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Yutung “Faye” Zhang, 18, passed away on Saturday, October 14, after a fall from the anchors while cleaning a route at Sand Rock (Cherokee Rock Village) in northeastern Alabama.
Zhang, a new climber, was the last in her party to take a top rope lap on the crag mainstay Misty (5.10b/c) around 12:00 p.m. Upon reaching the anchors, after cleaning other party members’ quickdraws on her way up, Zhang prepared to clean a lone locking carabiner that her group had placed on the dual-mussy hook anchors as a backup in the event that the rope became unclipped from the mussys.
Though none of her party were at the anchors to witness what occurred, her belayer wrote on Mountain Project that it appears that while taking off the locker, Zhang inadvertently put the rope into a position so that when it was weighted, it unclipped from both mussy hooks.
As the rope unweighted, her belayer “fell and smacked my back and head against another rock and [Zhang] fell right beside me and more or less passed on impact. A few of us trained in emergency first response came to aid immediately, as well as a physician who happened to be in the area. EMS response was quite fast as well, but there was really nothing to be done.”
“In our eyes this was routine and one of the safest things we could ask of a relatively new climber,” the belayer added. “At the same time, I know all of us are kicking ourselves for asking her to do anything at all. … We’ve all been thinking about what we could or should have done differently or how this could have been a safer experience.”
Originally from Minnesota, Zhang was a freshman at the University of Georgia, attending the college as part of the Foundation Fellowship, UGA’s highest academic scholarship. According to her father, Pingchuan Zhang, this trip to Sand Rock was his daughter’s second time climbing outside. She’d met the other members of her party at a rock gym in Athens, Georgia.
IFMGA guide Karsten Delap posted a short clip on Instagram analyzing the accident. “When she undid the carabiner, she was probably a little bit above [the mussys] with a little bit of slack,” he said. As Zhang leaned back, the rope would have acted like a back-clipped quickdraw, effectively unclipping itself when she leaned back.
Delap and others online noted that the inclusion of a locking carabiner into the system—while helpful to reduce wear in instances where the primary anchor points are closed rings or maillons—was a mistake in this scenario, given the “open” nature of a mussy hook.