Peru Police via AP

A Peru police photo shows a yellow tent believed by authorities to belong to U.S. climbers Gil Weiss and Ben Horne near Palcaraju Peak in Huaraz, Peru.

Searchers on Saturday found the bodies of two U.S. mountaineers who apparently plunged 1,000 feet to their deaths on their way down from the summit of a glacier-capped Peruvian peak.

Gil Weiss, 29, and Ben Horne, 32, fell off a ridge after reaching the west summit of 20,584-foot Palcaraju in the Cordillera Blanca range in mid-July, search coordinator Ted Alexander told The Associated Press.

Their bodies will be recovered Sunday, he said.

More at NBCSanDiego.com: Climber remembered by father, friend

Both Weiss, of Queens, N.Y., and Horne, of Annandale, Va., were experienced climbers. Weiss was a repeat visitor to the Cordillera Blanca while this trip was Horne's first.

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Both belong to the pullharder.org climbers' collective, and Horne wrote about the first, six-day leg of their trip on its blog, saying they had been buffeted by hurricane-force winds when the two reached the top of the 20,216-foot Ranrapalca.

After a rest in Huaraz, the two set out again July 11 for an excursion of seven to 10 days. Their families contacted Alexander after 13 days passed with no word from them.

Weiss's sister, Galit, said the two were not carrying a satellite phone.

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Horne was a graduate student in economics at the University of California, San Diego. Weiss was founder of a business a Boulder, Colo., business called Beyond Adventure Productions that specialized in organizing and photographing events in remote and spectacular locations.

The Cordillera Blanca climbing season runs from June to September, and the deaths of Weiss and Horne bring to eight the number of mountaineers who have lost their lives in the range so far this year, the AP said.

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.

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Rain and snow at Mount Rainier in Washington state on Friday were preventing a helicopter from recovering the body of a national park ranger who fell 3,700 feet to his death during the rescue of four climbers. The National Park Service identified the ranger as Nick Hall. 

Hall was on Rainier's northeast side at about 13,700 feet when he fell around 5 p.m. local time Thursday as he was helping the climbers aboard a helicopter, the service said.

"As the first of the climbers were being evacuated by helicopter, Mount Rainier climbing ranger Nick Hall fell, sliding more than 3,000 feet down the side of the mountain," the service said in a statement.

"He did not respond to attempts to contact him and was not moving. High winds and a rapidly lowering cloud ceiling made rescue efforts extremely difficult," the service added. "Climbers reached Ranger Hall several hours after the incident began and found him to be deceased." 

Three of the climbers were able to be airlifted by 9 p.m. but the fourth had to spend the night on the mountain "in a safe location, with Mount Rainier National Park climbing rangers," the service stated Thursday night.

National Park Service

Nick Hall, far left, poses with other Mount Rainier Climbing Rangers during a training session on May 4.

On Friday morning, the climber and two rangers started to walk down and made it to a camp at 9,500 feet by early afternoon.

Visibility was poor Friday, with rain showers at lower elevation and snow above 10,000 feet. As a result, the helicopter was grounded and rangers hoping to get to where Hall perished were also making little progress.

The climbers, two men and two women from Waco, Texas, had been walking on the Emmons Glacier Route on their way down from the summit when two of them slipped and fell into a crevasse, said Kevin Bacher, a park spokesman.

One of the climbers had a working cell phone and was able to notify park rangers. Rescue crews on foot located the climbers and lifted the two out of the crevasse, then began the process of transferring the climbers to a helicopter.

"The two women on the end went into the crevasse," Bacher said, "but the two men were able to stop the group, and that prevented anyone from falling to the bottom of the crevasse."

All four had bruises, and possibly some broken bones, but none of the injuries seemed life-threatening, Bacher said.

The climber still on the mountain is Stacy Wren, 22. The three hospitalized are Noelle Smith, Stuart Smith and Ross Vandyke, the park said.

The Waco Tribune-Herald reported that Smith is a Waco attorney who has climbed the highest mountains on all seven continents and has been to both poles.

Hall, a four-year veteran of Mount Rainier's climbing program and a native of Patten, Maine, was a former Marine sergeant and had also worked as an avalanche forecaster at Yellowstone National Park, according to his Facebook page.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar praised Hall as a ranger "who heroically gave his life to save others". 

Hall's age was initially reported as 34 but later corrected to 33.

Hall's is the second death of a Mount Rainier ranger this year. Margaret Anderson was shot dead on New Year's Day at a roadblock when she stopped a man suspected in a Seattle shooting.

Moreover, four Rainier visitors, two climbers and two campers, are presumed dead after failing to return from the mountain in January.

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National Park Service / AP

Crews search for four Japanese climbers on Alaska's Mount McKinley on Saturday.

Crews have suspended efforts to recover the bodies of four Japanese climbers killed in an avalanche on Alaska's Mount McKinley, the National Park Service said Sunday.

A two-day ground search of the debris path from the avalanche turned up clues Saturday indicating the likely location of four deceased climbers, a Denali National Park spokeswoman said.

A mountaineering ranger lowered himself into the same crevasse that the party's one survivor fell into. The ranger probed through avalanche debris 100 feet beneath the glacier's surface and found a broken rope that matched that of the Japanese team. He began to dig further, but encountered heavily compacted ice and snow debris.

"Due to the danger of ice fall within the crevasse, it was decided to permanently suspend the recovery efforts," the park service said in a press release.  

Rangers also now say that the avalanche, which happened at approximately 11,800 feet on the West Buttress, occurred early Wednesday morning, not Thursday. The lone survivor, 69-year-old Hitoshi Ogi, reached a base camp to report the avalanche Thursday afternoon. He suffered only a minor hand injury.

The climbers were part of a five-member Miyagi Workers Alpine Federation expedition. All were from the Miyagi Prefecture in Japan, the park service said.

Those killed were identified as Yoshiaki Kato, 64; Masako Suda, 50; Michiko Suzuki, 56; and Tamao Suzuki, 63.

National Park Service / Reuters

A rescue worker and dog search the debris field from the deadly avalanche.

The climbers -- three men and two women -- were descending and roped together at the time of the accident. Ogi was the last person on the rope, and thus was the closest to the surface when the team fell into the crevasse, said park spokeswoman Maureen McLaughlin.

Mount McKinley, also referred to as Denali, is the tallest peak in North America, with a summit elevation of 20,320 feet. The McKinley climbing season runs from late April until early July. Typically, 1,200 to 1,300 people attempt the peak each season.

There have six climbing fatalities on McKinley this season, according to the park service. Since 1932, a total of 120 climbers have perished on the mountain, 12 due to avalanches. This week's four avalanche fatalities were the first to occur on the popular West Buttress route.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.

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