Over twenty years ago, William Holland, a 38 year old from Gorham, Maine, was in the Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies ice climbing Snow Dome with a partner. He had reached the summit and was taking a break on an outcropping of snow. Unfortunately, the cornice wasn’t strong enough to hold him and he fell over 1,000 feet to his death.
Rescuers were dispatched but they were never able to find his body before foul weather and avalanches forced them to call off the search. He was presumed dead after two days.
Two weeks ago, his body was uncovered by two climbers in Jasper National Park after they saw a flash of yellow fabric in the snow. Glacial ice had preserved Holland’s body, including his yellow jacket, purple boots, and red backpack, since his fall in 1989, though he had taken a small journey with the glacier over the past twenty years. The two hikers found him about a kilometer away from where he had fallen. Gary Lemke, a public safety expert for Parks Canada described him as being “in a deep freeze for the last 21 years.”
Holland is described as an experienced climber. Before his death in 1989, he had climbed Mt. McKinley in Alaska and was planning on traveling to Nepal to climb Mount Ama Dablam. The route Holland and his partner were climbing on Snow Dome was a very technical route, with ice walls, large crevasses and dangerous cornices that have been known to give way without any notice.
You can read more about Holland in the Kennebec Journal.
