{"id":7431,"date":"2026-09-29T03:20:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T10:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/?p=7431"},"modified":"2026-09-29T03:20:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T10:20:32","slug":"he-was-a-celebrated-climber-for-years-women-warned-about-him-then-a-jury-convicted-him-to-life-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/2026\/09\/29\/he-was-a-celebrated-climber-for-years-women-warned-about-him-then-a-jury-convicted-him-to-life-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"He Was a Celebrated Climber. For Years, Women Warned About Him. Then a Jury Convicted Him to Life in Prison."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Charles
Charles Barrett in 2019, climbing a Northern California route he developed called Mario Kart. Right: Barrett after a January 2022 arrest in Mono County, California, for alleged stalking and criminal threats. (Photo: From left: Michael Eadington; courtesy Mono County Sheriff’s Office)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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He Was a Celebrated Climber. For Years, Women Warned About Him. Then a Jury Convicted Him to Life in Prison.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Charles Barrett remained a prominent California climber despite years of violence, threats, and warnings from women. He was eventually convicted of sexually abusing a woman in Yosemite, sentenced to life in prison, and lost his appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Annette McGivney<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published: Sep 29, 2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s update:<\/strong> Charles Barrett was convicted in February 2024 of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact involving a woman he met in Yosemite National Park. He was sentenced to life in federal prison that June. In December 2025, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his conviction and life sentence. The investigation below, originally published days before Barrett\u2019s trial began, documented his history of violence against women and examined how he remained a prominent member of the climbing community for years.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Bonnie Hedlund first started dating Charlie Barrett in 2005, every day was Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She would come home from work to find her driveway sprinkled with rose petals, placed there by Barrett, an exceptionally talented rock climber and boulderer based in Northern California. Love notes were hung from trees with messages like \u201cKeep going beautiful girl.\u201d He put more notes inside Hedlund\u2019s cabin, which sat on forested land near the Truckee River. When the weather was right, Barrett sometimes set up a romantic space on the porch, with a table and chairs, candles, dinner for two, and a mattress. He made CD mixes and wrote poems on beautiful stationery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett, then 21, was 12 years younger than Hedlund. When she was introduced to him by a mutual friend, she never thought of dating as an option because of their age difference. But then he started randomly showing up at her cabin, making his interest clear. He was attractive\u2014tall and dark, with broad shoulders and a big smile\u2014and attentive in a way she\u2019d never experienced. Better still, some of their best times together happened in her favorite place: the outdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe climbing was phenomenal,\u201d she says. \u201cWe would do amazing climbs nearly every day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Barrett, Hedlund was an accomplished sport climber and boulderer, and she had been ticking off difficult routes on the east side of the Sierra Nevada since the late 1980s, before the region became widely known as a bouldering destination. The couple, along with their core group of Tahoe-area friends, did routes together constantly. As the relationship grew stronger, Barrett moved in with Hedlund and her dog, a rescued wolf hybrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was some of the best times of my life,\u201d Hedlund says. \u201cUntil it wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2006, Hedlund says, she and Barrett went snowboarding and then had dinner at a friend\u2019s house. When they got back to the cabin, Barrett began acting strangely. Holding his head in his hands, he bent over the kitchen counter and stood motionless. Hedlund thought that he was about to pass out; she asked if he wanted to sit. They\u2019d never had a fight or even a serious argument, but she started to feel scared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen he stood up and looked at me, it was like he was a different person,\u201d she says. \u201cHis eyes were glazed over and he started walking toward me, chanting gibberish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Hedlund, Barrett said over and over: \u201cYou are the prosecution and I am the defense.\u201d He backed her into a corner. Then, so suddenly that she had no time to defend herself, he hit the side of her head with his fist, knocking her out. Barrett was six feet tall and weighed 165 pounds. Hedlund was five-two and 112.