American climbers found dead in Peru

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Search crews discovered the bodies of two American climbers in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range in Peru, NBC News reports.

The two men, 29-year-old Gil Weiss and 32-year-old Ben Horne, fell off a ridge after reaching the west summit of Palcaraju mountain. Their bodies will be recovered Sunday.

According to CNN, Palcaraju, located in the popular climbing destination of Huaraz, a province about 275 miles northeast of Lima, measures about 20,216 feet in height.

The two longtime friends were experienced climbers; Weiss founded Beyond Adventure Productions, a company specializing in organizing and photographing events in remote locations, and Horne wrote about their most recent climbs on the climbing blog Pullharder.org.

“The Cordillera Blanca is world renowned for its high altitude mountaineering,” he wrote. “But almost as awesome as the mountains themselves is the motley crew of international climbers who come to try their hand at getting high, on big peaks, cheap and fast.”

KNBC-TV in San Diego, California, reported that Horne was living there as a graduate student in economics at the University of California-San Diego, while Weiss and his business were based out of Boulder, Colorado. Horne’s father, Gary, said his son was devoted to his faith.

“The hardest thing for me as a parent would be if my child fell away from God and died and had no faith,” Gary Horne said. “But Ben was really a remarkable person who practiced his faith in deep ways. We’re at peace knowing he’s in heaven,”

[Cordillera Blanca image via user Nick Leonard on Flickr, Creative Commons licensed]