Failed Rock Anchor Killed Two Students on Colorado’s West Apostle

Two Colorado Mountain College students who went missing in the Sawatch Range in late October died when the rock anchor holding them failed during their descent of West Apostle Mountain, Chaffee County officials said on November 3. Kaden Matsuda, 19, and Jackson Donlon, 20, were killed instantly by multiple blunt force injuries, according to a joint statement from the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office and Coroner’s Office.

The finding is the first official account of how the friends died. Their disappearance set off a search by several agencies that lasted days and ran through deep snow and dangerous terrain.

What investigators found on the mountain

Matsuda and Donlon left the college’s Leadville campus on October 23 to climb West Apostle, a peak that rises 13,597 feet. On the way down, Donlon started to rappel, which means lowering himself on a rope fixed to an anchor in the rock. Matsuda was attached to that same anchor through his personal anchor device, a short tether climbers use to clip themselves to a fixed point.

The system looked like it had two backups. One was a piton, a metal spike driven into the rock, and the other was a second rock anchor. Investigators said the whole setup still suffered a “catastrophic failure,” and both men fell down the mountainside.

Officials have not said why the anchor gave way. They also have not said how far the two fell.

The storm was not the cause

Outside reported earlier that an early-season storm dropped as much as two feet of snow on the range while the students were missing. The snow slowed searchers and led to questions about whether weather had trapped or killed the pair. Investigators now say the storm did not directly contribute to the deaths.

Search teams found the bodies on October 28 in a snow-filled basin below the peak. A helicopter brought them out the following day.

What the sheriff said about the climbers

Sheriff Andy Rohrich praised how well the students had prepared. In the same statement he said his staff found no obvious errors to point to, which he described as unusual for fatal accidents of this kind, where it is often easy to identify what went wrong. Rohrich said his staff would remember the two “as an example to others of what preparation looks like.”

Why it matters for people heading into the backcountry

For anyone who climbs or rappels in the Sawatch Range, two findings from the investigation stand out:

• The anchor system had what looked like two layers of backup, and it still failed completely.
• Weather was ruled out as a direct cause, so the early snow that dominated coverage of the search did not decide the outcome.

Because two people were attached to one anchor, its failure took both of them at once. Officials have not released findings that explain which part of the system let go first, so the statement gives climbers no specific lesson about gear or technique yet.

What is still unknown

The Chaffee County statement leaves two questions open: why the anchor failed, and the distance of the fall. The sheriff’s office and coroner have not said whether they expect to release more detail. Until they do, the November 3 statement is the official record of what happened on West Apostle Mountain.

Source: Outside