Utah climber gets 5-year ban from Denali in plea deal over rescue requests after near-fatal fall

The Utah climber accused of making a false report to get evacuated after his partner fell 1,000 feet during a Denali summit attempt has agreed to a five-year ban from North America’s highest peak.

Dr. Jason Lance of Ogden, Utah, was trying to summit Denali via the popular West Buttress route in May 2021 with Adam Rawski when the Canadian climber began experiencing altitude sickness and later fell more than 1,000 feet from the top of Denali Pass.

Rawski miraculously survived after what rangers called one of the most significant rescues in Denali National Park history and is recovering in Vancouver, friends say.

But the aftermath still divides others involved.

Lance and two other climbers spent several harrowing hours on the mountain trying to recover from what they thought was Rawski’s death before agreeing on a plan to descend to safety.

Federal prosecutors in a lawsuit last November, based on information from Denali climbing rangers, accused Lance of misleading rescuers to get a helicopter evacuation, refusing to hand over a satellite communications device and deleting messages from the device.

The charges said Lance asked for a helicopter evacuation for the three climbers, saying they were in shock and experiencing early hypothermia. The next day, rangers said, he refused to hand over Rawski’s satellite communication device and appeared to delete messages from it.

In an agreement last month, Lance pleaded guilty to violating a lawful order of a government employee. Charges of interfering with a rescue operation and making a false report were dismissed.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott A. Oravec, in a sentencing hearing in Fairbanks on Thursday, ordered Lance to stay off Denali for five years and pay a $5,000 fine and donate $5,000 to the Denali Rescue Volunteers, conditions he agreed to.

Lance in a phone interview Saturday expressed relief that the government “reviewed the information and found I didn’t make any false statements about requesting rescue.”

The 48-year-old radiologist and former U.S. Air Force physician also said the initial charges against him didn’t reflect the truth of what happened.

Another climber with him on the mountain, however, said Lance’s personality complicated the aftermath of the disaster, and he questioned some of the details of Lance’s narrative.

The lure of a ‘pristine, clear day’

Lance said he paired up with Rawski after they met at the 14,200-foot camp waiting for a weather window and decided to climb together.

Lance said his two original partners didn’t feel comfortable trying for the summit after some prior attempts. Rawski’s original partner wasn’t progressing either.

“We had met and talked through the week. We knew the following day was going to be just this pristine, clear day,” he said.

They left the 14,200-foot camp at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m., Lance said. At a higher camp just above 17,000 feet, the pair met Grant Wilson and a climbing partner.

Wilson, a 23-year-old guide, mountaineer and skier who grew up in Fairbanks, had never met Lance before but befriended Rawski in a climbers camp earlier that week.

Rawski was already suffering from altitude effects at that point, Wilson said in an interview Saturday, but the pair continued to ascend. He and his partner — Sarah Maynard, who’s also from Fairbanks — decided to hike up with them.

That’s when Rawski really started slowing down, Wilson said. Maynard was also experiencing some altitude sickness.

A statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Friday stated that Lance left Rawski and the others behind “while he proceeded to make a solo summit attempt,” though he came back later.

Lance said that’s not what happened. He had climbed to a flatter area to flag down two other skiers in Wilson’s party but didn’t see them and came back.

Wilson, however, said Lance had suggested earlier that the two ailing climbers stay back together while the two stronger climbers tried for the summit. Wilson called the suggestion to leave a partner behind “unfeasible.”

As Rawski’s pace slowed, he said, Lance got farther ahead until he disappeared out of sight.

Then Wilson said he and his climbing partner descended with Rawski. Lance came back down and joined them at some point, he said.

The four descended a gradual slope unroped, then stopped at the top of Denali Pass, Lance said.

The fall

Lance said the group wasn’t immediately aware that Rawski was gone.

Wilson was relieving himself and his partner was getting ready to ski down, Lance said. He clipped into a metal snow picket, which mountaineers use as anchors for added protection, and got ready to rope up to drop into the pass.

He called over to Rawski to do the same.

“That’s when he fell,” Lance said, adding that it’s possible the climber lost consciousness. “Nobody heard it.”

The trio didn’t even know Rawski had fallen until they saw a tiny speck far down the pass. He’d tumbled down a steep, 1,000-foot snow and ice slope.

They all thought he was dead.

Lance said Saturday that he used Rawski’s satellite communication device — he had it because he was leading the descent — and hit the SOS button.

Denali National Park’s high-altitude helicopter was conducting surveys nearby and rescuers reached Rawski less than 30 minutes after the call, park officials said at the time. He was taken to Talkeetna for treatment of critical injuries.

Then Lance requested a helicopter evacuation off the mountain for the three climbers left behind.

The aftermath

Federal prosecutors accused Lance of “first claiming they did not have proper equipment to descend and then misleadingly claiming that two other climbers were suffering from shock in an attempt to secure a helicopter extraction at the top of Denali Pass.”

On Saturday, Lance said the request reflected a combination of factors: the pickets he needed to descend were in Rawski’s pack and there weren’t enough new ones placed on the route yet that season; the trio were experiencing “psychological shock”; and they were all shivering, an early sign of hypothermia.

Rangers told him the helicopter was no longer flying that night and the only way down was to rope up and descend. Lance kept asking. He read back a message: “Can’t descend safely patients in shock, early hypothermia. Can’t you land east of pass?”

“No good options at this time. We’re working on the plan,” he said, reading back the response.

Rangers launched a helicopter only to turn it back after guides below said the group of three was descending.

Lance said he never got a message the helicopter was coming, and the trio decided their only option was to descend. At some point, to address any apprehension, he told the others that they wouldn’t have to pay for a helicopter rescue if one came, he said.

Wilson said Saturday that they were all in psychological shock after the fall but only Lance pushed for a helicopter evacuation.

“We watched our friend fall to his apparent death, so yeah, we had a lot of trauma to deal with,” he said. “We were fatigued, exhausted, dehydrated, experiencing symptoms of altitude sickness and then on top of what we were dealing with ... we also had this complicated character to navigate who we didn’t know anything about.”

They needed two hours to process the trauma but then were ready to climb down.

“We started to tell Jason, ‘OK, we’re starting to get cold now. We have all our gear on,’ ” he said. “ ‘Think we need to start moving soon.’ ”

Lance, he said, was still preoccupied with a helicopter evacuation. Wilson said he told the doctor that descending on their own was the only option and he joined them.

“My first piece of protection wasn’t even a snow picket,” Wilson said. “It was a piece of rock. I smashed it with my palm and then clipped in. I told him, ‘Jason, this is what we call self-rescue.’ ”

Back safely at the 17,200-foot high camp, the trio learned Rawski had somehow survived his fall.

The next morning, Wilson and his partner made their way down without Lance, who found a guided group to descend with.

A climbing ranger who interviewed Lance at a lower camp said he refused to hand over the satellite device, then deleted messages after being told not to, prosecutors said.

Lance said he wanted to hang on to the device because he needed it for his descent to base camp, as recommended by the Park Service. He planned to return it to Rawski’s sister, and also needed her contact information. He was taking screen shots of the information on his phone when a ranger poked his head into his tent and asked if he was deleting messages.

He adamantly denies deleting anything.