Last Sunday, minutes after leaving the summit of 14,099-foot Snowmass Mountain in Colorado's Elk Range, 25-year-old Sean A. Wylam was injured in a big rockslide. He later died from his injuries, despite being airlifted to a hospital in Aspen.
Wylam, who recently moved to Denver from New Mexico, climbed Snowmass, Colorado's 34th highest mountain, but was not alone on it. He left camp at Snowmass Lake at 4:45a.m., just behind a couple other parties which he followed up the route on the mountain's east side. Jeff Golden, a member of that group, reported on 14ers.com, "He had crampons, an ice axe, a helmet, a SPOT, a GPS--everything."
Sean reached the rocky top and posted a summit photograph of himself taken with his Blackberry on Facebook at 9:01 a.m. He also wrote on his Facebook wall: "On Snowmass...now to get back down."
Jeff Golden met up with him on the summit and reported to me: "He was fairly quiet, kind of minding his own business while me, my partner and the other party of two chatter. When the other party of two departed (they booked it down and were not part of the rescue), Sean opened up a bit and we took photos of each other. He seemed to be a really nice guy who enjoyed solitude in the mountains."
Jeff and his partner invited Sean to climb over to North Snowmass with them about 0.4 mile away but Sean declined the offer. Later a couple other climbers on the summit talked to Sean a few minutes before he began descending. Just below the summit and southeast ridge, Sean was caught in a massive rockslide, suffering severe injuries.
Jeff says, "Roughly 20 minutes later we heard the thunderous rockslide on the standard route, on the other side of the summit.... It was terribly loud, like an extended clap of thunder. We didn't even think that someone might have been in it, though, until the S-Ridge climbers shouted down to us to call for help." Dan, Jeff's partner, called the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office and then descended down to Sean, while Jeff climbed back to Snowmass's summit since he was very visible in a bright orange shirt.
After Pitkin County authorities were alerted at 9:55a.m, a Flight for Life heliocopter took rescue personnel to the mountain. They reached Sean about 1 in the afternoon, stabilized him, and airlifted him to the hospital at 3:40 p.m. He later died from his injuries.
Snowmass Mountain, along with neighboring Capitol Peak, is covered with shattered granite blocks of all sizes that are perched on steep, precarious slopes. While not a difficult ascent by its regular route, all that loose rock makes it a dangerous outing.
Monster5, a 14er.com member from Golden, Colorado and one of the climbers on the summit, wrote, "Plain and simple, he stepped on the wrong block and a few tons of debris gave way beneath him in a thundering boom. Attribute it to freeze-thaw, mass wasting, saturation, and any combination of processes."
It's unfortunate that Sean Wylam, despite being prepared and careful, was involved in a tragic rockfall. As Jeff or SurfNTurf on 14ers.com noted, "I can say with 100 percent confidence he did everything right. There's nothing to be learned from this one, which somehow makes it even tougher to accept. RIP Sean..."
This is the seventh fatality on the 54 Colorado Fourteeners or mountains over 14,000-feet-high this year. The other victims were in an avalanche in Dead Dog Couloir on Torreys Peak; a fall from The Sawtooth on Mount Evans: a rock fall on Mount Princeton; a father and daughter in a fall on Missouri Mountain; a heart attack on Quandary Peak; and now this rockfall on Snowmass Mountain.
My sincere condolences to Sean Wylam's family.
Photograph above: Sean Wylam's self-portrait atop Snowmass Mountain before the rockfall. Photograph courtesy Sean Wylam/Facebook.
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