BISHOP, Calif. (AP) — A hiker fell to his death Sunday on a Sierra Nevada peak, and his body was recovered by a helicopter crew, the Fresno County sheriff’s office said.
The death was reported around noon Sunday. A member of a different hiking group had seen the man fall from boulders on the western slope of Mount Humphreys. The witness was able to reach the body and determine the man was dead.
He was later identified as Paul Sheykhzadeh, 52, of Reno, a physician and a search-and-rescue volunteer for the Washoe County sheriff’s office, in Nevada.
Mount Humphreys is on the border of Fresno and Inyo counties above the Eastern Sierra community of Bishop. The western route to the 13,993-foot summit does not require technical gear, but the risk of a fatal fall is great enough that hikers often clip into a secured rope on the more exposed sections.
Because the fall was on the peak’s western side, Inyo County sheriff’s deputies alerted their Fresno County colleagues, who sent up a helicopter and spotted the body a few hundred feet below the summit.
Because of the altitude, a different aircraft was needed for the recovery. On Monday, a California Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopter carried seven sheriff’s search-and-rescue members to the site. One of them rappelled 370 feet, then hoisted the body to the helicopter.
The Washoe County sheriff’s office said Sheykhzadeh had been one of the most active members of its rescue team for more than 10 years, with experience in backcountry rescue, technical rope rescue and helicopter hoists. He was an experienced climber, backcountry skier, mountain biker and kite surfer, they said.
In his professional life, he was a specialist in gastroenterology. He grew up in the Bay Area and received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He is survived by his fiancee, Mary Flanigan, as well as his parents, who live in Albany, and a sister, the Washoe sheriff’s office said.
Sheykhzadeh’s death is at least the second on Humphreys this year. The body of Ray Warburton, 59, an experienced climber and skier from Bishop, was found on June 10 on a snowfield on the east side, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office said. He may have been struck by falling rocks, they said.
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