By admin 
A climber was killed around 4 a.m. Sunday on Mount Rainier’s Disappointment Cleaver route. Reports are coming in that a series of rockfalls took place, which affected two parties.
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On Monday, an official with the NPS sent The News Tribune the following statement:
“Early Sunday, July 19, 2026, Mount Rainier National Park responded to an incident involving rockfall on the Disappointment Cleaver climbing route at approximately 11,600 feet. Six climbers from two independent climbing parties were involved. Two climbers were transported by helicopter to medical facilities, and four climbers were safely flown from the mountain.”
The Pierce County Medical Examiner identified the deceased climber as Daihong Chen, 44, from Bellevue, Washington.
Jason Houck, 48, from Issaquah, was on the mountain when the accident took place. He and his son, Dylan, who is 17, were on their way down from an early summit when they noticed that there weren’t many people coming up the mountain.
“Not many people were coming up, despite the fact that we had seen a huge train of people getting started much earlier,” Houck told The News Tribune over the phone Monday morning. “We could tell people had been stopped. And the weather was perfect and clear. There was hardly any wind at all. That’s when we knew.”
Houck and his son heard rumblings on the way up to the summit about a possible accident. First, over a guide’s radio when they passed him and his client around 12,000 feet, and then later over radio again when they were resting around 13,500 feet.
“There are carved out benches in the snow for people to sit on there,” Houck said. “There were eight total people resting there with guides. A guide radio went off about some accident that had happened down the mountain.”
Houck and son summited and then were the first to head back down the mountain Sunday morning. That’s when they noticed the eerie sight of barely anyone else coming up. “Maybe 15 to 20 climbers, which is very strange,” Houck remembered.
The Houcks got down to the lower third of the cleaver and were stopped by a guide and his client. The guide told them that he was instructed by climbing rangers over the radio to hold any parties there due to a medical emergency below.
“It was unfolding about 100 vertical feet below us on the scree towards the bottom of the cleaver,” Houck said.
That’s when the guide told them about a rockfall that had killed one person and broken the leg of another in her party.
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Houck and his son sat there for an hour and watched while park rangers brought in a helicopter and short-hauled the climber with the broken leg. This was around 7:45 a.m., according to Houck.
Then the rangers radioed up that any parties waiting just above the accident site could come down while the rangers were waiting for the helicopter to return for the body recovery. The Houcks and another party then hiked past the accident site and back into Camp Muir.
“They let us come down at that point,” Houck said over the phone. “It was pretty grim, but I work for the King County Sheriff’s Office, and I’ve seen a lot of bodies and horrible accidents before. And my son has grown up around me, so he gets it.”
When they got back to Camp Muir, Houck noticed that the people in the tent next to them were packing up with a climbing ranger. And what had been a group of five or six people last night was down to three.
“They were distraught and talking about how they needed to get to the hospital,” Houck says. “We learned from them that their group had gotten hit by the rockfall as well, and their friend had broken their ankle. They were above the group of people with the lady who got killed. So it sounds like a pretty significant rockfall.”
Late July is notorious for rockfall on Disappointment Cleaver, Mount Rainier’s most popular and guide-maintained route in July. As the summer sun melts snow and ice off the cleaver (a steep, rocky ridge), it becomes unstable and susceptible to falling rocks.
That was Houck’s fourth time on the Disappointment Cleaver route, and he says it was his last.
“I’ve done that route, and I’m not doing it anymore. Especially if I’m going to talk my wife into letting me take my son again.”
This is a developing story. The News Tribune will update with further information.
This story was originally published July 20, 2026 at 2:56 PM with the headline “Reports of rockfall killing climber on Mount Rainier, injuring at least 2 others.”
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