ST. GEORGE — A man and a woman rock climbing above Red Cliffs Campground became lost and had to be rescued Friday night.
Washington County Search and Rescue was called at 9:25 p .m. and found the climbers north of the Red Reef Trailhead on the cliff face. According to the Washington County Sheriff’s office, 10 members of the High Angle team were involved in the rescue near near Harrisburg, Utah.
“The climbers went off trail and ended up unable to get back onto the trail. They went down a ledge and couldn’t get back up. So they got stuck in that spot,” Jacob Paul, Washington County Sheriff’s deputy, said.
Search and Rescue sent two teams out and one of them was able to make contact with the couple who are from Layton, Utah. The team sent ropes and harnesses down to them, Paul said. The couple was raised 150 feet to where the rest of the rescue team was and from that point, they were able to move the pair to a different part of the cliff.
“Then I assisted them with rappelling from that point all the way down to like about another 150 feet or so to the spot that they could hike back down to the trailhead,” Paul said
Although there were no injuries, Paul cautions people to be careful when hiking and rock climbing. The rescue started at 9:25 p.m. and was not completed until around 1:30 a.m.
“Don’t go off the trail if you don’t know where you’re going,” Paul said. “What I’m saying is because a majority of the search and rescue that we get are people that aren’t familiar with the area. They ended up going off the trail, thinking they could get back and then get lost. Or somewhere like these people who were not able to get back.”
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