Two US college students fell to their deaths on Colorado's Ice Mountain after their climbing anchor suffered a 'catastrophic failure'

Jackson Donlon, 20, of Queensbury, New York, and Kaden Matsuda, 19, of Ridgway, Colorado, were students at Colorado Mountain College Leadville who disappeared last week after heading out to climb Ice Mountain, a peak approaching 14,000 feet. The Chaffee County Sheriff's Office confirmed Tuesday that both died instantly from multiple blunt force injuries after plunging an undetermined distance into a mountain basin.

Donlon had just started to rappel when the primary anchor — reinforced by a piton and a secondary rock-substrate anchor — underwent a 'catastrophic failure of unknown cause.'

Matsuda, an aspiring firefighter, was clipped into the same anchor system when both students fell; they were found five days after leaving campus.

Investigators say a heavy snowstorm the pair encountered was not a direct cause of the fall, leaving the precise trigger of the anchor failure unexplained.