Advertisement Climber dies in fall from Cathedral Ledge Experienced climber may have been preparing to descend Share Shares Copy Link Copy

People in Mount Washington Valley are mourning for a man described as a pillar of the local climbing community.Click here to view News 9’s report.The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department said a man preparing to descend from a rock cliff in North Conway fell 65 feet and died of his injuries.Officers said Brian Delaney, 56, of Scarborough, Maine, was climbing alone Saturday and climbed up Cathedral Ledge. At about noon on Saturday, another climber saw him finish his climb, then saw him fall.Other climbers came to his aid and called 911 for assistance.Delaney was a fixture in the New England climbing community.“It’s really sad that he’s no longer with us,” said Brad White, the co-owner of the International Mountain Climbing School in North Conway.White said he took one of his first rock climbing lessons from Delaney in the mid-1970s.“He had a perfect demeanor for a climber,” White said. “He never got rattled and stuff like that. He was really able to keep his act together.”A preliminary investigation suggests that the fall happened as Delaney, an accomplished climber, was preparing or attempting to descend the route.It wasn’t exactly clear what caused the accident. White said something went wrong at the top of the ledge.“When you’re doing what he was doing, tons of climbers do that. I do that all the time. It’s a self-belay thing where you rappel down and you use a ratcheting type device, and you climb back up and the rope is there, and the ratchet locks if you fall off. The danger is in the transitions when you get to the top and you’re switching back around and you’re switching devices to then descend again,” White said. “We’re not positive what caused it, but basically the safety system he had in place didn’t engage, and he went to the ground.”Friends where Delaney lived in Maine remember him as a man devoted to his family.“I had heard that as he fell, he was still conscious and that as rescuers reached him, he was talking and that his thoughts were with his wife and daughter, and then he passed away as they were carrying him out,” said Dominic Tracey, a friend.Friends said Delaney’s ashes will be spread from the top of Cathedral Ledge.“He was just a pillar of the climbing community,” White said. “He was just always around, and it will be hard to think of him as not being around.”12967056