Climber Killed By Yosemite Rock Fall Died Shielding Wife

The British climber killed by a rockfall at Yosemite National Park earlier this week apparently died saving his wife, who survived but was hospitalized when granite plunged down from El Capitan on Wednesday. The couple, who were hiking at the bottom of the vertical rock formation, were identified as 32-year-old Andrew Foster, of Wales and 28-year-old Lucy Foster.

The Times in London reported that the couple decided to celebrate their first wedding anniversary with a trip to Yosemite. In the aftermath of the rock fall, Lucy Foster has told family members that she is only alive because of her husband.

"Andrew saved my life. He dived on top of me as soon as he could see what was going to happen. He saved my life," Gillian Foster, Andrew Foster's aunt, told The Times.

Lucy Foster is expected to make a full recovery, The Times reported.

The couple shared a love of the outdoors and documented their experiences in a blog titled "camandbearuk."

"We are a young married couple who enjoy nothing more than getting out and having adventures in the mountains together," an introduction on the blog says.

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The couple also posted about their adventures to Instagram and the last post from the account was a photo of Andrew Foster with the caption "Yosemite has broken Andy. Time for a rest."

According to a post from August on the Instagram account, the couple married just over a year ago.

Another climber who was there during the rockfall on Wednesday described what he saw for Outside Online.

"Just as we shoulder our backpacks, we hear a horrible crackling—the sound that makes every climber, no matter where they are, wince, recoil, and look up with squinting eyes," writer and climber Jeff Johnson wrote.

Johnson also wrote that Andrew and Lucy Foster were apparently picking up trash at the base of El Capitan when the rock fell. A friend of Johnson's who wrote to Foster said Foster, who worked for Patagonia, had just handed in a notice to "take a year long, once in a lifetime adventure with Lucy."

Since the rock fall on Wednesday that claimed Foster's life, a second rock fall from El Capitan on Thursday injured one person, who was airlifted to a hospital. There's no word on the person's condition.

The collapses come at the peak of climbing season for El Capitan, when people from around the world come to test their skills on its sheer walls. The park says at least 30 climbers were on the formation Wednesday during the deadly rock fall.

Reporting by The Associated Press was used in this story.

Photo by Tom Evans/National Park Service via AP