\u00a0Jonny Copp (age 35), Micah Dash (age 32) \u00a0and Wade Johnson (age 24) \u00a0died when attempting a first ascent on a serious alpine wall on Mount Edgar (6818 meters) on \u00a0the Minya Konka massif in the Western Sichuan Province. They embarked from base camp on May 20, 2009. There hasn\u2019t been any contact with the climbers since.
\nAfter the team missed their flight home, on June 3 from Chengdu, China, \u00a0an international rescue effort went into effect. A small party of experienced climbers, organized through the Sichuan Mountaineering Association, arrived in the area\u00a0\u00a0attempting the rescue, in the hope they were trapped somewhere on the mountain. Unfortunately two bodies were found some days later in avalanche\u00a0debris at 4000 meters.\u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nCopp and Dash were highly experienced alpinists and professional climbers with \u00a0many years experience tackling big unclimbed mountains around the world. They received the Mugs Stump Award grant for this expedition from the American Alpine Club in 2008 but had to delay the climb until now, due to political unrest in the region.
\n\u00a0
\nJohnson (a photographer with Sender Films) was accompanying Dash and Copp to base camp and did not intend to attempt the climb to the summit.
\nms
\nvideo1\u00a0
\nvideo2
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0Jonny Copp (age 35), Micah Dash (age 32) \u00a0and Wade Johnson (age 24) \u00a0died when attempting a first ascent on a serious alpine wall on Mount Edgar (6818 meters) on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8066],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-boulder"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n