A Longmont engineer who wanted to see the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro before global warming took them away was one of three climbers killed when boulders rained down on their tents while they were sleeping.
Kristian Ferguson, 27, of Longmont, was killed Wednesday morning on Kilimanjaro’s treacherous Western Breach before beginning his final ascent of Africa’s highest mountain, regional police commander Mohamed Chico said.
Also killed in the rock slide were Mary Lou Sammis, 58, of California, and Betty Orrik Sapp, 63, of Tennessee.
“Kris had heard that the glaciers were not going to be around too many more years,” Kristian’s mother, Karrie Ferguson of Redmond, Wash., said Thursday. “It was important for him to see them before they went away.”
Ferguson was killed instantly, and his wife, Jodi Coochise, was struck and bruised by rocks while they were in their tent, Karrie Ferguson said.
“We miss him so much already,” she told The Denver Post on Thursday. “We’re having trouble breathing.”
Chico said experts were investigating exactly what caused the slide on the 19,340-foot mountain in Tanzania.
A rescue team finished evacuating more than 50 climbers early Thursday from the Umbwe route and the campsite, near Arrow Glacier, at about 15,800 feet between Kibo Peak and Gilman’s Point.
James Wakibara, acting spokesman for Mount Kilimanjaro National Park, said the injured were flown to Nairobi, Kenya, for treatment.
The rock slide hit a large group of climbers from various tours while they were in their tents. They had set out Saturday to ascend Kilimanjaro along its most dangerous route.
Ferguson was valedictorian at Eastside Catholic High School in Bellevue, Wash., and later earned a mechanical engineering degree from Gonzaga University in Spokane.
Recently, he was promoted at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, where he designed satellite structures.
Ferguson and his wife moved from Arizona to Colorado so they could ski, hike and rock climb, his father, Paul Ferguson, said. They were part of a Colorado Mountain Club group of 17 climbing the mountain.
Jill Yarger, a club instructor, said the couple trained this summer by climbing some of the highest peaks in Colorado. She said Ferguson was conscientious about safety when he was on the mountain.
They planned their trip for about a year, friend and co-worker Greg Brown said. Yarger said they often spoke about seeing the glaciers at Kilimanjaro.
“It’s a very special thing to see the glaciers at the equator,” Yarger said.
Warmer temperatures recently had melted some of Mount Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, causing them to retreat, which had loosened rocks once held in place by the ice.
There had been a change in the weather at the peak before the rock slide, officials said, without elaborating on how that could have contributed to the accident.
“The possible explanation I hear on this could be earth movement or vibration,” Wakibara said in an Associated Press story. “It has never happened like this in the past.”
Tens of thousands of people climb Mount Kilimanjaro every year.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