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After about a minute, she came to and saw that the cabin\u2019s front door was open. Barrett had left, and he\u2019d taken her dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hedlund ran outside looking for Barrett, who had moved about 75 feet from the cabin and was standing in the middle of a busy state highway that ran past her property, holding the dog by its collar. Cars were honking and swerving while Barrett shouted at Hedlund that he\u2019d been struggling to keep himself from hurting her. Now that he\u2019d failed, he intended to kill himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care what you do, just give me my dog back!\u201d she yelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett let go, the dog bolted, and Hedlund ran into the woods to retrieve him as Barrett headed toward his truck. She stayed there, hunkered down, until she saw that he\u2019d driven away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why I didn\u2019t call the cops,\u201d she says. \u201cI had just never experienced anything like that before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bonnie
Bonnie Hedlund and Barrett (far right) during a 2006 climbing trip in Tahoe National Forest. Jake Dayley, a friend of both Hedlund\u2019s and Barrett\u2019s, is seen at far left. (Photo: Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Kicking
Kicking back at the Arsenal, near Rifle, Colorado, in 2013 (Photo: James Clayton Lucas)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the weeks after the attack, Hedlund, along with her closest friends, took a path that domestic-violence experts say is a common response to a first encounter with an abuser: they gave Barrett the benefit of the doubt and showed him compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the previous months, Barrett had made vague references to what he had called \u201cfalse accusations\u201d and \u201clegal troubles\u201d in Yosemite National Park. After assaulting her, Hedlund says, Barrett told her that the possibility of doing time had been weighing on him, and it had caused him to \u201csnap\u201d that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett was referring to a serious episode: In September 2004, he was arrested by Yosemite law-enforcement rangers and charged with a misdemeanor DUI in Mariposa County. According to a federal report, Barrett retaliated against one of the rangers a few days after the incident by slashing the tires on his car. He also made verbal threats against the rangers immediately following the arrest, on the way to a holding station. These actions led to a federal indictment in January 2005 charging Barrett with five felony counts, including witness retaliation and intimidating and interfering with federal officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hedlund was unsure about what to do after the assault. She didn\u2019t let Barrett move back in, but she and her friends tried to be supportive as he spent much of 2006 navigating the legal system. During this time, Hedlund says, he worked hard to win her back and apologized repeatedly for hurting her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 2006, Barrett accepted a plea deal from the U.S. attorney in Fresno, which seemed generous given the severity of the alleged offenses: all of the felony counts would be dismissed if he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor vandalism charge. He could have spent years in prison; instead he got six months and was banned from Yosemite for three years. There was no mention of the DUI in the deal. It may have been dismissed as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After sentencing, Barrett served time at the now shuttered Taft Correctional Institution in Kern County. While there he wrote to Hedlund frequently, complaining about prison life and seeking reconciliation. Some of these letters, which Hedlund showed me, are troubling. Barrett told her that he longed to see her and make love, but he also wanted something else. \u201cI\u2019d like to be more rough, too,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThat\u2019s the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 15 years later, federal investigators conducting interviews related to Barrett\u2019s alleged assault of another female climber spoke to a woman\u2014not the subject of the case\u2014who had dated Barrett. \u201cHe told her she had to prove her love for him by agreeing to \u2018rough sex,\u2019\u201d the report says. The woman, unnamed in the document, added: \u201cHe liked tying me up and blindfolding me. Choking me, sometimes really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Records show that during a 14-year period starting in 2008, at least nine criminal protective orders or restraining orders were obtained against Barrett by four women who all said they feared for their lives.<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Barrett was released in August 2007, and Hedlund maintained a guarded relationship with him. The situation was awkward, because he was part of the same climbing community that served as her support network. He told friends that he was trying to get his mental health challenges and drinking under control. But during that same period, he began sending Hedlund what she calls \u201cmanipulative\u201d messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe would email me and beg me to see him and say he was going to kill himself,\u201d she told me. \u201cSo I would agree to meet him in a public place. I was always terrified, but I thought if I placated him then he wouldn\u2019t go crazy and try to hurt me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October 2008, Barrett harmed