Towering granite spires whiz by in the background, and Joseph Brambila howls with delight, in a YouTube video he shot of himself sliding on his butt down a steep, snowy slope on the upper reaches of Mt. Whitney.<\/p>\n
When he loses control and wipes out \u2014 repeatedly \u2014 it looks like he\u2019s tumbling inside a snow globe.<\/p>\n
He has none of the usual safety equipment for such a slide, known to mountaineers as a \u201cglissade\u201d: no helmet and, crucially, no ice ax, which is used as a brake to avoid picking up too much speed and hurtling into a catastrophic fall. <\/p>\n
But he\u2019s lucky. It\u2019s a warm, sunny day in June and the snow is so forgiving he can stop by simply digging his heels into the soft slush.<\/p>\n
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Even so, while drying his clothes in the sun at the bottom of the 1,500-foot slope, the charming, slightly mischievous 20-year-old confesses to his camera, \u201cLow key, I didn\u2019t know how that was going to turn out. Half of it was good and then way too much speed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brambila returned to Mt. Whitney on Nov. 11, two days after his 21st birthday. At that time of year, the weather can change without warning, quickly turning a soft slope into something much harder, much faster and absolutely merciless. <\/p>\n
One of the last people known to have seen Brambila \u2014 Luis Buenrostro, a fellow solo hiker who met him on the summit that day \u2014 told The Times the two parted ways at Trail Crest, the spot from which Brambila glissaded in June.<\/p>\n
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A screenshot from a video recorded by Joseph Brambila shows him sliding down an area of Mt. Whitney known as \u201cthe Chute\u201d in June 2025.<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of Darlene Molina)<\/p>\n
The temperature was plummeting and the sun sets early in November, so Brambila indicated he was going to try the \u201cshort cut\u201d to save time. Buenrostro assumed he intended to glissade.<\/p>\n
Nobody has seen or heard from Brambila since. His family reported him missing a few days later, and other hikers have reported seeing a body on the broad slope that descends from Trail Crest. <\/p>\n
But despite multiple searches by state and local emergency services for Brambila \u2014 from the air and on the ground with a cadaver dog \u2014 no body has been recovered.<\/p>\n
In late October, another hiker had fallen and died<\/a> on that same stretch of trail.<\/p>\n Brambila\u2019s family members have spent the last month posting desperate appeals on social media for help finding him, but the Inyo County Sheriff\u2019s Office is urging caution.<\/p>\n \u201cHeavy snow from the last two storms has made conditions extremely hazardous. The terrain is icy and unstable, and attempting a summit or any search in these conditions is very dangerous,\u201d Lindsey Stine, a spokeswoman for the Inyo County Sheriff\u2019s Department, wrote in an email. <\/p>\n Another search is possible in the coming days, Stine wrote in an email on Wednesday, depending on the weather and the availability of other agencies to assist. But she has also cautioned, \u201crecovery may not be feasible until the snow and ice begin to melt.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, it\u2019s impossible to know exactly what happened to Brambila. Despite the forbidding odds, the people closest to him are \u201cholding on to hope\u201d that he is somehow still alive, his girlfriend, Darlene Molina, said in an interview last week. \u201cWe still have faith,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe just wanted to be out there\u201d A May 2023 view of Mt. Whitney, right, outside Lone Pine.<\/p>\n (Brian van der Brug \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Brambila had a lot of faith, too.<\/p>\n A picture of the budding alpinist emerges from interviews with people close to him, hikers who met him on the trail and, especially, his self-shot YouTube videos. He is a funny, self-deprecating young man from southeast Los Angeles County who is still finding his way in the mountains, but is hopelessly in love with them.<\/p>\n \u201cHe always said he loves to disconnect from the real world,\u201d Molina said. \u201cHe just wanted to be out there and enjoy life. \u2026 It was just him, nature, and God.\u201d<\/p>\n Brambila was especially enamored with Mt. Whitney, the 14,500-foot giant four hours north of Los Angeles and the nation\u2019s tallest mountain outside of Alaska.<\/p>\n Even in perfect summer weather, the standard route up Mt. Whitney is a physically demanding, 20-mile round-trip hike that climbs more than 6,000 vertical feet. It takes some very fit people two long days to complete.<\/p>\n In any other season, the mountain is subject to sudden and severe blizzards. Once buried in snow, climbing Mt. Whitney is no longer a simple hike. It\u2019s a full-blown mountaineering expedition.<\/p>\n The trickiest seasons are the spring and fall, when the snow is least stable and conditions are constantly changing.<\/p>\n Before his fateful November climb, Brambila had tried Mt. Whitney four other times, including one early aborted attempt when his mom insisted on going with him, and another, in April 2024, that\u2019s the subject of a video he posted on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n It begins with him chiding himself for forgetting his trekking poles in the car. Then he goes over a gear checklist posted at the trailhead: emergency blanket, first aid kit, headlamp & extra batteries, map & compass. He taps each item, saying, \u201cNope, nope, nope, nope.\u201d<\/p>\n A screenshot from a YouTube video shows Joseph Brambila going over a checklist at the base of the Mt. Whitney trail.<\/p>\n (Courtesy of Darlene Molina)<\/p>\n As he turns and starts heading up the trail he quips, \u201cSo I think we\u2019re pretty qualified for the hike.\u201d<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, his adventure bogs down as soon as he reaches the snow line and realizes the trail is completely buried. Then he starts post-holing: falling through the surface of the snow up to his knees, sometimes up to his hips.<\/p>\n He\u2019s mostly good-natured about it, joking, \u201cI gotta make myself light!\u201d But some of the falls look painful. At one point, he tells his YouTube viewers how easy it would be to break a leg.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear he understands all of the risks he\u2019s taking. <\/p>\n More than once, he crashes through what appear to be snow bridges: spans covering pools of water and running streams. He doesn\u2019t go completely through them, but if he had, there\u2019s a good chance he would have been trapped. Drowning or freezing to death would have been serious possibilities.<\/p>\n After a frigid night camping on a rock ledge \u2014 watching YouTube sensation Mr. Beast on a laptop, warming his bare feet by an open fire \u2014 he decides to turn around and go home. \u201cKinda sucks I ain\u2019t gonna reach [the summit],\u201d he tells the camera, \u201cbut I\u2019m gonna put my own safety over anything right now, cuz it\u2019s cooooold.\u201d<\/p>\n Was he reckless? Definitely. But he was also a city kid working as a dental assistant who didn\u2019t grow up with endless amounts of money and free time to spend on private guides or expensive mountaineering classes.<\/p>\n So, like many others who are drawn to high alpine peaks with little previous exposure to them, he appeared to be figuring things out on his own.<\/p>\n Buenrostro, the fellow hiker who met Brambila on the summit in November, said he felt an immediate kinship with him. They were both young Latinos from working-class backgrounds who sometimes felt judged by well-off, suburban outdoorsy types for not having all the latest and greatest equipment.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand, sometimes we go out there without all the right gear,\u201d Buenrostro said, \u201cbut a lot of the time, we\u2019re saving up for the proper gear.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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