Man Stranded on Longs Peak Ledge

Greg D wrote: Umm. Was he not climbing the mountain? Hello. Should they call him a walker. A biker. A boater. I know. You think you are special cuz u got cammy things and spikie stuff and ropie shit. But he was climbing the fucking mountain.

I would call him a hiker
And a stupid one at that!

its damned impressive watching the rangers at work I have them in action quite a bit. Even know some of them !hats off guys Thanks for keeping darwinisim in check once again!!!

Greg D- a little bit of misdirected anger? I usually enjoy your contributions. I'm going to be bigger than you and not slam someone I don't know. And I would call him a hiker, unless everyone that walks up a 14er is actually a climber? I was merely playing with the words in the article.

Greg D, you need Jesus...

Now they are reporting that he made it to the top, but saw a way down on the map that looked "faster". And a cotton T shirt and sneakers in June?? Amazingly from Canada too. I don't even see how he made it that far in that attire.

http://www.kktv.com/home/headlines/Hiker-stuck-on-ledge-in-Rocky-Mountain-National-Park-260961481.html

Well he was correct about one thing, his route was the much faster way down the mountain. After making it all the way to Broadway he could have traversed over to Lambslide and walked down from there. From the summit down to Broadway is ten times harder than the traverse/descent on lambslide. I still would love to know how he got from the summit to Broadway without rappelling.

Ryan N wrote:Greg D- a little bit of misdirected anger? I usually enjoy your contributions. I'm going to be bigger than you and not slam someone I don't know. And I would call him a hiker, unless everyone that walks up a 14er is actually a climber? I was merely playing with the words in the article.

So, I found Jesus over night. Thanks for the suggestion. Sorry if I came off a bit too harsh. Its just that I find it amusing, if not a bit annoying when "climbers" get all up in arms over journalists mis classifying people as climbers when "clearly" this person cannot be part of our elite culture.

It is not that surprising that this guy ended up on Broadway. My first alpine climb ever with only a few pitches of rock under my belt was Notch Couloir. Because of the conditions that day, we never roped up. I was terrified. But, my more experienced partner made this decision.

Yes, this guy made a poor decision to go that way. But, it is possible to get to Broadway either on the way up or on the way down with technical gear.

Greg D wrote: So, I found Jesus over night. Thanks for the suggestion. Sorry if I came off a bit too harsh. Its just that I find it amusing, if not a bit annoying when "climbers" get all up in arms over journalists mis classifying people as climbers when "clearly" this person cannot be part of our elite culture.

Oh Greg don't go to the dark side, Jesus doesn't need you.

I agree that it is sometimes a self centered reason some people are upset when hikers and tourists are labeled as climbers. They hate to have lesser outdoors men/women be compared to them and all their awesomeness. However, I do agree that the media constantly portraying lost hikers falling off 14ers(a yearly occurrence around here) as climbers falling to their death has contributed to a negative public opinion of climbers in some instances. It makes climbing look far more deadly than it really is and has in fact, been used as an argument against climbing access at more than one crag around the country.

Yes, the access argument. Fair enough. But, lets face it, most of the "climbers" getting injured and killed are actually climbers. Climbing is dangerous.

So Eli, how close is this to the craziest shit you have ever seen?

WOW, thanks for some details Eli. Super surprised he down climbed Kieners in Tennies. If he managed to get across Broadway in those shoes Diamond season is on and cracking! LOL.

Ok well Brains are not this kids strong suit but god damn that is some seriously admirable descending. Sans rope, gear, in tennis shoes this kid dynos the step across and runs across 45 degree snow above some serious exposure and runs down lambslide and across the glacier in 20 minutes??? After spending a night at altitude in a wet t shirt???

Someone should take this kid under their wing, sounds like an alpinist in the making!!

Ryan Kempf wrote:WOW, thanks for some details Eli. Super surprised he down climbed Kieners in Tennies. If he managed to get across Broadway in those shoes Diamond season is on and cracking! LOL.

Seriously... Crampons are for pussies. Canadians aint got time for that shit.

Call it Divinity, call it Stochasticity, either way, this kid defines the concept.

Cotton, sneakers, no gear, sat there overnight and then realized he could dyno the jump?
Frickin' idiot if you ask me!

Damn! I was afraid to do that step-over in summer without being roped up (or crawling under it). and downclimbing Kieners now?? The kid may not have brains, but he sure has cojones!

Tevis Blom wrote:Cotton, sneakers, no gear, sat there overnight and then realized he could dyno the jump? Frickin' idiot if you ask me!

Are you kidding me? He had no idea where the other side of that jump went to, he thought it went no where. This kid had no mountaineering experience whatever, was in tennis shoes on steep snow with a huge drop a few feet from him if he slipped. I think he absolutely did the right thing by calling for help. It is awesome (and badass) that he ended up dyno-ing the move and running down the Lamb's slide, but if he'd slipped and fallen and died we'd all have a lot different view of it.

