- A 49-year-old man died in a Little Cottonwood Canyon rockslide Saturday morning.
- He fell 700 feet while hiking alone near Pfeifferhorn, despite medical aid efforts.
- Rescue teams confirmed no other injuries; his identity remains undisclosed.
SALT LAKE CITY — A man died after getting caught in a rockslide in Little Cottonwood Canyon Saturday morning.
At about 8:45 a.m., Salt Lake County rescue teams responded to Bell's Canyon where a rockslide had occurred. Rescue crews had received report of a 49-year-old man who had been hiking alone near Pfeifferhorn when he fell about 700 feet.
A doctor that had been hiking in the area had found the man first and administered medical aid, officials said. The man died from his injuries on scene. His identity has not been released.
Rescue crews searched the area and confirmed no other individuals were injured in the slide, the sheriff's office said.
Heather Hayes told KSL.com she and her husband, who is an ER doctor, started hiking the Pfeifferhorn trail at the same time as the man and had a few conversations with him as they would pass each other on the long trail.
They chatted at the top of the peak as well, but she never learned his name. While hiking back down along a steep ridge where you have to scramble along big boulders, Hayes and her husband noticed some of the rocks were loose because of rain the previous night.
Hayes was nervous as they made their way down and felt one rock wobble, so she moved to a different one before putting her weight on it. She didn't notice that the man had been following shortly behind them and he went for the same rock.
"I watched him as it loosened on him and he fell backwards. It started a cascade of rocks and he called out to me for help, but I couldn't even process what was happening as the rocks around us loosened and he fell backwards and started rolling down the mountain with the rock slide," she said.
Hayes' husband and another man on the trail, who Hayes said she found out was a nursing student, started climbing down into the gulch to help the man who had fallen, but it took about 10 minutes to traverse the more than 200 yards to where the man ended up. The two administered CPR on the man, but Hayes' husband could tell the injuries were fatal.
"They continued CPR, but we screamed at them to move out of the way because another rockslide was starting ... more chair-sized rocks and some larger boulders were flying down the same path towards them so my husband and the other man ran out of the rock path," Hayes said.
Hayes and a couple of other hikers still on the ridge had called 911 once the initial rockslide had occurred. Hayes said it took about two hours after the man's initial fall before a helicopter arrived to retrieve him just after 10:30 a.m.
"I was the last person he spoke to, and I think I was the only one close enough to him to see exactly what happened," she said.
