authorities announced November 3<\/a>.<\/p>\nKaden Matsuda, 19, and Jackson Donlon, 20, died instantly from multiple blunt force injuries, according to a November 3 joint statement from the Chaffee County Sheriff\u2019s Office and Coroner\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cKaden and Jackson lived life at the highest peaks chasing freedoms and panoramic views that most of us only see in pictures,\u201d Chaffee County Sheriff Andy Rohrich said in the statement. \u201cWe hope their families and friends find strength in the memories of their vibrant spirits.\u201d<\/p>\n
The findings provide the first official explanation of what happened to the two friends, whose disappearance prompted a dayslong search involving multiple agencies working through heavy snow and treacherous mountain terrain.<\/p>\n
What Investigators Found<\/h2>\n
According to the release, investigators pieced together what happened on West Apostle Mountain, the 13,597-foot peak where the students were climbing after leaving Colorado Mountain College\u2019s Leadville campus on October 23.<\/p>\n
The pair were descending the mountain when Donlon began to rappel, using a rope secured to an anchor in the rock to lower himself down the steep terrain. Matsuda was clipped into the same anchor system through his personal anchor device.<\/p>\n
The setup appeared to have two backups, including a piton\u2014a metal spike driven into rock\u2014and a second rock anchor. But despite those apparent safeguards, the anchor system suffered what investigators described as a \u201ccatastrophic failure,\u201d sending both climbers falling down the mountainside.<\/p>\n
Authorities have not determined why the anchor failed or exactly how far the students fell.<\/p>\n
Search crews discovered their bodies on October 28 in a snow-filled basin below West Apostle Mountain. A helicopter recovered them the following day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no right words to family and friends for a loss this heavy,\u201d Rohrich said in the statement. \u201cKnow that whenever we explore our backcountry in the future we will think of them as young men who didn\u2019t just look at the world; they climbed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did the Snowstorm Play a Role?<\/h2>\n
As Outside previously reported, a powerful early-season snowstorm dumped up to two feet of snow on the mountains, complicating the search and raising questions about what happened to the climbers.<\/p>\n
Investigators now say the storm was not a direct contributing factor in the students\u2019 deaths.<\/p>\n
In his November 3 statement, Rohrich also praised the students\u2019 preparedness, saying his staff had found no obvious mistakes to point to.<\/p>\n
\u201cKaden and Jackson will certainly be remembered by my staff as an example to others of what preparation looks like,\u201d Rohrich said. \u201cIn most similar cases that have led to a devastating conclusion we find it easy to pick apart what was done wrong. That was not the case with Kaden and Jackson.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Investigators say Kaden Matsuda and Jackson Donlon were properly equipped with multiple backups before their descent turned fatal. A joint county report confirmed an anchor broke unexpectedly on West Apostle Mountain, ruling out weather as the cause. Colorado Mountain College students Kaden Matsuda, 19, left, and Jackson Donlon, 20, died in late October after a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wild-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}