A climbing guide who was with the RMNP SAR and Teton SAR told me as I was walking by the staging area, The guy followed tracks down Keiners after separating from his buddy, and down-climbed that route to the exposed step on B-way, where he spent the night.
He was doing a modern day repeat of Ezekial Lambs historic decent with more or less period equipment if this is the case.

I'd like to nominate him for the gold piolet award. (he could use the axe more than most guys who win it)

The guy (or someone claiming to be him) has posted his own account on 14ers.com:

14ers.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.…

Hi everyone.

As you can see, I'm Samuel Frappier and I finally can share the true story with you. I've read some of the replies that people wrote and I can see you don't know the entire story. Sorry for my bad English and bad knowledge of the names of trails and places.

I started climbing at 7h30 AM Tuesday morning from the campsite with my friend. I'll put a link here so you can follow on the picture:
eptrail.com/ci_18524125?sou…
We first tried to get up by the path on the left of the photo, but we got stuck and couldn't more forward. My friend could make his way but I just turned around and tried a trail that seemed more easy (well I don't think it's a trail). I climbed the smaller mountain that is on the right of the lake if you look on the photo. After climbing this mountain I had a good view but my goal was to get to the top of Longs Peak so I continued climbing (well going down at start to get to the Longs Peak face). I was getting very tired but I knew I was able to do it. My first mistake here is to continue getting up without being sure to have enough water to get down. I arrived at the top at maybe 5;30pm, pretty tired but extremely satisfied. I saw my friend who was on the peak just to the left of the summit(if you look on the photo): he couldn't make it to the top. We decided to get down at 6pm. As I was a bit exhausted, I decided to try going down by the trail that is indicated on the photo (the one on the left). It was a very steep slope as you must know, but I managed to be careful and not take too much risks (tough I sometimes feared a bit for my life). I arrived maybe at 7pm at the spot where I was stuck, as you can see on this photo :
i.cbc.ca/1.2657977.14014209…
I saw I couldn't continue down relatively safely, so I called 911. Here I'm gonna summarize: they told me I'd have to stay the night and that rescuers would come tomorrow. I stayed that night with all my clothes wet on a little rock (yeah, it was the most horrible experience in my life). Wednesday they sent people to look if they could help me, but they realized they couldn't climb straight up to get to me. I wasn't and am not aware of what they did to help me except to send a first helicopter to see if they could send me supplies and a second helicopter from Wyoming that tried to get near me, without too much success (and I understand that it must be dangerous to get near me). The first time the Wyoming helicopter got away I got very desesperated, even thinking about getting down on the way below me (which would have probably been fatal). As I resigned to stay one more night in the cold, the helicopter came back to make another rescue attempt. I was desesperate and looked for a better spot for them to take me off. I crawled through a dangerous path on my right to get to a spot I had seen before (but I had told myself that it was too dangerous to get there). Once I was there, the helicopter still couldn't get near me. But I am thankful because it is that way that I found the path that leaded me to the chasm lake (it was just behind the spot; I couldn't see that there was a trail behind it from where I was stuck). I was then extremely happy: I had finally found a way down, and it all ended well (yeah, as you can understand, I made the way back to the lake all by myself: there was no helicopter that took me off the ledge I was stuck on!!). On the way back I saw the helicopter and I decided to go see them to say thanks for their help. That's when they brought me to a hospital, even if I would have been perfectly okay to get down the rest of the way by myself (and I would have preferred it this way, even if I liked the helicopter tour :P ). I didn't have any injury except heavy sunburns on the face and eyes. So you can understand there was NO help provided to me on the mountain, even if I am extremely grateful for them to have tried. I also understand why medias have changed the story to tell Colorado's population that I had been rescued by helicopter: it would be stupid to tell everyone ''Hey all, we spent a couple hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to help someone but we couldn't help him and he got off the mountain all by himself.'' At this point I completely understand why Colorado's population is angry at me, I was stupid to get down this way. I should have had a better preparation and knowledge of the mountain before going there. I assure you that I won't do that again, I had way enough time to think about that!
If you have any questions, comments or critics, just write it on this site and I'll make sure to look at them or answer them!

Samuel Frappier

Very interesting account!

My buddy and I climbed the Notch on Saturday and we saw old footprints thatt were descent footprints coming down off Kieners, saw them on parts of broadway, and saw them on lamb's slide. We are sure they are descent footprints because of the spacing between them. We didn't see them at the broadway crux and there was a lot of snow guarding the step over I had to hack out. He must have climbed the snow above them.

During the day we assumed it was someone else since this story was still quite confusing and we thought he had gone up lamb's slide, not down. We didn't see a big ledge scraped off (what I would do if I was going to spend the night) but I think he must have been above the route.

FYI MattThaner, the notch was complete snow all the way up. A little bit of rock near the top but easy enough to pass it through the snow on the left.