her again. In an attack that I\u2019ll describe in more detail below, he showed up unexpectedly at a popular California climbing area and beat Hedlund to the point of unconsciousness, with witnesses nearby. She reported the incident to law enforcement, who arrested Barrett six days later. He was convicted of felony domestic violence and sentenced to 180 days in Inyo County Jail. Hedlund hoped she would never hear from him again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in the years after his release, Hedlund says, Barrett continued to harass her. And as I discovered over the course of a year spent researching his background and court records, he was accused of sexually assaulting four other female climbers between 2010 and 2017. Federal investigators told me that there could be many more victims who\u2019ve stayed silent. Records also show that during a 14-year period starting in 2008, at least nine criminal protective orders or restraining orders were obtained against Barrett by four women who all said they feared for their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this time, Barrett was a celebrated member of the Northern California climbing community, praised on social media for his many first ascents and for a popular series of guidebooks he wrote on bouldering in the eastern Sierra and Yosemite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCharlie is a very strong, naturally talented climber,\u201d Alex Honnold said in a 2019 article in Tahoe Quarterly<\/i><\/a>, a magazine that covers the Lake Tahoe region. \u201cA friend of Honnold\u2019s and a strong climber in his own right,\u201d the piece said, \u201cBarrett is primarily known for pioneering some of the hardest bouldering routes in California.\u201d Barrett was also the subject of a glowing profile in the July 2016 issue of Climbing.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That kind of coverage ended in August 2022, when Barrett was arrested by federal authorities and charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman during a 2016 climbing trip in Yosemite. The indictment charges Barrett with three felony counts<\/a>, including two counts of aggravated sexual abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett has been in federal detention ever since; his trial is scheduled to start February 5 at the federal district court in Sacramento. If convicted on all three counts, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. While the trial will focus primarily on the Yosemite charges, testimony could also shine a light on a longer and broader history of abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Hedlund learned of the Yosemite arrest, she was shocked and sickened. To protect herself over the past 15 years, she cut herself off from social media and stopped climbing to avoid bumping into Barrett. She had no idea that he might be doing to other women what he\u2019d done to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d she says. \u201cHow did this keep happening?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not a climber, and I had never heard of Barrett at the time of his arrest. My introduction to this story arrived a month later, in September 2022, when an editor at Outside <\/i>called and asked if I\u2019d be willing to take a deeper look. As the editor pointed out, we had no idea yet if Barrett was guilty or innocent, but he\u2019d heard about other women who may have been assaulted or violently threatened by him. Did I want to make some calls?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I immediately said yes. I grew up in a home where my father\u2014a caring physician and active church member\u2014abused his family and often flew into violent rages, with me frequently on the receiving end. A large part of my healing from that traumatic childhood has involved advocating for domestic-violence survivors and pushing back against a culture that too often seeks to minimize victims\u2019 experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I started reporting, I quickly learned that Barrett had a way of scaring people. And as I gathered from a variety of sources\u2014federal court documents, city and county police reports, social media posts, climbing websites, and interviews with his friends, acquaintances, and former girlfriends\u2014Barrett has been accused of tactics that include death threats, physical and online stalking, threats of lawsuits, breaking into residences, anonymous calls from burner phones, trolling on Instagram, spreading lies to get people fired from their jobs, and impersonating a police officer. (My attempts to reach Barrett for an interview were unsuccessful, and the lawyers currently representing him didn\u2019t respond to interview requests. In all the cases discussed in this story, Barrett has been represented by public defenders.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even after Barrett was jailed and denied bail, some of his alleged victims and other acquaintances were reluctant to talk. \u201cWhat if he gets out?\u201d one woman said. \u201cI know I\u2019m on his hit list.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hit list? Was that an exaggeration?