Visitor at a famed climbing spot scales rock without gear — and plunges 150 feet

A man suffered life-threatening injuries Sunday after he fell 150 feet while climbing a rock face and rolled an additional 100 feet down a steep hill, according to a release from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon.

Emergency responders received reports of a serious fall in the southernmost portion of Smith Rock State Park at about 4 p.m., according to the release. When they arrived, they found 21-year-old Benjamin Schulman, of Alexandria, Virginia, gravely injured.

Authorities said Schulman was at the park with friends when he decided to “free climb a rock face not typically used or identified as a climbing route,” the sheriff’s office said.

Schulman wasn’t using ropes or other safety gear, according to the news release. He climbed the rock face using “only handholds and footholds to ascend,” and was in the middle of climbing when he fell.

Schulman then rolled 100 feet down a steep hill “before coming to rest mid-slope,” according to the news release.

First responders took Schulman down the hillside to a meadow, where a helicopter was waiting to airlift him to a hospital in Bend, Oregon, officials said.

Schulman’s “condition stabilized Sunday night” and he was later transferred to a hospital in Portland, Schulman’s father, Steven Schulman, told The Oregonian.

Steven Schulman told The Oregonian that his son, a sophomore at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, suffered “multiple fractures.”

Schulman was camping nearby with climbers who were familiar with the area, according to the news release. Authorities said they don’t know how experienced a climber Schulman was.

This story was originally published August 27, 2018 at 11:46 AM.