A person hiking with them told police the two were trying to climb down to “the Notch”--a flat cliff on the north side of the mountain’s face near the Mount Whitney Mountaineer Route--and snowboard back to Upper Boy Scout Lake, where they had set up camp.
Law enforcement has released few details about the climbers and where they were found on the mountain, located in east-central California, about 220 miles north of Los Angeles.
An Inyo County Sheriff’s Department team started searching for the hikers after the person they were with reported them missing.
The reporting party, who hiked with them up the mountain, told the searchers he waited for hours at their campsite but the two never returned from the Notch.
The search and rescue team used a helicopter and teams on foot to search the area. The hikers were discovered dead at a location within the neighboring county of Tulare.
The Tulare County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office is now handling the case but has not yet released any information about the hikers or where they were found on the mountain.
“We haven’t released the names yet,” Tulare County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Teresa Douglass told The Epoch Times. “Inyo County Search and Rescue recovered the bodies. We have the bodies, but we’re waiting to notify next of kin.”
The hikers’ names may be released later Friday, according to Ms. Douglass.
