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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Jaimie Ding and Owen Scott

TikTok climbing star dies after falling from Yosemite’s famed El Capitan while livestreaming

A popular Alaskan climber has died after falling from Yosemite National Park's El Capitan, marking the third fatality in the park this summer.

Balin Miller, 23, died in a climbing accident on Wednesday, his mother Jeanine Girard-Moorman confirmed. “He’s been climbing since he was a young boy,” she said. “His heart and soul was truly to just climb. He loved to climb and it was never about money and fame.”

While it's still unclear exactly what happened, Miller’s older brother Dylan said Balin was lead rope soloing — a way to climb alone while still protected by a rope — on a 2,400-foot (730-meter) route named Sea of Dreams. He had already finished the climb and was hauling up his last bit of gear when he likely rappelled off the end of his rope, Dylan added.

Tributes were to Miller on social media, saying they had watched him climb on a TikTok livestream for two days before his death and referring him to “orange tent guy" because of his distinctive camp setup.

Michelle Derrick, one of Miller’s fans, claimed that she watched when the climber had made it to the summit of El Capitan before trying to retrieve his bags, which were stuck on a rock.

“As he was trying to retrieve his bags, he fell to his death, all caught in the livestream,” she said, according to the Daily Mail.

Tom Evans, a Yosemite-based photographer who witnessed Miller fall, said that Ballin’s rope “didn’t reach the bag’s location by many feet, but he seemed unaware of that fact.”

“On the way down he rappelled off the end of the rope,” he said.

El Capitan is one of the most striking features of Yosemite National Park, an enormous sheer granite rock face of approximately 3,000 feet (915 meters) that entices big-wall rock climbers from all over the world. Alex Honnold completed the first free solo climb of El Capitan in 2017 for the documentary “Free Solo.”

Earlier this year, an 18-year-old from Texas died in the same park while free-soloing on a different formation. In August, a 29-year-old woman died after being struck in the head by a large tree branch while hiking.

El Capitan stands in Yosemite National Park, Calif., Jan. 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File) (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Miller died on the first day of the federal government shutdown. National parks are "generally" open but with limited operations and closed visitor centrers, according to the National Park Service. The park service did not respond to a request for comment, and it remains unclear what staff are present at Yosemite during the shutdown.

Miller was also an accomplished alpinist who had already gained international attention for claiming the first solo ascent of Mount McKinley's Slovak Direct, a technically difficult route that took him 56 hours to complete, he posted on his Instagram in June.

He grew up climbing in Alaska with his brother and their father, who was also a climber.

“He said he felt most alive when he was climbing,” Dylan said. “I’m his bigger brother but he was my mentor.”

Earlier this Miller spent weeks solo climbing in Patagonia and the Canadian Rockies, ticking off a notoriously difficult ice climb called Reality Bath, which had been unrepeated for 37 years, according to Climbing magazine.

"He’s had probably one of the most impressive last six months of climbing of anyone that I can think of,” Clint Helander, an Alaska alpinist, told the Anchorage Daily News.

But this most recent trip to Yosemite wasn't supposed to be hard climbing. Miller had just arrived two weeks early to climb and enjoy the park's beauty and solitude before the rest of his family, who planned to meet up there.

More than just a climber, he loved animals and was fun, kind and full of life, his mother said.

He often climbed with a stripe of glitter freckles across his cheekbones, describing it in a Climbing magazine interview like “a warrior putting makeup on before going into battle.”

“He has inspired so many people to do things that are perhaps unthinkable, including myself. I can’t imagine climbing ever again without him," his brother said.

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