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe not. A June 2023 motion from prosecutors in the Yosemite case contains a description of a call Barrett made to a friend on October 17, 2022. \u201cThey discussed what action [Barrett] should take against the alleged victims because they reported him,\u201d the records state. \u201cOh something will happen, that\u2019s for sure \u2026 in the courts or not,\u201d Barrett said, according to a transcript of the recorded call. \u201cIf I don\u2019t get out of here, I got people that I made contact with because they fucking put me in here with murderers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Court records also show how Barrett\u2019s ability to intimidate people made the Yosemite case difficult to follow up on. In an August 2022 affidavit, National Park Service investigator Kristy McGee stated: \u201cI have talked to dozens of witnesses who have expressed fear regarding what Barrett might do to them or who have otherwise confirmed that he is an unstable and often dangerous person.\u201d She called the case the most difficult of her 20-year career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was also a segment of the community who wouldn\u2019t talk to investigators, or to me, for a different reason: an apparent desire to close ranks around one of their own. A Park Service law-enforcement officer assigned to the Yosemite case described this group to me as \u201cold-guy climbers.\u201d They were mostly men in their fifties and sixties who were invested in minimizing sexual assaults and harassment while elevating climbing accomplishments. As friends and mentors of Barrett\u2019s, some of them were angry or mystified that he was being investigated at all. Out of more than a dozen professional climbers who had well-publicized relationships with Barrett, only a few agreed to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turned out, the first alarms about Barrett came from members of a grassroots initiative called Safe Outside, and the chain of events that occurred before Barrett\u2019s arrest is illuminating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Safe Outside<\/a>\u2014a collaboration among data scientist Charlie Lieu, University of Colorado Denver criminology researcher Callie Rennison, and former Alpinist<\/i> editor Katie Ives\u2014was founded in 2018 in response to the #MeToo movement. Its main goal was to conduct an extensive online survey that could assess sexual assault and harassment in the climbing world, whether it occurred at an urban gym or in the mountains. The initiative was supported by more than 30 major players in the outdoor industry, including the Access Fund, REI, and Outside <\/i>magazine.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Barrett\u2019s buddies managed to gloss over his threatening behavior, the Safe Outside survey made that more difficult. A court document describes how a data analyst for the project, who sifted through thousands of responses from climbers around the world, noticed similarities in various descriptions of incidents said to have occurred in Northern California. It appeared to the analyst that a serial assaulter might be on the loose. Safe Outside facilitated connections among the victims, who confirmed that it was Barrett who had assaulted them. Soon law enforcement got involved and began following a trail of clues that eventually led to Barrett\u2019s arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Department of Justice announced Barrett\u2019s August 2022 arrest, Safe Outside posted a notice on its Facebook page, along with a Justice Department press release requesting additional leads. The group celebrated this development in a post on August 30, 2022. \u201cFour years after we launched the Safe Outside survey,\u201d it said, \u201cthe first arrest resulting directly from our work FINALLY happened. #believewomen #thereishopeforjustice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Vertex climbing gym in Santa Rosa, California (Photo: Ben Prowell)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Inside
Inside Vertex (Photo: Ben Prowell)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Charles Barrett, a native of Santa Rosa, California, began climbing when he was a teenager. His father, Ron Barrett, recalls that he bought his son a membership at Vertex, a local climbing gym, when he was 14, and that Charles quickly became obsessed. Climbing wasn\u2019t the only sport he excelled in. \u201cHe was a great golfer,\u201d Ron says. \u201cHe was also good at baseball and basketball. The kid is a natural athlete.\u201d Charles\u2019s parents divorced when he was 14. Ron lived nearby in Santa Rosa, while Charles, along with his brother and sister, continued to live with their mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Summit, a longtime California climber who also lives in Santa Rosa, says he met Barrett around 2000. At the time, Summit and his buddies were at Vertex, sitting in Summit\u2019s car in the parking lot smoking a joint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of a sudden,\u201d Summit recalls with a laugh, \u201cCharlie is knocking on the window asking if he can smoke with us. I said no, you\u2019re just a kid. But Charlie said he smoked all the time, and he convinced us to let him in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Summit, Barrett was around 16 at the time and had recently dropped out of high school. He was spending his days at the climbing gym. Summit, who was ten years older, was impressed. \u201cHe could just glide up the wall without any prior experience or training,\u201d recalls Summit, who\u2019s now a climbing instructor and guidebook author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summit and his friends brought Barrett into their group and introduced him to popular climbing areas throughout Northern California. This was a lifeline for Barrett, because he\u2019d been getting into fights at the high school he attended\u2014a place, according to Summit, that was full of \u201cgang bangers.