Kaden Matsuda, 19, and Jackson Donlon, 20, died after a climbing anchor failed while they were descending West Apostle Mountain in Colorado’s Sawatch Range, authorities said on November 3. The Colorado Mountain College students suffered multiple blunt force injuries, according to a joint statement from the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office and Coroner’s Office.
The pair had left the college’s Leadville campus on October 23 to climb the 13,597-foot peak. During their descent, Donlon began rappelling on a rope attached to an anchor in the rock, while Matsuda was clipped into the same system with his personal anchor device.
Investigators said the setup appeared to include two safeguards: a piton driven into the rock and a second rock anchor. Despite these, the system suffered what authorities described as a “catastrophic failure,” causing both climbers to fall. Investigators have not established why the anchor failed or how far the men fell.
Search crews found their bodies on October 28 in a snow-filled basin below the mountain. A helicopter recovered them the next day. Heavy snow had complicated the search, but investigators said the storm was not a direct contributing factor in the deaths.
Sheriff Andy Rohrich said investigators found no obvious mistakes in the climbers’ preparation. He described them as an example of preparedness, adding that staff had not found the kinds of errors often identified in similar fatal incidents.
Sources: Outside.