Queens climber, friend die in fall in Peru

LIMA, Peru -- Searchers on Saturday found the bodies of two U.S. mountaineers -- one from Queens -- who apparently plunged to their deaths off a ridge after ascending a glacier-capped 20,000-foot Peruvian peak, the rescue coordinator said.

"They did the summit and they got into trouble on the way down," said coordinator Ted Alexander. "What led to the fall, I cannot tell you now."

Gil Weiss, 29, of Queens, and Ben Horne, 32, fell an estimated 1,000 feet off a ridge after reaching the west summit of Palcaraju in the Cordillera Blanca range in mid-July, he said.

"Unfortunately, they died whenever they fell because they had been there long in the snow," he said from the nearby town of Huaraz, where he runs a guide business.

He said a private plane helped the three-person search team piece together what might have happened. He said he would have a better idea of how the climbers died after examining photos taken by rescuers on-site.

Both Weiss and Horne, of Annandale, Va., were experienced climbers. Weiss was a repeat visitor to the Cordillera Blanca while this trip was Horne's first.

Both belong to the pullharder.org climbers' collective and Horne wrote about the first, six-day leg of their trip on its blog, saying they had been buffeted by hurricane-force winds when the two reached the top of the 20,216-foot Ranrapalca.

After a rest in Huaraz, the two set out again on July 11 for an excursion of seven to 10 days. Their families contacted Alexander after 13 days passed with no word from them.

Weiss' sister, Galit, said the two were not carrying a satellite phone.

Alexander said it should not be too difficult to remove the bodies and hoped they could be out .

Horne was a graduate student in economics at the University of California, San Diego. Weiss was founder of a business in Boulder, Colo., called Beyond Adventure Productions, which specialized in organizing and photographing events in remote and spectacular locations.