Jake Whisenant, who raced up Yosemite’s El Capitan at record speed, dies in a fall

Jake Whisenant, an elite rock climber who set a record for one of the fastest ascents of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in 2024, died in a climbing accident in California’s Sierra Nevada last week, authorities said Monday.

The Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said that Whisenant, 30, died in Sequoia National Park after suffering traumatic injuries in a fall while climbing Aug. 2. He was found dead by rangers after a two-day search, the National Park Service said in a statement.

Bailee Moore, a friend of Whisenant’s, confirmed his death in a phone interview.

Whisenant became known in the climbing community for his ambitious speed climbs. In October 2024, he and Brant Hysell recorded the fastest climb of Lurking Fear, a 2,000-foot route on El Capitan, the granite monolith in Yosemite National Park. The route typically takes four days to complete, but Whisenant and Hysell reached the top in 2 hours 55 minutes and 32 seconds.

“We both tapped into a flow state, fully committed to our plan, and most importantly had an absolute blast on our favorite rock,” Whisenant wrote on social media at the time.

Climbing on El Capitan has drawn a wider audience in recent years, particularly after the 2018 documentary “Free Solo” chronicled a ropeless ascent of the formation by Alex Honnold, a prominent climber. That same year, Honnold and Tommy Caldwell became the first team to complete the so-called Nose route, which runs up the middle of the rock face, in under two hours.

The previous record for Lurking Fear had been set at 3 hours 4 minutes in 2003 by Yuji Hirayama and Nick Fowler. Whisenant and Hysell carried lighter supplies as they tried to break the record, after scaling the same route in a little more than four hours two days earlier, Whisenant told Gripped, a climbing magazine.

The pair set another record in June 2025 for climbing The Prow, a route on Yosemite’s 1,100-foot Washington Column, in 2 hours 52 minutes, according to a group that tracks Yosemite climbing records.

In May, Whisenant and Noah Fox climbed El Capitan twice in one day on the Nose, a rare feat on a physically demanding route that normally takes days to climb.

Whisenant, who was born and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, was living in Mammoth Lakes, California, a town near Yosemite National Park, with his fiancee, Emma London, at the time of his death, Moore said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.