Deceased climber loved solo adventures
Once the interviews were over for his new job, Sean Wylam opened up, especially when the subject turned to the outdoors.
Zane Crapo, director of software engineering at Centennial-based Seakr Engineering, hired Wylam, 25, of Highlands Ranch, who died after being caught in a rock slide near the summit of Snowmass Mountain on Sunday.
Wylam was climbing the 14er after starting his new job the previous Monday, Crapo said. Wylam worked as a firmware engineer, building custom computers for satellites. He was born in Centralia, Wash., and recently moved to Colorado after landing the Seakr position.
“I took him out to lunch, and he just lit up about his hobbies,” Crapo said. “He loved to be outdoors, camping, hiking, climbing. He talked about his solo adventures.”
Wylam was by himself on Sunday’s climb, which wasn’t unusual, Crapo said. He’d hiked with others, but going solo never stopped him from summiting scores of tall peaks, including 20 of the state’s 14,000-foot mountains.
“He struck me as very experienced,” Crapo said.
The initial 911 call was made at 9:55 am, possibly by two climbers who wrote on the website 14ers.com that they had spoken with Wylam on the summit two minutes before the slide. They said they heard the slide and were the first to reach him. A Pitkin County Sheriff’s deputy confirmed details of their website posts.
“The accident occurred on the standard route right off the summit, not the S or the W slopes,” one climber wrote. “Plain and simple, he stepped on the wrong block and a few tons of debris gave way beneath him in a thundering boom. Attribute it to freeze-thaw, mass wasting, saturation, and any combination of processes.”
Another wrote that while Wylam was solo, he stayed right behind their group and another group of two for the entire ascent.
“He had crampons, an ice axe, a helmet, a SPOT, a GPS — everything,” the post says. “I can say with 100 percent confidence he did everything right. There’s nothing to be learned from this one, which somehow makes it even tougher to accept.”
Adam Crider, a deputy with the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, said Wylam was not wearing a rope or a harness.
“It seems like he might have stepped on a rock. It broke loose, and he and the rock got tangled pretty badly,” Crider said.
He described it as a fairly large rock and said Wylam likely fell 25 feet, ending up on a boulder.
“It’s hard to say because no one saw it,” Crider said. “They heard it.”
Wylam died from multi-systems trauma, the Pitkin County Coroner’s Office said in a press release Monday. Mountain Rescue Aspen responded and Wylam was airlifted to Aspen Valley Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. CPR was administered in the helicopter and at AVH.
“He was a good guy and able to smile and talk with us throughout it all,” one of the responding climbers wrote. “Again, he was an enthusiastic climber and it couldn’t have happened to a better, more prepared guy.”
Efforts to reach family members were unsuccessful Monday.
Wylam graduated from Centralia High School in 2004 with not just his diploma but also an associate degree in science from Centralia College. On a college web page, he was described as shy in high school and said Centralia College “helped open me up a little.” He was a member of the honor society at Centralia College before he went on to the University of Washington, where he graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a minor in Spanish.
He was working at TransCore in New Mexico when Seakr Engineering came calling.
While few people knew him well at his new job, Seakr President Eric Anderson said Wylam was “the kind of kid we wanted.”
“He was active, wanted to go see things,” he said. “It’s a shame we didn’t get to know him better.”
chad@aspendailynews.com