\u201d After divorcing Barrett\u2019s father, Barrett\u2019s mother struggled to raise him and his two siblings on what Summit calls \u201cthe poor side of town.\u201d (Barrett\u2019s mother declined to be interviewed for this story.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe best thing Charlie could have done during that time was to get stoned and go rock climbing with us,\u201d Summit says. \u201cHe became one of my best friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richie Esquibel, who was part of this circle, remembers that while Barrett showed great promise as a climber, he also seemed to have mental health challenges and was getting treatment. According to Esquibel, when Barrett first showed up at Vertex, he\u2019d recently been released from a residential psychiatric facility for adolescents in San Francisco. Esquibel recalls Barrett saying that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and clinical depression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was in denial about the severity of his mental health issues,\u201d Esquibel says. \u201cHe also said the medication made him feel too loopy.\u201d Instead, Esquibel says, Barrett \u201cself-medicated\u201d with \u201ca ton of alcohol\u201d\u2014and with his newfound passion for climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once Barrett got into the sport, his singular focus became tackling routes on real rock instead of at the gym. He landed jobs in Yosemite\u2014cleaning cabins in Curry Village<\/a>, flipping burgers at Tuolumne Grill\u2014so he could spend as much time as possible climbing on its legendary granite. He was living the dirtbag dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were all in our early twenties, drinking a lot and smoking weed,\u201d says James Lucas, a climber and guidebook author who got to know Barrett when they worked together in Yosemite. \u201cCharlie was super outgoing, with a charismatic personality. He was very flirtatious with women, but he was also a little mean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWhen he stood up and looked at me, it was like he was a different person,\u201d Bonnie Hedlund says of Barrett. \u201cHis eyes were glazed over and he started walking toward me, chanting gibberish.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When Barrett got in trouble at Yosemite in 2004, Lucas says, it didn\u2019t occur to him that the behavior signaled deeper problems. Wild and over the top? Sure. But the episode fit with the rebel image that was part of Yosemite climbing culture, and Barrett had his own version of events. He said that the rangers\u2014with whom climbers had a long, tense relationship\u2014were conspiring to accuse him of something he didn\u2019t do. Many of his climbing buddies found the explanation easy to accept. \u201cCharlie is the kind of guy where you just really want to believe him,\u201d Lucas says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the federal felony charges moved through the justice system in 2005, Barrett migrated to the Tahoe area, where he began dating Hedlund and focusing on eastern Sierra climbing, especially at a place called the Buttermilks<\/a>. Located in the foothills near Bishop, the region is littered with large quartz monzonite boulders that were deposited by an ancient glacier and reach up to 50 feet high. As the popularity of bouldering exploded in the 2000s, the Buttermilks became a mecca, and Barrett was one of its rising stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climber Jake Dayley\u2014who moved to Tahoe in 2006 and immediately developed a close friendship with Barrett and Hedlund\u2014remembers how impressive Barrett was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCharlie polished off all the hardest climbs that existed in the Tahoe area, so he started establishing new routes and boulder problems with higher degrees of difficulty,\u201d Dayley says, noting that Barrett\u2019s exploits caught the attention of famous climbers who\u2019d never been drawn to the region before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Dayley admired Barrett\u2019s drive, he was wary of what he calls his \u201cdark side.\u201d Sometimes while climbing, Barrett would inexplicably break off from the rest of the group and isolate himself. \u201cI had no idea what was going on,\u201d Dayley says. \u201cIt was something traumatic in his mind that made him very internally preoccupied. He would rejoin us later and seem fine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little over two and a half years after the first assault against Hedlund, that dark side led to violence once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Buttermilks, near Bishop, California (Photo: Evgeny Vasenev\/Cavan\/Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In October 2008, Hedlund had driven with her dog to do some bouldering in the Buttermilks. According to a police report, she was camping in her truck and one evening joined a group of climbers from Alabama who\u2019d gathered around a campfire. It was a beautiful night\u2014at least until Barrett showed up, accompanied by a climber named Lonnie Kauk<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kauk, the son of Yosemite legend Ron Kauk, was a trad climber who wanted to branch out into bouldering. He had recently met Barrett and was looking forward to learning some moves. \u201cHe was a talented climber, and he had the beta on the Buttermilks,\u201d Kauk says. \u201cIt was a great day. He gave me a tour. But I was also a little concerned about how Charlie would smash down a six-pack in less than 30 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kauk and Barrett joined the group at the campfire. Hedlund tried to stay relaxed. Before long, Barrett started taunting her dog\u2014the same wolf hybrid he\u2019d dragged to the middle of a highway a few years earlier. He squeezed its snout and revealed its fangs, jokingly saying, \u201cDon\u2019t do this to a wolf.