An experienced climber has died after falling from El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
Balin Miller, 23, died on Oct. 1, his mother said.
Jeanine Girard-Moorman told The Associated Press, “He’s been climbing since he was a young boy, His heart and soul was truly to just climb. He loved to climb and it was never about money and fame.”
El Capitan is a “sheer granite rock face of approximately 3,000 feet,” according to the AP.
Miller’s was the third death Yosemite National Park has experienced this year. The first was an 18-year-old climber from Texas who died while climbing without a rope, or what’s called free-soloing on a different formation in the park. A woman, 29, was hit in the head by a large tree branch while she was hiking and died.
Miller was an experienced climber, learning how to climb in Alaska with his brother and their father.
“He said he felt most alive when he was climbing,” Dylan Miller told the AP. “I’m his bigger brother but he was my mentor.”
He climbed solo in Patagonia and the Canadian Rockies, completing an ice climb called Reality Bath. He was the first to complete it in 37 years, Climbing magazine said.
Balin Miller also finished the first solo ascent of Mount McKinley’s Slovak Direct, over 56 hours in June.
Balin Miller had gone to Yosemite about two weeks ago to take in the solitude and sights before meeting with his family at the national park.
Miller’s brother Dylan told the AP he still is not sure what happened.
Dylan Miller said his brother had completed his lead rope soloing, or a way to climb alone but with the safety of a rope, on the Sea of Dreams and was hauling up the end of his gear when he possibly rappelled off the end of the rope.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Tom Evans, who witnessed what happened, wrote on Facebook that Balin Miller’s gear bag got stuck, so he went down to fix it, but didn’t seem to realize the rope he was attached to was not long enough.
“His rope didn’t reach the bag’s location by many feet, but he seemed unaware of that fact,” Evans shared. “On the way down he rappelled off the end of the rope.”
His deadly fall was captured on a livestream watched by about 500 people, Climbing magazine reported.
Balin Miller’s death came on the first day of the federal government shutdown, and some of the park’s officials are on furlough, but many of the park rangers are exempt from the shutdown layoffs and were able to respond shortly after he fell, the Times reported.