Colorado college students fell ‘substantial distance’ to their deaths, officials say

Two college students who went missing on a hike in central Colorado last month fell to their deaths after a “catastrophic failure” while rappelling, authorities said Tuesday.

Colorado Mountain College students Kaden Matsuda, 19, of Ridgway, Colorado, and Jackson Donlon, 20, of Queensbury, New York, “fell a substantial distance” while rappelling in the Rocky Mountains in Chaffee County, Colorado, the county sheriff’s and coroner’s offices said.

The two were reported missing Oct. 26, three days after they left campus for a hike on Colorado’s Ice Mountain.

Authorities said the two men fell after their anchor had a “catastrophic failure of unknown cause.” The men died from “multiple blunt force injuries and their deaths were instant,” officials said.

“While their lives were far too short, they spent their final moments together surrounded by the majestic beauty of Chaffee County’s high peaks that they loved,” Chaffee County Sheriff Andy Rohrich said. “There is also relief knowing neither of them suffered.”

The sheriff’s office said in a statement last week that it received a call from Colorado Mountain College’s Leadville Campus, reporting the students missing.

Friends and family members said the two planned to return from their hike a day or two after they left, according to the sheriff’s office. The pair were experienced climbers and should have been properly dressed and shared a map of their route, their friends and family told authorities, the sheriff’s office added.

Ice Mountain received about 2 feet of snow around the time that the two went hiking, according to officials. It is unknown if the heavy snowstorm “had a negative impact” on the incident, “but it did not play a direct contributing factor in their death,” authorities said.

“Ice Mountain is a very technical climb, and it is recommended that hikers be very experienced when trying to tackle it,” the sheriff’s office said. “That is when it is dry.”

Last week, authorities located Matsuda’s car and the pair’s tent, which collapsed under the weight of the snow, the sheriff’s office said. Several days later, their bodies were recovered from a basin below the West Apostle Mountain.

The peak of the mountain, which is located in the Sawatch Range, a mountain range within the central Rockies, is roughly 13,600 feet, about nine times higher than New York City’s Empire State Building, according to 14ers.com, a Colorado-based website dedicated to documenting the state’s mountain topography.

Authorities said they did not know the exact distance that the young men fell.

“There are no right words to family and friends for a loss this heavy,” Rohrich said. “Know that whenever we explore our backcountry in the future we will think of them as young men who didn’t just look at the world; they climbed it.”