Her friends and family sound mystified why she couldn't save herself, but a rapid 200-foot slide on icy snow wouldn't have given her much time to react, starting and ending in just two heartbeats. Scary way to go!:
In the world of California mountaineering, Patricia Rambert was closing in on the Holy Grail.
The 57-year-old Laguna Hills woman had just 39 peaks to "bag" before making a clean sweep of the 247 summits that climbing enthusiasts consider the most notable in the Sierra Nevada.
...But on Wednesday, just 300 feet short of the summit, the mother of two plunged 300 feet to her death while scaling the east face of 13,710-foot Mt. Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park, friends and relatives said Sunday.
Bowman, as well as Rambert's husband, Carl, said the climber was equipped with a helmet, boot spikes called crampons and an ice ax that could have been used to break her fall. Neither understood why, after she lost her footing, she was not able to do so. She slid helplessly down 200 feet of a snow field before dropping 100 feet through the air.
...The peak where Rambert died was where a World War II Army airman was found last fall, buried in ice since a training accident 63 years earlier.
...Her quest earned her a reputation within hiking circles as a first-class "peak bagger" who, according to her husband, was either out hiking or scaling mountains 150 to 200 days a year, sleeping every night in a tent.
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