A ranger who was assigned to a climbing patrol on Mount McKinley in Alaska, North America’s tallest peak, died after falling into a crevasse on Thursday, the National Park Service said.
Officials identified the ranger as Robin Pendery, 33, of Enumclaw, Wash., a seasonal employee for the park service, and said she had been near a camp that sits at about 14,000 feet up the mountain when she fell. Parks Service workers responded immediately, the agency said, but Ms. Pendery did not survive. It did not release further details about the incident.
Ms. Pendery’s death came just over a week after three members of a Latvian climbing expedition died in an accident on the same mountain in Denali National Park and Preserve.
The Park Service said that Ms. Pendery had joined the mountaineering staff at the park in 2024.
“We are heartbroken by the loss of a member of our Denali family,” Brooke Merrell, the park’s superintendent, said in a statement. “Our mountaineering rangers dedicate themselves to serving visitors and helping others in one of the most challenging environments in the world. Today, we mourn the loss of a valued colleague, friend and teammate.”
Ms. Pendery was a nursing student at the University of Washington, according to her LinkedIn profile, and had nearly a decade of experience as a seasonal mountain guide, including for Alpine Ascents International, an expedition company based in Seattle.
A biography page for Ms. Pendery on the Alpine Ascents website said that, along with Mount McKinley, she had climbed Mount Rainier, Mount Baker and Mount St. Helens in Washington State and Mount Hood in Oregon.
“She was a serious and compassionate professional,” Gordon Janow, the director of programs for Alpine Ascents, wrote in an email on Friday. “Highly respected by peers, thorough, competent and an absolute pleasure to spend time with. We guided together in India, and her level of care for clients and passion for the mountains were unsurpassed. We’re devastated and her companionship will be sorely missed.”
Mount McKinley, which soars to 20,310 feet above sea level, was renamed as Mount Denali, the name long used by Alaska Native tribes, by President Barack Obama in 2015, but last year, President Trump reinstated the name that honored the former U.S. president William McKinley.
The recent stretch of the climbing season in the national park, which typically runs from late April through mid-July, has been particularly deadly.
Last week, three members of the Latvian Mountaineering Association died and a fourth was critically injured in what officials described as an accident at about 18,000 feet on the mountain.
The recent death toll is above average for the mountain, where more than 130 people have died since the park started keeping records more than a century ago. Three people died in Denali National Park in 2025, according to Park Service data, and there was one death in the park in both 2024 and 2023.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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