An 11-year-old boy has died after slipping and falling 300-feet while ice climbing with his father in New York’s Catskills Mountains. The tragic accident occurred around 4 pm on Saturday in Platte Clove near the town of Hunter as the group walked “out on a portion of a trail that was equipped with a hand line”.
The boy was with a group of climbers, including his father, a 13-year-old, a 15-year-old and three other adults, and was wearing appropriate ice-climbing gear. He fell down ice-covered ledges while ascending a popular ice climbing spot called “Dark Side”. A helicopter was brought in to airlift him to the hospital. By the time first responders arrived, forest rangers determined it was too risky to recover the boy’s body until Sunday.
The Catskills are a popular climbing area with hundreds of climbs and guiding agencies, and Platte Clove is a narrow valley with a number of popular ice climbs in the winter.
Forest Rangers were able to find the boy’s body on Saturday night, but because it was dark out, they waited until 9 am the next morning to retrieve the body.
The picture of kaaterskill falls is misleading to the story as it’s nowhere near where the accident happened. You should remove it or replace it.