Professional climber survives horror fall from Yosemite peak
A professional climber has survived a horror fall while scaling Yosemite’s 3,200ft El Capitan.
Emily Harrington, a US national champion in sport climbing, shared a post on Instagram from a California hospital bed on Tuesday announcing she got “banged up” after having a “bad fall”.
The 33-year-old wrote: “I had an accident yesterday on El Cap.
“I’m banged up but gonna be ok thankfully. Not much to say except I took a bad fall and pin balled a bit then somehow hit the rope w my neck”.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Emily Harrington (@emilyaharrington) on Nov 25, 2019 at 10:53am PST
The second picture included in the post shows a sizeable burn mark across the top of her neck and face from the rope.
Ms Harrington thanked Yosemite Search and Rescue and elite climbers with her at the time for their help in rescuing her after the accident.
More than 30 deaths have been recorded between 1905 and 2018 while climbing El Capitan, which is located on the north side of Yosemite Valley and is popular with rock climbers and BASE jumpers.
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The mountain is one of the best-known landmarks in the park and is considered a world-class challenge for rock climbers.
A recent spike in fatalities – five deaths from 2013 to 2018 – have partly been blamed on increased competition around times ascents, social media fame and “competing for deals with equipment manufacturers or advertisers”.
Last summer, two friends fell to their deaths while climbing the Freeblast route of the daunting precipice.
