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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – A St. Helena man died on Sunday afternoon in what authorities said appeared to be a paragliding crash on Mount Saint Helena.
Walden Grindle, 35, who also has a Lake County address, was found dead following the crash on Sunday afternoon, according to Sgt. Doug Pace of the Napa County Sheriff's Office.
Reports from the scene indicated Grindle's body was found on the south slope of Mount Saint Helena, between 500 and 1,000 feet below a climbing rock, shortly after 1 p.m. just inside the Napa County line.
Cal Fire Copter 104 from Boggs Mountain in Lake County and the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office's Henry-1 helicopter assisted with the search, according to radio reports. Henry-1's crew had to use a long line to drop in and help recover Grindle's body.
Pace said the call originally came in as a paraglider down, but officials aren't yet completely sure what kind of equipment Grindle was using.
“We're really early in the investigation,” Pace said.
The terrain in the area of the crash is very steep, and the only item of equipment recovered was what appeared to be a parachute, Pace said.
What Pace described finding matches the kind of paragliding equipment shown in videos Grindle had posted online of himself and friends taking part in the sport.
Pace said Grindle had with him a spot device to help track him in case of emergencies.
Authorities believe that Grindle set off the device, which Pace said alerted the GEOS International Emergency Response Center.
That center, in turn, alerted the Office of Emergency Services, which contacted local authorities, Pace said.
Emergency personnel were first dispatched to Grindle's crash at around 12:45 p.m., based on radio traffic. They located him just before 1:15 p.m. in the rough terrain.
“By the time we got to him, it was too late,” Pace said.
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