On Monday morning, October 28, the Mono County Sheriff’s Office was advised of an overdue party of two females that had the stated intention of climbing the Red Slate Couloir on Red Slate Mountain, at 13,140’ elevation. The reporting party stated that they were going to investigate, and to delay SAR deployment. Later in the afternoon, the reporting party requested MOSAR assistance.
Red Slate Mountain, with Red Slate Couloir the left-leaning snow/ice strip running from the snowfield to near the summit.
Air resources were requested by the Sheriff’s Office, and a CHP helicopter made a reconnaisance flight and located two climbers in the couloir, approximately 600’ feet up, and reported that no movement was noted. A MOSAR ground team hiked to the couloir entry, and made similar observations. The ground team returned to base due to the late hour.
On Tuesday October 29 at approximately 9:30 am, MOSAR field teams were flown in to the base of the couloir near Constance Lake in a CH-47 Chinook. The helicopter attempted a hoist lowering to the subject’s location, but found their hoist cable to be too short for the sketchy and hazardous conditions encountered, with continued risk of rockfall in the couloir.
CH-47 Chinook off-loading the field teams at the base of Red Slate Couloir.
One team of 3 began an ascent of the Red Slate Couloir, and found reasonable conditions for the first 2 pitches with consolidated neve that held ice tools and ice screws well. The third pitch conditions were found to be bulletproof ice that required strenuous effort to achieve solid ice tool placements, and was tenous and exacting climbing. Ice screws were leap-frogged along the way to keep the fall risk acceptable with a limited amount of hardware. Pitch four was marginally better.
Climbing Red Slate Couloir to reach the subject’s location.
The climbing team reached the subjects late in the afternoon, and determined that they were deceased, most probably hit by large rockfall at the belay. By that time the CH-47 had returned to base due to high winds and encroaching darkness. The climbing team determined that they did not have adequate time to affect a recovery, and abseiled the route and rejoined the other ground team.
The field teams collected all of the gear and began the long hike out, arriving back at Rescue Base early in the morning. Assistance with the recovery was requested from Yosemite Search and Rescue due to their contract helicopter and expertise with short-hauling.
On Wednesday, October 30, YOSAR was able to reach the subjects with helicopter 551, and transport them to the base of the couloir. They reconfigured their airship and transported the subjects from the base of the couloir to Mammoth-Yosemite Airport for the Coroner investigation.
IC: Pelichowski. Ops Leader: Buchanan. Reponders: Creager, Hammack, L, Senior, Hartstrom, Quiring, Patterson, Knight, Thompson, Gilbreath, Hodges, Mulligan, Pavlovsky, Anderson, Godshalk.