An intrepid climber died after he fell hundreds of feet off the side of a famed peak in Colorado on New Year’s Eve — leaving his partner trapped on the edge.
The man was scaling Citadel Peak, a 13,300-foot-tall mountain visible from Denver, when he fell from a ridge, the Alpine Rescue Team said in a statement.
The mountaineer, whose name was not released, was climbing with a 29-year-old woman, who reported his fatal fall to the rescue team around 2 p.m. local time.
Rescuers dispatched multiple helicopters, including a Flight for Life chopper, but high winds prevented them from landing on the peak.
“Obviously, it’s a sharp peak. They can’t land right where our subjects are. And as we’re trying to find good places to land close enough to be useful, the winds just weren’t cooperating at the time. So they just had to abort,” Steve Wilson, a volunteer with the Alpine Rescue Team, told CBS News.
Once night fell, the Colorado National Guard Black Hawk helicopter joined the large-scale response and search for the missing climber while several ground teams worked on saving the 29-year-old woman, who was stranded just a couple of hundred feet shy of the mountain’s peak.
“She was up, still on the ridge, in a precarious position of her own. I don’t think she was in danger of falling, but it was very difficult to access her. It would have been very difficult to climb herself down,” Wilson told the outlet.
Eventually, two rescue volunteers were lowered down to where the man’s body landed and confirmed he had died. His body was removed by 8 p.m. local time, and the woman was safely led away from the ridge, according to the statement from the Alpine Rescue Team.
It’s unclear what caused the man to fall. The rescue group noted that the weather conditions for climbing that day were pristine, and the pair of climbers were not amateurs.
“Accidents happen. That’s an unfortunate way to end the year. A tragic end,” Wilson told the outlet.
“They were up above all of the snow. They were in the rocks. Tragic accident as far as we can see. They’re doing what they love. They’re enjoying the back country of Colorado, which is an amazing, beautiful place.”