\u201d The dog growled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hedlund repeatedly asked Barrett to stop, but he kept at it until the dog snapped at him, biting his pinkie finger. Barrett then started beating the dog, according to a witness statement given the next day to police. The group went quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hedlund says she grabbed her dog and walked toward her truck, planning to \u201cget the hell out of there.\u201d Barrett turned on his headlamp and followed. Kauk remembers feeling confused. \u201cI thought they were just working it out,\u201d he says. \u201cHe was down by her truck, and I guess she was trying to load up her dog. But all of a sudden we heard this thud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kauk got up from his spot at the campfire to investigate. He saw that Hedlund was lying on the ground and that Barrett was punching her head repeatedly. Kauk rushed toward Hedlund as Barrett made his way back to the campfire. \u201cShit just got real,\u201d Barrett said, according to the police report. \u201cI hit Bonnie.\u201d Kauk helped Hedlund, who was regaining consciousness; blood was coming out of her nose and left ear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett left the camping area that night, while Hedlund stayed and slept in her truck, assured by Kauk and others that they\u2019d keep her safe. Members of the group drove to Bishop the next morning to give their statements to police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After disappearing for nearly a week, and contacting friends to say that he planned to commit suicide, Barrett was arrested by Inyo County sheriff\u2019s deputies. According to the police report, Barrett told the officer that he \u201chit\u201d Hedlund at the campground. When asked if this had happened before, he acknowledged striking her in 2006 at Hedlund\u2019s cabin. Barrett pleaded no contest to one count of battery on a cohabitant with traumatic injury\u2014more commonly known as felony domestic violence\u2014a crime that in California carries a maximum penalty of two to four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kauk would later tell federal investigators that Barrett asked him to appear in court and lie to a judge about what happened. In Barrett\u2019s version of events, he was trying to protect himself from the dog and somehow hit Hedlund during the fray. But Kauk refused to go along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDude, you crossed the line and now you are going to jail,\u201d Kauk told Barrett. \u201cJust suck it up and deal with it.\u201d Kauk\u2019s refusal had consequences\u2014Barrett harassed him on and off for more than a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2009, Barrett was offered another plea deal, and he was sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation by an Inyo County district judge. The deal stipulated that if he violated the probation conditions, which included refraining from alcohol and from contacting Hedlund, he could be sent back to jail for up to a year for each violation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least one friend of Barrett\u2019s believed that the deal was a serious mistake. In a letter to the county district attorney written before the sentencing was announced, this friend\u2014whose name is redacted in the transcript\u2014made a request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCharlie Barrett is mentally ill,\u201d they wrote, asking that Barrett be placed in a long-term psychiatric facility instead of prison. \u201cPlease do not underestimate how dangerous his illness is.\u2026 He has the capacity to hurt or kill people. He could have killed Bonnie and if his condition goes untreated he could kill others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine months after Barrett\u2019s release from prison for the second Hedlund assault, he allegedly attacked another female climber. And he would eventually threaten to kill her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2010, Stephanie Fort\u00e9 was spending the weekend at the home of some friends, a climbing couple who lived in Bishop, and the recreational agenda was all about bouldering. (Fort\u00e9 is identified by name in Mono County Superior Court transcripts, rather than by an alias or initials.) She would later tell police that the man and woman were friends of Barrett\u2019s, too, and that he was living with them while he \u201cgot back on his feet\u201d after his release from jail. At the time, Fort\u00e9 ran her own public relations agency in Las Vegas. She was an accomplished rock climber who routinely tackled difficult 5.13-plus routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Fort\u00e9\u2019s description of her encounter with Barrett, which she later shared with police, the woman she was staying with informed her when she arrived that Barrett had been convicted of domestic violence. This worried Fort\u00e9, but the friend said she shouldn\u2019t be concerned, because the charges had been \u201ctotally rigged.