Seriously Injured Climber Rescued From El Capitan

The park received a 911 call reporting a climbing fall on El Capitan around 9:30 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, May 17th. Initial reports were that the climber – Alexander Scola, a German national – had sustained a very serious injury and that a long blood trail could be seen below the ledge where he was awaiting aid. SAR personnel were paged and efforts to find and reach him began immediately. Scola was climbing the seventeenth pitch of the Nose Route on the south face of El Capitan when the accident occurred. He was leapfrogging his protection when he fell about 100 feet, striking Eagle Ledge during his fall and coming to rest ten feet below the ledge, hanging from the climbing rope that had ultimately arrested his fall. With the assistance of a California Highway Patrol helicopter, rescuers were on the four-foot-long by eighteen-inch-wide ledge within three hours of the call. Scola was packaged, flown to El Cap Meadow, then transferred to a waiting air ambulance. He sustained several injuries, including fractures to a femur, three vertebrae and his jaw. Rob Lewis was IC.