Volunteers in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range carried out a more than 15-hour rescue operation over the weekend to save a climber stranded on a small ledge at an elevation of over 10,000 feet, according to the Mono County Sheriff Search and Rescue Team.
The climber, who had been scaling the Mendenhall couloir with a friend on Saturday, veered off the intended route and became stuck on a 6-inch-wide (15-centimeter) ledge. The route is steep and contains portions of loose rock that could destabilize, and the section the man traversed had no route markers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
A four-person rescue team from the volunteer group, dispatched by the Mono County Sheriff's Office, located the man after a two-hour search. Team spokesperson Mitchell Quiring, who participated in the rescue, described the situation as dire: the stranded climber had only one foot fully on the ledge and was alternating his legs to avoid fatigue. "Any fall would almost certainly be fatal," the team wrote on its Facebook page.
Initially, a helicopter hoist rescue was considered but deemed unviable due to powerful winds. Instead, the team approached on foot at night, using headlamps for illumination. Quiring, a rescuer, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the operation was "incredibly dangerous and a little scary moving around in the dead of night – everyone's operating on pure trust."
Once reached, the climber was secured to a rope system to prevent a fall. The operation concluded in the early hours of Sunday. Quiring credited the climber, identified in some accounts as Rob Martin, with the strength and will to survive. "He was not going to give up. He was going to push until there was a solution," Quiring said.
The volunteer group, which has long trained for technical rescues, was among those dispatched by the Mono County Sheriff's Office in the Sierra Nevada, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) east of San Francisco.