“He Was Really Coming Into Himself:” Lake Tahoe Mourns 15-Year-Old Climber Noah Wiley

The South Lake Tahoe climbing community is mourning after a local teen, Noah Sebastian Ortega Wiley, fell to his death in a climbing accident. Wiley died on April 9 while toproping at 90 Foot Wall, a granite crag on Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay. He was 15 years old.

Wiley’s family told Climbing that the fall was caused by a user error—not gear failure, rockfall, or a mistake on the part of his belayer—but declined to provide further details of the accident.

Miles Blakesley, Wiley’s uncle, spoke of his nephew as a disciplined, motivated kid who, in rock climbing, had recently found a polestar. “He was really coming into himself,” Blakesley said, “and he was the kind of kid who, once he was put on to something, would learn everything about it and go as hard as possible, diving into the ins and outs of whatever it was he was doing.”

Wiley was climbing with his best friend, 16-year-old Josh Maldonado, at the time of his death. The pair, who went through their entire climbing journey together, first met at a local mountain biking spot, Bijou Bike Park. A few hangouts later, after a sleepover, Wiley suggested they visit the local climbing gym, Blue Granite, which Blakesley had taken him to a few times before.

“We both absolutely fell in love with it,” Maldonado said. The boys climbed together constantly for the next eight months, roping up every other day, first at Blue Granite, and then outside at 90 Foot Wall. It was their fourth or fifth time climbing at the crag when Wiley fell.

Maldonado said he and Wiley were uncannily alike, and although they hadn’t known each other very long, saw each other as kindred spirits. “We had similar upbringing and family backgrounds, we had similar genes, we looked similar, we had the same beliefs, the same thoughts going through our heads,” he said. “There were countless times where we’d both just started singing a random song out of nowhere at the exact same time. It was crazy. We felt like brothers, and everybody always asked us if we were brothers.”

Maldonado said Wiley was a quick study, and, between the two of them, was the more technically minded. He was keen to learn everything he could about the sport. “He would stay up all night researching stuff, how to climb, how to build anchors, everything,” Maldonado said.

Blakesley said outside of climbing, his nephew was an avid fan of the Las Vegas (formerly Oakland) Raiders, a keen baseball player, and a talented snowboarder. “He was just really stoked on life,” Blakesley said. “He loved being outside, hiking, climbing, snowboarding, whatever. He just wanted to be outdoors and around people.”

Although he passed young, Blakesley said Wiley already had a strong grasp of the value of hard work. In his bedroom, he hung a banner with the word “DISCIPLINE” followed by its dictionary definition. This is part of why Blakesley felt his nephew was so captivated by climbing—there’s always a harder grade, another route, a higher rung on the ladder. “Doing things, even when they’re hard, even when you don’t want to, that’s what Noah was all about,” Blakesley said.

Seeing that progress in real time was incredibly gratifying for the 15-year-old Wiley. “He was a scrawny kid growing up, but once he started climbing and doing hangboard workouts, he’d say, ‘Look at my muscles’” Blakesley recalled. “He always wanted to take on bigger challenges. He always wanted to do more.”

Blakesley, a climber himself, said he hoped his nephew’s passing would remind other climbers, veterans and newcomers alike, of the sport’s slim margin for error. “Climbing gives us so much, it fulfills us, but it also demands presence,” he said. “It’s easy to get comfortable. Staying present and intentional is so important.” This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to novice climbers like Wiley. Blakesley noted that he was in Yosemite Valley last October when the renowned alpinist Balin Miller rappelled off the end of his rope on El Capitan. “No matter what level of experience or your age,” he said, “being present and slowing down is crucial.”

Maldonado shared one of his favorite memories with Wiley: the boys’ first day roping up together outside. Wiley had just bought 200 feet of static rope, and the pair were outfitted in helmets, harnesses, and new hardware to build their first anchor outdoors at 90 Foot Wall. “We were just so excited to be out there,” he said. “We were so stoked. We set up and started climbing, and both of us had the biggest smiles we’d ever seen on each other’s faces.”

The pair began climbing in the late afternoon, and by the time they finished their last route, the sun was nearly set, but neither wanted to leave the crag. “We didn’t bother packing up, even though it was getting dark,” Maldonado said. “We just wanted to sit and admire that sunset.”

The friends spoke to each other about how climbing outside had made them feel, how exciting it was, how much more exhilarating and fulfilling than the indoor climbing they’d been doing up until then.

“It felt like the start of something so great,” Maldonado recalled. “I remember feeling like we were going to go so far as climbers, like we were going to be doing this for the rest of our lives together.”

He said that in Wiley’s passing, he’d lost more than a friend. For all their jokes about how similar the two looked, and how alike they thought, the bond they shared went deeper than surface-level coincidences. “We called each other brothers because we knew that’s what we were,” Maldonado said.

Noah Sebastian Ortega Wiley is survived by a loving community of friends and family, including Blakesley, Maldonado, his mother, Dominique, stepfather, Matthew, and younger half-brother, Silas. Wiley’s aunt, Christina Rome, has organized a GoFundMe to pay for his funeral and memorial service and support his mother in the wake of his passing.

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