As the sun rose over the icy slopes of Huascaran in June 2024, climber Ryan Cooper woke to supreme disappointment. His group decided to turn back rather than summit due to safety fears. As Ryan Hockensmith writes in a lengthy piece for ESPN, when it comes to ranking the world's most dangerous mountains, the 22,205-foot Peruvian peak "is routinely placed near Mount Everest, sometimes higher." Cooper, 44, was crushed at not achieving his goal—until he was confronted with the idea that maybe the mountain wanted something else out of him. As they made their way down a rarely used older route, he saw something: a frozen body that he determined belonged to Bill Stampfl, an American climber who'd vanished 22 years earlier during a 2002 avalanche on Huascaran.
Hockensmith's piece is replete with intimate details: how Stampfl's hands covered his face in a final attempt to protect himself, and the call Cooper placed from a hotel in Peru to Stampfl's son in New Jersey, who wonders for a moment if it's a scam. He also details the man Stampfl was—a man who found solitary hobbies and mastered them; how he prepped for his climbs by carrying 65 pounds of cat litter on his back; someone who was always cold, a laughable detail considering his penchant for climbing icy peaks. After Stampfl is finally brought down from the mountain and cremated, his family meets at California's Mount Baldy to scatter some of his ashes. Cooper joins them—and in honor of Bill, hikes to the top carrying a 65-pound rock in his backpack. (Read the full story.) (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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