A climber died on Sunday after falling while scaling Castle Peak, a 14,272-foot mountain in Colorado's Elk Mountains south of Aspen. The Gunnison County Sheriff's Office was alerted and Mountain Rescue Aspen reached the climber by 4pm, but determined his injuries were not survivable, marking the latest fatal incident on one of Colorado's famous "14ers".

A witness, Rebecca Rees, described the scene on Facebook, saying it had been an "extremely sad and terrible afternoon", and noted that a bystander named Robert had rushed towards the fallen climber in case he could help. Rescue teams, using helicopters and off-highway vehicles, reached nearly 13,000 feet in under two hours despite the remote location and holiday weekend, deploying 21 personnel in total before recovering and evacuating the climber's body shortly after 8pm. Rees praised the compassion shown by search and rescue teams, the sheriff and the coroner throughout the operation.