Popular climber dies in tragic Yosemite fall: ‘Couldn’t help but love him’
A renowned 23-year-old alpinist from Alaska fell to his death after a climbing accident on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park on Wednesday, Oct. 1, his family said on social media.
“It is with a heavy heart I have to tell you my incredible son Balin Miller died during a climbing accident today,” Miller’s parents said in a video posted to social media accounts for his outdoor brand VIRR Get Outdoors. “My heart is (shattered) in a million pieces. I don’t know how I will get through this.... I love him so much. I want to wake up from this horrible nightmare.”
The 3,000-foot granite wall of El Capitan is “among the most famous and challenging rock climbs in the world,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
“The mountain took my Balin today — I will never recover,” his mother Jeanine Girard-Moorman said on her Facebook page.
Another undated clip shared by VIRR Get Outdoors shows Miller filming himself with snow in his hair and on his face before he flips the camera to face the mountain and record a rainbow.
“For those of you who only knew him as a climber … he was so much more,” the post says. “He had a heck of a personality, he could do physics with little effort, he was kind, loved animals, and was an incredible athlete. It was never about money for him as he lived on a shoe string budget out of his silver Prius. He said how he felt most alive when he climbed.”
Someone remembered him as “smart, and funny, and mischievous” under the post. “You couldn’t help but love him,” they said.
What happened in Balin Miller’s climbing accident on Yosemite’s El Capitan?
Miller fell on the first day of the federal government shutdown, which limited operations and closed visitor centers in national parks, the Associated Press reported.
The park service did not respond to The Fresno Bee’s request for comment.
His fall was apparently captured in a TikTok livestream, the Los Angeles Times reported. Several people who witnessed the fall said park rangers arrived shortly after the accident, the outlet reported.
Some who had been following his ascent on TikTok over the last few days shared that they had affectionately started referring to him as Orange Tent after he was spotted sleeping in one.
“The community is deeply saddened and heartbroken,” someone wrote under the post confirming his death on VIRR Get Outdoors social media accounts. “He was so inspiring to all of us. What a treasure and a legacy as I read more about him.”
Tom Evans, a local photographer who has been documenting climbers for years, also witnessed the fall and posted about it on Facebook.
“Yesterday, a climber finished his climb of the Sea of Dreams, on ElCap, and was hauling his bag up the last pitch when it became stuck. So, he went down his lead line to clear it,” Evans said in the post. “His rope didn’t reach the bags location by many feet, but he seemed unaware of that fact. On the way down he rappelled off the end of the rope.”
Evans added that Miller was “highly regarded among the best climbers here.”
“I photographed him for many days on the climb and spoke with him earlier,” he said. “Many climbers on the wall saw the tragedy unfold. These things happen from time to time but the pain never passes.”
Evans urged others to avoid speculating about Miller’s death.
“Let’s just take this moment to remember a fine young man and save the lessons for another time,” he said.
Miller remembered as climbing legend and ‘a good human’
“During his relatively few years climbing, Miller had earned a reputation as one of the country’s rising alpinists,” SFGATE reported. “This spring, he spent 53 days on Alaskan glaciers and made a historic ascent up Slovak Direct, a 9,000-foot climb up the face of Denali. He also completed notable climbs in the Canadian Rockies and on Mount Huntington in Alaska, and summited Cerro Torre in Patagonia.”
Miller and his brother Dylan learned to climb with their father on Hatcher Pass in Alaska, according to VIRR Get Outdoors.
On Reddit under the climbing page, someone shared that they had known Miller and “had been good friends since 7th grade.”
“We would spend weeks at a time hanging out every day after school together and I got to see his passion for climbing grow over the years,” they wrote in the post. “More than once we discussed the dangers of his craft and the likelihood that his career would end in a tragic way.... Nevertheless, we both understood that what made his life meaningful and each day worth tackling (with the vigor he often brought to any and all the things he did), was climbing.”
The friends had just spent the summer commercial fishing together.
“Balin Miller was a fantastic friend, a good human, and a ... legend in his time,” they wrote. “He will be immortalized in the memories he made and the countless people he inspired to not just climb but do hard shit and get your hands dirty. I love you bailer and I’ll be listening to some Daft Punk for you today.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2025 at 6:51 AM with the headline "Popular climber dies in tragic Yosemite fall: ‘Couldn’t help but love him’."
