UK climber is killed by rock the size of a block of f lats
A BRITISH climber was killed and his wife seriously injured when a rock ‘the size of a 12-storey block of flats’ split off a mountainside and fell 2,000ft on to them.
Andrew and Lucy Foster had been training for six months to scale El Capitan in the US during a dream mountaineering trip to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.
The experienced climbers were hiking at the base of the 3,600ft rock formation in California’s Yosemite National Park when a huge piece of granite broke away and crashed to the ground.
Mr Foster, 32, was killed instantly. His 28-year-old wife was airlifted to hospital.
They were with other climbers but so far no one else has been reported injured, although a search is continuing, said a spokesman for the park.
The couple, who married in August last year, were keen adventurers and had planned to give up their jobs to spend a year climbing and skiing in the French Alps next year.
They described themselves as Yosemite ‘virgins’ but had climbed all over the UK in preparation for scaling El Capitan, which they said was their ‘big dream’.
The day before the tragedy, Mrs Foster posted a picture of her husband in the national park looking exhausted, with the forebodMr
‘Like 1,000 freight trains derailing’
ing caption: ‘Yosemite has broken Andy.’ In footage of Wednesday’s rock fall, videoed by other climbers, an enormous bang can be heard and a huge cloud of dust engulfs the mountain.
The chunk of granite fell from the popular ‘Waterfall Route’ on the East Buttress of El Capitan.
Witness Peter Zabroke, who was climbing the route, said the sound was like ‘1,000 freight trains derailing at once but louder’.
He added: ‘I observed a 100ft by 100ft by 100ft piece of granite peel off and fall 2,000ft to the ground. It was the size of an apartment building. There were two people walking at the base and they appeared to get hit and completely buried.’ Foster’s death was the first climbing fatality in the national park in four years.
Rock falls happen frequently in Yosemite. Local geologist Greg Stock said the break-off was probably caused by the expansion and contraction of El Capitan’s granite as it heats up during the summer and gets cold and more brittle in the winter.
A second, even larger rock fall occurred just over 24 hours later, on Thursday, injuring one man.
Mr Foster, who grew up in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, met his wife, who was raised near Market Drayton, Shropshire, while studying at Cardiff University. They were members of the university’s climbing club and both went on to work at an outdoor equipment shop, Up and Under, in the city.
More recently, engineering graduate Mr Foster worked as a regional sales rep for the outdoors brand Patagonia. Yesterday colleagues at Up and Under said Mr Foster ‘was highly respected, loved, and his loss will be sorely felt by us all’.
A spokesman for Cardiff University Students’ Union said: ‘Andy will be truly missed by the generations of climbers he has influenced and encouraged.’