Mercury News Reports the name of the deceased as well as the approximate location of the fall (the knife-edge between the summits) which is the only spot on the main route that (I recall) as a sustained knife-edge.
A San Jose man died Monday when he fell from a ridge while climbing a 14,000-foot peak in Sequoia National Park.
The man, whom authorities identified as 56-year-old Yao-Min Chen, was in a group of three near the summit of Mount Russell when he slipped and fell about 500 feet, park officials said.
One of his companions, a 45-year-old woman from Milpitas, tried to grab him and also fell. She was able to stop her slide after about 30 feet but was injured.
The third member of the party activated a satellite emergency-locator beacon and called 911 from his mobile phone.
Because Sequoia/Kings Canyon rescuers were attending to an unconscious hiker at another location in the park, a helicopter crew from Yosemite flew to Mount Russell.
The injured woman was lifted from a ledge and taken to the hospital in Bishop. She was later flown to Reno, where she underwent surgery.
Chen’s body was recovered on Tuesday from the peak.
Mount Russell — at 14,094 feet the state’s seventh-highest mountain — is a mile north of Mount Whitney, on the east edge of the Sierra Nevada. When the man fell, the party was reportedly on the knife-edge ridge that connects Russell’s two peaks.
In April, a Texas man was found dead after being missing for several days on Mount Whitney. He apparently had fallen down a slope during a solo hike.
