The Inyo County Sheriff’s Office announced Monday it had recovered the body of a young male hiker that fits the description of Joseph Brambila, who disappeared on Mt. Whitney in early November.
Brambila, 21, has been the subject of searches in the last month, and his family waged a desperate campaign on social media asking for help finding him.
The body was removed from the 99 Switchbacks area high on the mountain — the tallest in the United States outside of Alaska — by helicopter Monday, according to Lindsey Stine, the Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.
Hikers had spotted the body, but previous attempts to find and recover it were stymied by heavy snow. Searches from the air by helicopter and on the ground with a cadaver dog were unsuccessful, and it was feared the remains might not be recovered until the spring thaw.
Brambila’s disappearance was the focus of a Times story last week. Interviews with people close to him and hikers who met him on the trail and his self-shot YouTube videos painted a picture of a funny, self-deprecating young man from southeast Los Angeles County who still was learning his way in the mountains, which he had grown to love.
A video from an aborted attempt to climb Mt. Whitney in April 2024 began with Brambila chiding himself for forgetting his trekking poles in the car.
Then he went over a gear checklist posted at the trailhead: emergency blanket, first aid kit, headlamp and extra batteries, map and compass. He tapped each item, saying, “Nope, nope, nope, nope.”
As he turned and started heading up the trail he quipped, “So I think we’re pretty qualified for the hike.”
His adventure bogged down as soon as he reached the snow line and realized the trail was completely buried.
His first successful climb of Whitney was in June. During the descent he filmed himself sliding down a 1,500-foot snow slope on his butt.
He had none of the usual safety equipment for such a slide, known to mountaineers as a “glissade” — 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.
But he was lucky. It was a warm, sunny day and the snow was so forgiving that, to stop, he just needed to dig his heels into the soft slush.
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 harder, faster and much more dangerous.
One of the last people to see Brambila — Luis Buenrostro, a fellow solo hiker who met him on the summit that day — told The Times that Brambila indicated he was going to glissade again.
But the body found Monday was a bit south of the spot where hikers typically glissade — on a steep, icy section of trail known as the 99 Switchbacks, according to Stine. Another hiker slipped and fell to his death there in October.
The Sheriff’s Office is holding off on releasing the young man’s name until the County Coroner positively identifies the body, which had extensive injuries and no ID, Stine said. But she said Brambila’s family has been notified, and someone close to him indicated the clothes on the body resemble what Brambila was believed to be wearing.
No one else has been reported missing on the mountain since Brambila disappeared Nov. 11, Stine said. He was the only hiker unaccounted for.
