21-year-old Joseph Brambila went for a solo hike of Mt. Whitney, the best peak within the contiguous United States, and his household by no means noticed him once more. One other solo hiker remembers seeing Brambila on the peak on that fateful November day, and so they’d mentioned the climate and the waning daylight. Apparently, Brambila informed the opposite hiker he deliberate to avoid wasting time by glissading down the mountain.
Brambila had climbed Whitney earlier than; he’d even made a YouTube video about it. He’d additionally discovered how you can glissade (slide down in your bottom) on the very slope that possible claimed his life. Sadly, Brambila didn’t have the correct tools to try this harmful mountaineering approach. He disappeared for over a month, with deep snowfall on the mountain making search-and-recovery efforts tough.
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On December 15, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office introduced the restoration of a deceased hiker’s physique on Mt. Whitney, and though the formal-identification course of remains to be underway, the overall consensus is that they discovered Brambila. Media reports suggest the deceased’s clothes matches what Brambila was carrying.
Here’s a report by the LA Occasions earlier than officers recovered the younger hiker’s physique, adopted by the Data County Sheriff’s Workplace’s official press launch in regards to the restoration:
Header inventory picture of Mt. Whitney by 4nadia/Getty Pictures