A Montana man is dead after taking a precipitous fall while ice climbing in the Custer Gallatin National Forest over the weekend, officials said.
Kyle Rott, 36, was critically injured Saturday afternoon when he fell near Grotto Falls in the over 2 million acre forest, just north of Yellowstone National Park.
A South Dakota native, Rott was somebody who “marched to the beat of his own drum and was eager to venture off and embrace his free-spiritedness,” an obituary in KBZK read.
Rescue crews rushed to the scene after receiving emergency calls from a witness who saw the accident, Gallatin County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue squad said in a statement.
Five search teams were dispatched to locate Rott, along with two helicopters.
He was found on the remote trailhead with injuries to his head, and airlifted about twenty miles north to a hospital in Bozeman.
Rott later died at the hospital. The death was ruled accidental, caused by blunt force trauma from the fall, the sheriff’s department coroners said.
He spent much of his life since graduating from the University of Montana in 2005 traveling the American West and working an eclectic array of outdoor jobs “that allowed him to embark on adventures and live on his own terms.”
Some of those jobs included a year at a wolf sanctuary outside of Missoula, assisting with the production of an ice climbing film, and guiding climbs in Yosemite and other parks.
“Kyle’s travels took him to mountains across the western United States and Alaska. Some of his favorite places to climb were the Black Hills of South Dakota, Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, Yosemite Valley in California, and Hyalite Canyon in Montana,” the obituary read.
“In each of these places, Kyle built a deep community of like-minded friends who quickly became part of his extended family.”