Canadian climber dies after fall on Mount Rainier, National Park Service says

A 52-year-old Canadian national died this week on Mount Rainier after taking a “substantial fall” while descending the mountain, the National Park Service said Thursday morning.

The man’s body was recovered by a team of Park Service rangers on Tuesday, one day after witnesses reported seeing the fall at Mount Rainier National Park, according to a news release. The man was identified as Chun Hui Zhang of Surrey, British Columbia.

Zhang was with a group of friends summiting Mount Rainier. The Park Service said the man fell while descending on the Disappointment Cleaver route. Two staff members from International Mountain Guides witnessed the fall and reported it to the National Park Service, director Harry Hamlin said. He said the staff members were preparing for a guided climb Monday afternoon when they saw the man fall from the cleaver, a rocky feature of the mountain that he said begins at about 11,400 feet and runs to about 12,400 feet.

It’s unclear what caused the man to fall. Although Disappointment Cleaver is the most popular way to get to the peak, according to a Park Service route description, the cleaver can be a challenge for climbers, with some of the steepest slopes along the route. An investigation into the incident is underway, Ben Welch, chief ranger for the national park, told The News Tribune.

“From all accounts, it appears the individual was unroped, was looking out to something, and then people witnessed the actual fall,” Welch said.

After the mountain guides saw the fall, Hamlin said the pair went up onto the cleaver to assist in directing the remaining climbers safely down. The Park Service said mountain climbing guides and NPS rangers made several unsuccessful attempts to locate the fallen climber before his body was recovered Tuesday.

Summer is a busy time of year to be on Mount Rainier, and hiking traffic was stopped in that area while rescuers extricated the fallen climber, Welch said. He said it’s a dangerous area to conduct a rescue because hikers above could cause rocks to fall which could kill the rescuers.

Welch said rangers were flown onto the mountain with a contracted helicopter. The rangers extricated the body and harnessed it to the helicopter, which flew it to a second location to be secured further before it was flown to the aircraft’s base.

“It’s just a really unfortunate tragedy,” Welch said. “The superintendent’s office and all the rangers are saddened for this loss.”

The Park Service credited International Mountain Guides and Rainier Mountaineering Inc. with providing valuable assistance during the incident. According to the route description, about 7,600 climbers attempt to summit the mountain along this route each year. It is an eight to nine mile journey that takes an average of one to three days to complete.