Red Rock Fatality?

Was out climbing today and it looked like there was a incident in Red Rock today in the Oak Creek Cyn. area. Anyone know what happened?!?

Unfortunately, it appears to have resulted in a fatality:
reviewjournal.com/news/las-…

Bummer! Day after Xmas too...sad for the family and friends. That's kinda of a odd place for a hiker fall, most hikers that do oak creek just do the trail to the old house slab.

From what I heard, party of 3 on solar slab, one male, two females. The guy took an 80 footer.

Condolences, what an informative newspaper article.

John Wilder wrote: The old homestead is in Pine Creek. There are quite a few places in Oak Creek that wouldn't be a great place to take a fall if you were hiking around.

Your right ...my bad! For some reason I was thinking oak had the homestead.
According to Doug, it sounds like it was climbers and not hikers though, which makes more sense. RIP Brother!!!

Update:
The accident happened on rappel in solar slab gulley on pitch 3.

I came across the accident trash yesterday descending solar slab gulley, and was wondering what happened. I'm so so sorry for the family's loss. Rest in peace.

Yeah,we climbed it on sun.(it happened sat) metro s&r was retrieving the gear and filled us in, kinda weird rapping that pitch on the way backdown.

Im a close family friend and any info about the accident will be greatly appreciated. this is what I already know about the accident---

This past Saturday (26 dec) my friend Brian fell while on rappelling down solar gully (5.3). The details are somewhat fuzzy as to the actual cause of his fall.
That morning, he along with his sister and girlfriend climbed up Johnny Vegas (5.7) then bailed after reaching the base of solar slab. They decided to descend Solar Gully. Brian fixed a single strand so both women could get to the ground in one rap. It is unclear as to why the rappel failed when Brian started to rap down. I will be climbing up the Gully as soon as possible to determine what actually happened. It looks like he may have planned to leave the rope on the route and return the next day since he set the rope up to single stand down. when the girls rapped down they where still 150 feet up the route. The little evidence that is present is that he was possibly half way down the rappel when he fell.

Possible he was trying to use a canyoneering-style single-strand rope retrieval method?

I don't know much about that stuff but have heard of all kinds of things canyoneers do, which seem fairly unsafe to a climber.

First, I am sorry to hear of your loss as well as the loss of others who were close to Brian. It is hard.

A lot of details would be needed to piece this together.

In general terms: how many ropes did they have and, after the fall, how were they relative to the usual attachments: to Brian? to the last rap anchor? And it sounds like they all successfully completed the first rap to a big ledge at the base of a huge chimney?

Last, the search and rescue folks may have a lot of the facts.

They where using a single 60m rope. I managed to find out who from search and rescue retrieved the gear and simply I am still trying to contact them for details about what they found when they climbed up to clean the anchors. Also, the rope was still in his belay plate when help arrived on the scene. Something must have failed at the top of the system he setup

Pure conjecture here but I recently did this rappel. We had two 60m ropes. We did 2 full 60m raps down the gully, then attempted a single rope (30m rap) from the 3rd station which was somewhat inobvious as there was at least one other crappy tat anchor in the vicinity of the bolted anchor as I recall. Initially we rapped off this last station (3rd rappel) with a a single 60m rope (30m) but once we realized that was well short the remaining members of the group rapped to the ground via a 60m rap with both ropes. Is it possible the first 2 members of this party rappeled via a single rope (60m rap) from the 3rd station then the last rapped off the end of his rope (30m) in hopes of retrieving the rope and downclimbing, because it definitely does require some downclimbing with only a 30m rap. Either that or they used the shit anchor I noticed and it failed? Again I'm only guessing here in hopes of providing some clarity.

My condolences to the family.

I just did the gulley with a 60m. All bolted anchors and the big thred through w/rap ring are bomber! Those anchors did not fail... Including the one after the "in-obvious" bolt anchor. We rapped off that threaded anchor and that's where we saw the scene. Again my condolences.

I'm thinking they went from the hanging bolt station and tried to skip the threaded pillar/column with a single rap of a 160'...I don't think he would have been leaving a fixed line for the next day... you still have 2 raps from the accident to the ground. I'm thinking he tried a rope trick, somewhat like what Randall Grandstaff tried.

Jeff Young wrote:Is it possible the first 2 members of this party rappeled via a single rope (60m rap) from the 3rd station then the last rapped off the end of his rope (30m) in hopes of retrieving the rope and downclimbing, ....

(Also indicated in Jeff Young's post was that it is no more than 60 meters from the 3rd station to the ground, counting stations in order of descent.)

The accident occurred higher up, unless some facts relayed here are incorrect (unlikely): Although not from personal observation, Eric Orloski indicated the women were still 150 feet up the gully at the time of the accident. And Brian fell while rapping from somewhere above them.

It is possible that the two women were close to what you (Jeff) are calling the 3rd station.

Bryan Manning wrote:I'm thinking he tried a rope trick, somewhat like what Randall Grandstaff tried.

More than one source about that 'trick' indicates it involves two ropes or a rope & cord ( Final Report of Randall''s death ). Brian's crew had one rope (edit to add: no mention yet of a tag line).

Eric: You may have already thought of these questions to ask (you posted here looking for info and I'm just asking questions - sorry; also, of course, the answers may simply not be known)...

Was the middle of the rope marked?

After the two women rapped on the single strand, did they see their rope end get pulled back up (and possibly out of sight) by Brian? If so, did they have any indication he then re-tossed the rope for rappel (e.g., calling out "rope" or the sound of ropes hitting rock after being tossed)?

Or did they still have that rope end with them when he fell - and if so, roughly how much of it was with them when he fell?

And ...

Eric Orloski wrote:the rope was still in his belay plate when help arrived on the scene. Something must have failed at the top of the system he setup

... was it just one strand through his belay plate or two strands (two strands as in a normal rap to be followed by pulling the rope free)?

Just a small bit more from news services:
news3lv.com/content/news/st…
fox5vegas.com/story/3083307…

The accent was after the threaded rap (I saw it and I documented it with my phone). Raping with 2 ropes from the bolted anchor makes sense. What a horrible situation down a strait forward decent. Very sad.

Gavin: Roughly how far was it from the threaded rap anchor to the rescue evidence you mentioned? Likely, it is less than 100 feet. But it has been a number of years since I was in the gully.

80 to 100ft from thread. 175- 200 from bolts... and the medical waste was cleaned up. There was just evidence that something very bad happened.