Daily Weird News Report
A climber spent hours balanced on a ledge only about six inches wide after accidentally veering off a route on Laurel Mountain in California’s Sierra Nevada, according to reporting by The Guardian and accounts from the Mono County Search and Rescue Team.
The man, whose name has not been released, had been climbing the Mendenhall couloir with a friend on Saturday. The steep gully includes areas of loose rock, and the section where he became stranded reportedly had no route markers. Search-and-rescue volunteers said that leaving the intended path led to increasingly vertical terrain with no safe way to continue upward or retreat.
Thousands of feet of open space lay below the ledge. In a Facebook post, the rescue team said a fall would have been almost certainly fatal. After the sheriff’s office notified rescuers, teams searched for roughly two hours before hearing the climber’s voice in the distance, according to the New York Times.
Rescuers became increasingly concerned that the man could not remain in place safely through the night. They observed him shifting his weight from one foot to the other, which suggested that his legs might be cramping. The team said the risk of a fatal fall was rising if he stayed where he was.
Strong winds made a helicopter hoist impractical, so the volunteers chose a ground approach. They moved through the mountain terrain at night, using headlamps, and reached the climber from above. A rescuer attached him to a secured rope system designed to prevent him from falling.
The operation concluded in the early hours of Sunday morning. Mitchell Quiring, one of the rescuers, described the nighttime movement as dangerous because terrain that could be navigated during daylight became difficult to read in the dark. He also said the climber’s persistence helped prevent the incident from ending differently.
The climber was reportedly an experienced mountaineer, but the supplied reports did not identify him or explain why he left the marked route.
