In the world of California mountaineering, Patricia Rambert was closing in on the Holy Grail.
The 57-year-old Laguna Hills woman had just 39 peaks to "bag" before making a clean sweep of the 247 summits that climbing enthusiasts consider the most notable in the Sierra Nevada. And as she was with most things in life, Rambert was so passionate about reaching her goal that she recently planned four back-to-back outings.
"She was getting close to that grail," Tina Bowman, her sole companion on the ridge, said Sunday. "It helps explain ... taking on an ambitious plan like that."
But on Wednesday, just 300 feet short of the summit, the mother of two plunged 300 feet to her death while scaling the east face of 13,710-foot Mt. Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park, friends and relatives said Sunday.
Bowman, as well as Rambert's husband, Carl, said the climber was equipped with a helmet, boot spikes called crampons and an ice ax that could have been used to break her fall. Neither understood why, after she lost her footing, she was not able to do so. She slid helplessly down 200 feet of a snow field before dropping 100 feet through the air.
Bowman climbed down, realized Rambert was dead and hiked out to inform the Inyo County sheriff's office, before calling the dead mountaineer's husband at home. Three climbing rangers from Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks recovered the body Thursday, and the incident is under investigation.
News of the death stunned the close-knit Southern California climbing community, where the gregarious Rambert was known as a stickler about safety.
"It's a huge shock because Patty is very, very, very safety-conscious," said Cheryl Gill, Orange County chairwoman of the Sierra Club's Wilderness Training Committee, for which Rambert was a popular and outgoing leader.
"Something just let loose under her foot," Gill said.
Rambert's climb came in the midst of a focused campaign to scale all 247 peaks in the picturesque range that one mountain climbing chapter of the Sierra Club has designated the most challenging and interesting. The peaks range from 8,000 to more than 14,000 feet and make the list because of their elevation, inaccessibility and "domination," a Sierra Club spokesman said.
The peak where Rambert died was where a World War II Army airman was found last fall, buried in ice since a training accident 63 years earlier.
