Hiker dies in attempt at scaling rock face

Friday, June 18, 2004 | 9:39 a.m.

A 30-year-old man fell to his death Thursday night during a hike at the Red Rock National Conservation Area, Metro Police said.

Metro's Search and Rescue team responded about 8 p.m. after receiving a call from two friends of hiker Darin Bakken in Ice Box Canyon.

Bakken of Las Vegas had apparently scaled a rock face before the fall, police said.

Rescuers believed he initially survived the fall, but by the time they reached him he had died, Lt. David Braden said. Bakken could have fallen 300 feet from a rock face where he had been climbing, police said.

The Search and Rescue team recovered the body late Thursday.

Others have died scrambling up the steep red sandstone cliffs in the canyon west of Las Vegas.

Veteran climber Randal Grandstaff, 44, fell about 150 feet to his death in June 2002. Owner of Sky's the Limit climbing school, Grandstaff was the first hiker or climber to die at Red Rock since March 1999, according to Metro Police Search and Rescue records.

Grandstaff fell to his death when a knot in his rope came undone. He had been five or six feet into a rappel from a rock face. He had lowered a tourist from the same rock shortly before the accident.

A 23-year-old woman was found dead at the bottom of a 100-foot cliff on March 24, 1999. On March 6, 1999, a 27-year-old ice climber fell 40 feet to his death at Mount Charleston.

Metro search and rescue officers are called out more than 200 times a year. Many of those calls originate from Red Rock or Mount Charleston, part of the Spring Mountain Range.

There are thousands of cliffs to climb in Red Rock for any level of skills hikers have.

Some of the routes in Red Rock top out at 2,000 feet. Some hikes and climbs require overnight camping and a Bureau of Land Management permit to be completed.