Miracle as rock climber survives 400ft plunge in North Cascades thanks to incredible pluck

A rock climber who somehow hiked to his car in the dark and then drove to a pay phone to call for help.

Anton Tselykh, 38, survived the ordeal against all odds as, despite suffering internal bleeding and head trauma, he staggered for more than 12 hours to the pay phone. He was desperate to call for help for his three companions; Vishnu Irigireddy, Tim Nguyen and Oleksander Martynenko, who also fell down the steep terrain in North Cascades National Park in . The three friends sadly died of their injuries.

Anton managed to extricate himself from a tangle of ropes, helmets and other equipment to leave on his rescue mission on Saturday. He is now in hospital receiving treatment for various injuries, including the head wound.

Cristina Woodworth, who led the search and rescue operation for Okanogan County Sheriff's Office, said her team is investigating the fall, and added Anton's miraculous story is rare.

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The group of four were scaling the Early Winters Spires, jagged peaks split by a cleft popular with climbers in the North Cascade Range, about 160 miles (257 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.

The anchor used to secure the friends' ropes was torn from the rock while they were descending, Okanogan County Coroner Dave Rodriguez said. The anchor they were using, a metal spike called a piton, appeared to have been placed there by past climbers, the coroner added.

They plummeted for about 200 feet (60 metres) into a slanted gulch and then tumbled another 200 feet before coming to rest, the early stage of the investigation has discovered. Authorities believe the group had been ascending but turned around when they saw a storm approaching on Saturday.

A three-person search and rescue team reached the site of the fall on Sunday, Ms Woodworth said. The team used coordinates from a device the climbers had been carrying, which had been shared by a friend of the men. Once they found the site, they called in a helicopter to remove the bodies one at a time because of the rough terrain, Ms Woodworth continued.

Responders have poured over the recovered equipment trying to decipher what caused the fall. They found a piton — a small metal spike which is driven into rock cracks or ice and used as anchors by climbers — that was still clipped into the climbers' ropes.

Mr Rodriguez, the coroner, continued: "There’s no other reason it would be hooked onto the rope unless it pulled out of the rock." He noted pitons are typically stuck fast in the rock. Mr Rodriguez added that when rappelling, all four men would not have be hanging from the one piton at the same time, but taking turns moving down the mountain. The investigation in Washington continues