Lacking Sierra backpacker fell to his loss of life beneath Mount Whitney, simply 2 miles into his journey

A backpacker who went lacking on a trek from Mount Whitney to Yosemite Valley was discovered useless simply two miles from his start line, Inyo County Search & Rescue reported.

Harris Levinson had apparently died of an damage suffered in a fall, the searchers’ report stated.

Levinson, 61, of Vashon Island, Wash., had set off June 23 from Whitney Portal on what was meant to be a 220-mile journey on the John Muir Path, the search workforce’s report stated. On July 9 he was reported lacking by buddies who had been fearful that he had neither contacted them nor picked up the meals caches he had organized farther up the path.

The search space was narrowed utilizing knowledge from Levinson’s satellite tv for pc messaging gadget, and his physique was discovered alongside the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek beneath Decrease Boy Scout Lake.

The realm the place Levinson died was not on the principle Whitney Path however an alternate known as the Mountaineer’s Route — a extra direct however steeper route, requiring scrambling on rocks. He was discovered at about 9,400 toes elevation, 1,000 toes larger than the Whitney Portal trailhead.

A pal who spoke to Levinson’s hometown paper, the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber, stated Levinson selected the riskier route as a result of he had not been capable of get a allow for the Whitney Path, which has a quota.

The paper stated Levinson, a schoolteacher and theater artist, was an skilled hiker.

The Mountaineer’s Route has been the positioning of different current misfortunes, together with three deaths inside every week in Might of final yr. A type of hikers, a Santa Rosa man, was fatally struck by falling rocks at Ebersbacher Ledges, very close to the place Levinson died.

Final month, a 14-year-old Santa Clarita boy suffered extreme accidents when he started hallucinating and walked off a ledge whereas descending Mount Whitney. He and his father had ascended the height by the Mountaineer’s Route however had been reportedly coming down through the path.