Bay Area woman dies on climb in New Zealand
A 28-year-old environmental scientist with a San Francisco consulting firm died this week after falling to her death while rock climbing in New Zealand, the apparent victim of faulty fixed bolts.
Lauren “Kimi” Worrell, who grew up in the Montclair neighborhood of Oakland and was a star in the drama program at Head-Royce School, had been working off and on for Panorama Environmental on Market Street while earning her master’s degree in environmental policy at the University of Auckland. She had recently graduated and received an A-plus grade on her thesis.
Worrell was also a rock climber, and on Sunday she and a friend, Richard Graham, conquered a steep face called Castle Rock, using the safety aids of bolts and ropes. A picture of Worrell taken at the peak was posted to Facebook.
She fell as she was about to make the descent on a 400-foot rock face, Worrell’s family said in a statement released Friday by New Zealand police.
The cause of death is being investigated, but the statement said, “The family asks climbers to
consider very carefully reliance on equipment left permanently fixed to rock faces, and the condition of this equipment. This equipment will naturally be affected by UV rays and other elements of nature affecting its condition and reliability.”
Worrell’s mother, Carrie Oto of Oakland, was in New Zealand preparing for a memorial.
Worrell’s close friend Hanna Schurman said that Worrell had started outdoor climbs a year or two ago after mastering the indoor walls in the East Bay. “She was always an incredibly careful climber and wouldn’t have done anything unsafe,” Schurman said.
After speaking to Oto on the phone, Schurman has concluded that Worrell was leading the descent down from Castle Rock and clipped into a bolt that had been placed as a permanent climbing aid to start her rappel. At that point, the bolt tore loose from the rock and Worrell fell 300 or 400 feet. Two climbers and the Kuaotunu Land Search and Rescue Team were unable to reach her in time to give medical assistance.
“Kimi was larger than life,” Schurman said. “She did a million and one things.” Rock climbing was just one of them.
She had picked that up in high school, to burn off energy left over from being on the swim team, running the student kitchen, serving as senior class treasurer and being involved in every theatrical production starting with her freshman year at Head-Royce.
“High schools can be cliquey,” Schurman said, “and Kimi got along with every group there was.”
By her senior year, Worrell had risen to the role of student director in drama, and also played the sheriff in “The Laramie Project.” “It was an incredibly powerful performance,” said Schurman, “One of the emotional linchpins in the play.”
After graduating from Head-Royce in 2008, Worrell went to Syracuse University in New York to study acting but transferred to the State University of New York College of Environmental Design and Forestry, where she co-founded an a cappella singing group. She was the class valedictorian, Schurman said, and her application was one of 250 received for an entry-level position at Panorama Environmental, which does consulting on renewableenergy projects.
“When we interviewed her, I knew she was more than 1 in 250,” said Tania Treis, principal at the firm. “She was one in a million.”
For four years, Worrell commuted to Market Street from Redwood City, where she lived with a boyfriend in a doctoral program at Stanford University.
That relationship ended before Worrell made the decision to move to Auckland. “Kimi had been bit hard by the wanderlust,” Schurman said.
During school breaks, Worrell returned to work on projects at Panorama but recently informed the firm she planned to stay in New Zealand and look for a job there.
“She was unique in her curiosity and absolutely was fearless,” said Laurie Hietter, the other principal at Panorama. “Kimi was an outstanding person.”
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Instagram: @sfchronicle_art