Our best friend fell 200ft to his death on a mountain but wouldn't want us to stop hiking
It started off like every other adventure for the three best friends – but just two returned from their climb.
Best friends Matty Belcher, Brandan Smith and Jack Carne had travelled from South Yorkshire to the mountains of north Wales for a weekend of camping and climbing.
It ended in tragedy, when a rock grabbed by 23-year-old Jack came loose in his hands. Before his friends could react, he was gone – tumbling 200ft (60m) to his death.
Brandan and Matty called mountain rescue, but they could do nothing to save Jack. The two men had to wait on a ledge for hours until they were found, then had to leave the mountain without him.
It wouldn’t be until the following day that volunteers from Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue were able to recover Jack’s body from the rocky slopes of Glyder Fawr in Eryri, also known as Snowdonia.
Jack was just 10m from the 1,000m (3,284 ft) summit of Wales’ fifth highest peak when the unimaginable happened.
“We’d probably walked for about four hours – and then it all went wrong,” said Matty.
“It was no harder than anything we’d done before – it was actually easier than a lot of stuff we’d done before. It just could have been anybody.”
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An inquest into Jack’s death heard how he “somersaulted” down the mountain and that his friends could see his rucksack about 50m (165ft) below where he fell. When the friends called out, there was no answer.
In the early hours following Jack’s death in February 2023, after their police interview, Matty and Brandan received a call from Jack’s dad Rich to see if they “were ok”.
For many, being confronted with something like that would have been enough to never return to a mountain – but for Matty and Brandan, that wasn’t an option.
“After speaking to mountain rescue, they said it was a freak accident,” said Brandan, who had travelled to Wales from Barnsley to go climbing.
“It was just timing. The boulder that actually took Jack, it could have gone in a week’s time, a year’s time – it just happened to go then and there.”
Volunteers from Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue had to reassure the friends it was a “really tragic accident”.
“The boys were well equipped and well organised,” said rescuer Chris Lloyd.
“It affects us as well. We’re all mountaineers – and it brings home the reality that one slip can lead to disaster.”
Struggling to understand what had happened to his son, Jack’s grieving dad asked the boys if they could take him back to where it happened.
It was something they too felt compelled to do. So just one week later Brandan and Matty found themselves back on Glyder Fawr.
This time they were accompanied by Jack’s dad and the Ogwen Mountain Rescue volunteers who had recovered their best friend’s body.
“I think Jack’s dad wanted a bit of closure,” said Matty.
“They took us back up to where they found Jack. We had about half-an-hour there, asking questions.”
While there they found Jack’s cap, still resting in the place close to where he fell and were able to bring it back with them.
The number of callouts rescue teams in England and Wales have attended has doubled in the past decade, reaching more than 3,000 a year by 2024.
Across north Wales, there were 23 fatalities in the mountains last year compared to 14 back in 2015.
The part of north Wales where Jack died has two of the busiest mountain rescue teams in the UK.
The rescue team covering Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon, is the busiest, while Ogwen Mountain Rescue, who recovered Jack’s body, is the second busiest in England and Wales.
That emotional return trip back up Glyder Fawr was designed to bring closure and, perhaps, end a chapter in their lives, but it actually started something else entirely.
Within a couple of weeks, Jack’s dad was back on the phone, only this time he wanted to plan his own trip into the outdoors with the boys – a new adventure.
“After that we just started going out together all the time,” recalled Brandan.
“It just feel like talking to a mate, it’s brilliant.”
Matty added: “Climbing mountains is not something Jack ever would have wanted us to stop doing. And now we’re doing it with his dad – it’s like we’re bringing a piece of him with us.”
Since that point, Brandan and Matty have been travelling around the world, climbing higher and higher peaks – taking Rich and his partner, Andy, along for many of their adventures.
Of all the trips the new friends have now taken together, one was far more important than all the rest.
“Jack always wanted to do Tryfan, but we never got to do it with him,” said Brandan.
The 917m (3,000ft) summit in north Wales is visible from the ridge where Jack fell – and had been down as Jack’s next target for adventure.
“It was one of the last big mountains around here that we’d never done. We always said we wanted to do it,” said Brandan.
Matty added: “Unfortunately the accident happened before that.
“So after the funeral we actually went up Tryfan with Jack’s dad – and we scattered his ashes at the top of there. It was a nice gesture, to say that we’d finally all done it together.”
Brandan laughs at the thought of what Jack would have made of his best mates spending their weekends hiking with his dad.
“I guess he’d think it was a bit weird,” he say, grinning.
“But going out with his dad is just like going out with him. He treats us like we’re his best mates.”
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