A man is dead after falling 3,000 feet off of Mount McKinley. In a press release, the National Park Service revealed that Alex Chiu died after his fall off of the mountain. Chiu, who was based in Seattle, Washington, was 41.On June 2, Chiu was hiking with two others when he fell from the Mt. McKinley West Buttress climbing route on to the Peters Glacier. Chiu, who was un-roped at the time, fell at Squirrel Point, an exposed rocky and serac covered 3,000-foot face.After the other two members of Chiu’s expedition witnessed the fall, they lowered over the edge as fall as possible. However, they were unable to see or hear Chiu, so they climbed down the mountain to get help.That help, however, didn’t come until June 4 due to high winds and snow. When the weather cleared, two mountaineering rangers set off on a helicopter search to locate Chiu.The rangers wound up finding Chiu deceased. Afterwards, the rangers returned to Denali National Park and Preserve headquarters, where Chiu’s body was transferred to the state medical examiner.It’s not the first time someone has fallen to their death at that spot. In 2010, an un-roped French mountaineer died in the same Alaska location. His body was never recovered.Since 1980, at least fourteen climbers have died in falls along this treacherous section of the West Buttress route.There are currently 500 climbers on the mountain. The climbing season typically begins in early May and ends in early July.Alex Chiu’s EErie Last Instagram Post Before his fatal fall off mountainChiu last posted on Instagram on May 19. At the time, he penned a lengthy caption about his love of climbing.“The arc of every alpinist is the same, they hone their craft and practice their skills relentlessly until they plateau because the easy climbs are boring and hard ones may kill you,” he wrote, “so your searching for climb thats in-between but even that carries a lot of risk.”Chiu revealed that, in the wake of the COVID pandemic, he’d all but given up climbing due to a move and other life changes. That held true until he set off on his trip to Alaska, which wound up being fatal.“So tomorrow I am getting on an airplane to Alaska,” he wrote, “in an attempt to climb the third highest peak in the world because I don’t want to know what happens to a dream deferred.”The post Climber Falls 3000 Feet to His Death Off Tallest Mountain in North America appeared first on VICE.