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Yes, it is pretty awful, isn't it? As we were climbing, my daughter kept asking, "Are we going to fall to our deaths?" (I don't think she was worried, by the way, I just think she was curious.) My answer was, "It's not part of the plan for today." Little did I know that the scenario was actually playing out just above our heads.
Suddenly, the Anchorage Daily News seems to be requiring a login, so here's the text of the article:
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Hiker dies following tumble
By KYLE HOPKINS and CRAIG MEDRED
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: July 11, 2006)
On a warm July day beneath a sky full of puffy white clouds, a 75-year-old Anchorage man's hike to the top of Alaska's most-climbed peak took a deadly turn.
Authorities said Monday they didn't know if Gene Paul Bryner simply slipped while following a heavily used trail up the northwest side of Flattop, the distinctive peak in the front range of the Chugach Mountains, or if he might have had a heart attack and lost his footing.
Bryner fell about noon near the top of the mountain, said Anchorage Fire Department spokesman Tom Kempton. It was not immediately clear how far he tumbled. Another hiker stopped the man from falling farther and called 911 on a cell phone.
Bryner retired from the Insurance Co. of North America in 1986 and would have celebrated his 53rd anniversary with his wife, Florence, in August, according to an anniversary announcement published in 2003.
Reached at Bryner's home Monday night, family members said they weren't ready to talk.
Tim Moch, a tourist from North Dakota, was hiking the trail Monday too. Bryner had zipped past other hikers on his way up, Moch said. "I guess he was just passing everybody, no stops. He was going hard."
Moch's sister, Abby, is a medical student at the University of Minnesota and reached the scene of the accident maybe 30 minutes after the fall, but Bryner was already dead.
"There was really nothing to be done for him," she said. Capt. Rick Erickson of the Anchorage Fire Department said the death is a reminder of how unforgiving the mountains of Alaska can be. One slip in the wrong place and a pleasant day-hike can turn into a disaster.
The Flattop trail is well-worn, especially near the beginning, but gets steeper and rockier as you approach the peak. As a rescue crew climbed back down, it passed a stream of hikers making their way up the popular path, young couples and tourists, a girl walking a Chihuahua and a woman on a crutch.
About halfway up was Hugo Dietrich, of Anchorage, balancing on two ski poles as he climbed. Dietrich said he's been mountaineering for roughly 50 years and didn't consider Flattop a dangerous trail as long as you're cautious.
But Monday's incident wasn't the first summer fatality on the mountain. A 9-year-old Anchorage boy died in a 300 foot fall in June 1991. The next June, a 20-year-old man fell to his death while climbing a steep wall.
In 1997, two people died and six were injured in a slide down Ptarmigan Peak, which rises behind Flattop.
Erickson and paramedic Leonard Krajkiewcz said that while it was impossible Monday to tell whether Bryner might have suffered a heart attack, it was obvious that he'd suffered traumatic injuries in his fall down the rocky face of the mountainside along the trail.
An employee at the state medical examiner's office said no autopsy had been conducted as of late Monday afternoon.
Erickson, Krajkiewcz and about a half-dozen Anchorage firefighters were among those who rushed to the flat summit of the 3,550-foot peak hoping to stage a rescue, but instead found themselves with the difficult task of body recovery.
On what would normally have been an ideal day for enjoying the mountains -- temperatures were near 70, winds light -- they set up ropes, anchors and a z-pulley system so they could hoist the man's body up to where a helicopter could land on top. They tied their ropes off to a big rock just feet from a 4-foot by 4-foot post which bears a small sign warning of the danger of descending the peak. |
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