Tech Exec Killed, Fell 2,000 Feet On Mt. Shasta: Police

SISKIYOU COUNTY, CA — A tech executive was killed this month when he fell roughly 2,000 feet down a glacier on Mt. Shasta, according to authorities.

Matias Augusto Travizano, a 45-year-old from Argentina and the chairman of San Francisco-based Grandata, fell to his death Sept. 12, authorities said.

Three climbers, including Travizano, had summited the more than 14,000-foot mountain and were descending when two of them accidentally wandered off the Clear Creek trail and became stranded on an ice sheet at the northern tip of Wintun Glacier around 13,500 feet, according to authorities.

The two men tried to glissade to a lower section of the mountain and re-enter the trail, but Travizano slid out of control and hit a large boulder about 300 feet below the other hiker, authorities said. He appeared unconscious for several minutes but then started moving, dislodging from the rock and sliding down the glacier and out of sight, according to authorities, who said the third hiker arrived and called 911.

The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office responded around 2:30 p.m. and California Highway Patrol air operations found Travizano later that day, at an elevation of 10,200 feet, near the base of the glacier, authorities said.

“While the Clear Creek Route is considered one of the mountain’s ‘safer’ trails to the summit, climbers can become disoriented in low-visibility conditions, particularly when descending from the summit plateau,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.