Record-breaking Yosemite climber’s fiancée pens truly heartbreaking obituary after he fell to his death off mountain

The grieving fiancée of a famed Yosemite speed climber wrote a heart-wrenching obituary after his death earlier this month.

Emma London, who was engaged 30-year-old climber Jake Whisenant, penned a long essay for Climbing.com on Tuesday.

In it, she described the heartbreaking moments around his death on Sequoia Kings Canyon in the Sierra Nevadas on August 3 and what he was like in life.

London wrote: “One week ago, just before sunset, I received the call that no one ever wants to get about the love of their life.

“Jake had fallen to his death while climbing a first ascent in Sequoia Kings Canyon. As dusk turned to night, I was forced to say goodbye to the last day we were both here on Earth.”

She believed the world was punishing her for a crime she didn’t commit with Jake’s death.

“When the sudden and indifferent tidal wave of cataclysmic loss sweeps over your life, it is all too easy to believe the world has cruelly and unfairly betrayed you as punishment for a crime you did not commit,” she wrote.

A witness saw Whisenant fall, which led to his instant death. London described how Whisenant grew to love climbing after a childhood in the suburbs of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

He studied environmental studies at the University of California – Santa Barbara, she said. The pair met at the college, where he had not quite yet caught the climbing bug.

She knew him as a great surfer and cyclist then, but said he “began deepening his connection” with the mountains after he graduated from college.

The obsession led him to summit several California mountain peaks, including Mount Whitney, and to climb in different areas within the West, she said. It also led him to Yosemite National Park and El Capitan, which he climbed in record time in 2024 with a friend.

He also cared for his mom when she was diagnosed with ALS in 2021. She died the next year, which he grieved by climbing more.

London described how his friends and family cherished him for his relentless devotion to them.

“Jake is remembered by me and the myriad of friends that time and distance could never separate him from. If he loved you once, he loved you forever,” she wrote.

Whisenant also enjoyed endurance climbing and set more records in his final years, London said. She called sharing life with him the “honor of a lifetime.”

The Tulare County Coroner ruled Whisenant’s cause of death to be blunt force trauma, and the manner of death was ruled an accident.

Whisenant was an accomplished climber who tackled some of the country’s most challenging routes, including Yosemite’s famed El Capitan.

He gained national attention in October 2024 when he and South Lake Tahoe climber Brant Hysell completed El Capitan’s Lurking Fear route in just 2 hours, 55 minutes and 32 seconds.

Climbing magazine Gripped reported the feat broke the previous speed record held by Yuji Hirayama and Nick Fowler.

The record came just two days after Whisenant and Hysell completed the same grueling route in slightly more than four hours.

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