11-year-old boy dies after falling with father on Mount Elbrus, Russia’s highest mountain

An eleven-year-old boy was killed in a fall on Mount Elbrus, Russia's highest peak, Meduza reports. The boy and his forty-year-old father were climbing the mountain's eastern slope on the morning of July nineteenth when they fell from a cliff at roughly four thousand two hundred meters, about thirteen thousand seven hundred eighty feet. The boy died at the scene, and his father was left with broken ribs and knee injuries; a search team reached the site late Sunday, but weather and darkness held up the helicopter evacuation until Monday morning. Per Meduza, the father told rescuers his son twisted an ankle and grabbed a cable, and the anchor gave way. The pair had not registered their route, and the Emergency Situations Ministry said it would not have approved a climb involving a child that young, though unregistered climbers are not legally required to seek approval. Investigators in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic have opened a preliminary inquiry.

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