Mr. Chiu was on, which is considered the easiest. The busiest season on the mountain lasts from mid-May to mid-June; there were about 500 climbers on it Wednesday, the National Park Service said.
Mr. Chiu was an aviation engineer at the Federal Aviation Administration and, before that, a software engineer at Boeing, according to his LinkedIn profile. On his social media accounts, he called himself a scuba diver, rock climber, alpinist, snowboarder and skier.
He wrote on his Instagram account about how living in Seattle allowed him to take his ice climbing tools to the mountains every weekend. He said he had gone often enough to be able to teach alpine climbing and to develop a new confidence in himself.
“When I am in the mountains, I realize I was at my best,” he wrote last month before flying to Alaska. “I was smart, witty, passionate, and bold.”
The pandemic put the brakes on his alpine climbs, he wrote. He also moved to Brooklyn to be closer to family. He expressed concern that his climbing skills could diminish during that break.
But he said he kept dreaming of returning to alpine climbing.
“So tomorrow I am getting on an airplane to Alaska,” he wrote on May 19, “in an attempt to climb the third highest peak in the world because I don’t want to know what happens to a dream deferred.”
Mr. Chiu is one of several people who have died while climbing Mount McKinley, North America’s tallest peak. An unroped French mountaineer fell to his death near the same location, called the Peters Glacier, in 2010, the National Park Service said.
A woman died last year while climbing another route at the park known as the Escalator, on Mount Johnson.
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
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