Utah teen dies after slipping off 150-foot cliff, second hiking tragedy this month
A second Utah teen this month has died after falling off a cliff, this time 17-year-old Conly Warren Ruff, who plummeted 150 feet while hiking with a friend at Hurricane Overlook.
It was about 5:30 p.m. Saturday when police and fire responders in Hurricane City, Utah, received a report of “a fall from a cliff,” police said.
Conly had been climbing near the cliff’s edge with a friend when he “reportedly slipped and fell approximately 150 feet to the ground below,” Hurricane City police said in a statement. “Within 15 minutes units were able to climb down to the area and reach the male but it was found that he had not survived the fall.”
Conly was from LaVerkin, Utah, about 300 miles south of Salt Lake City, and was a student at Hurricane High School, police said. They did not divulge his name, but subsequent Facebook posts from his mother confirmed Conly’s identity.
It devastates us to announce the untimely death of our dear son and brother Conly Warren Ruff,” his mother, Sara Gleason Ruff, wrote on a community page Monday. “On February 18th, 2023, Conly was involved in a fatal hiking accident which claimed his life.”
The school community mourned the loss of the beloved student.
“It’s always heartbreaking to lose a student from our community,” the Washington County School District told KUTV-TV. “There really are no words of comfort to help relieve the grief and pain. We will have our crisis team available at Hurricane High on Tuesday when the students return. And we ask our parents and students to look out for their friends, to find those that are suffering through this loss, and direct them to one of our grief counselors.”
The teen’s death comes about 10 days after a similar accident on Feb. 10, when 17-year-old Zoe McKinney fell 30 feet off a cliff while hiking the Moab Rim Trail in the Kane Creek Canyon area.
While she didn’t fall as far as Conly, and friends called 911 immediately, there was no safe way to get to her, and it took rescuers two hours to recover her body.