\u201d (The woman did not respond to requests for an interview.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort\u00e9 was briefly introduced to Barrett on the second evening of her stay, after Fort\u00e9 and her friend returned from a day of climbing, followed by dinner. The group engaged in small talk, and then Fort\u00e9 retired to the study, where she would be sleeping that night. Several hours later, she woke to find a man on top of her, with an erection pressed against her backside. Fort\u00e9 would later tell police that the man was kissing her neck, squeezing her breasts, and rubbing her genital area. The room was pitch-black, but Fort\u00e9 recognized the voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know you want it,\u201d Barrett kept whispering, according to the police report. Fort\u00e9, who was just over five feet tall and weighed barely 100 pounds, struggled to push him away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps wary of waking the couple, Barrett backed off, called Fort\u00e9 a \u201ccunt,\u201d and retreated to another room. He then left before sunrise. Fort\u00e9 remained awake, frozen on the bed, for the rest of the night, too terrified to move. Cutting the weekend short, she left the couple\u2019s house at dawn and went home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the coming days, Fort\u00e9 told several people\u2014including the friend who\u2019d hosted her in Bishop\u2014about what had happened. According to her account to police, the friend encouraged her to brush off the assault and consider it flattering that a guy 14 years younger was attracted to her. She would later regret that she waited until 2021 to speak with police about the 2010 assault; she naively assumed that she could bury the memory of what had taken place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Barrett continued to gain renown in the climbing world. The list of first ascents and sends of difficult bouldering problems, most of them chronicled on the popular website 8a.nu<\/a>, was growing. As he completed his five-year probation for assaulting Hedlund, Barrett lived out of his truck and was a constant presence in places like the Buttermilks, climbing full-time and working odd jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Lonnie Kauk saw that Hedlund was lying on the ground and that Barrett was punching her head repeatedly. He rushed toward Hedlund as Barrett made his way back to the campfire. \u201cShit just got real,\u201d Barrett said, according to a police report. \u201cI hit Bonnie.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Back in the early 2000s, bouldering had become popular enough\u2014supported by gear companies and tourism\u2014that climbers like Barrett could make a living at it. After his June 2009 release from jail, he began riding a wave he\u2019d helped create. Over the next five years, he self-published three popular guidebooks<\/a> and received gear support from Asana, which sells crash-pads and other climbing accessories. Blogs and social media further fueled the sport\u2019s popularity. It seemed that as long as Barrett maintained his reputation as a groundbreaking climber, the community would cheer him on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to finally hear that Charlie Barrett has defeated his nemesis The Spectre\u201d wrote climber and guidebook author Wills Young on the Bishop Bouldering Blog in December 2009. \u201cHe\u2019d had the early moves of the problem and the moves around the lip on lock-down last season and yet would spin off every time he tried to hold the swing after the long move left in the middle of the crux.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young, who declined to be interviewed, either didn\u2019t know or failed to mention that the likely reason Barrett had been delayed in completing the problem was that he was in jail for assaulting another climber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A judge had granted Hedlund a protective order in October 2008, stating that Barrett was to remain at least 100 yards from her at all times. (After Barrett was released from jail in June 2009, this order remained in effect until 2012. The judge also issued a protective order for her dog.) Hedlund, hoping to recover from the trauma of the attack in the Buttermilks, was determined to get back to climbing in the eastern Sierra, her \u201chappy place.\u201d But the possibility of running into Barrett and his friends was always a concern. Climbing areas throughout California had become danger zones for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I would go climbing, I would be so afraid of running into him,\u201d Hedlund says. \u201cBut it also made me angry. I didn\u2019t do anything wrong. Why did I have to avoid the outdoor places I loved?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bouldering
Bouldering in 2014 at Yosemite\u2019s Camp Four (Photo: James Clayton Lucas)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Hanging
Hanging out at Camp Four between sessions (Photo: James Clayton Lucas)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One day in November 2008, after Barrett had been charged with domestic violence, but before he was sent to jail, Hedlund decided to follow the advice of a court-appointed victim\u2019s advocate and her friends. She walked up to Barrett at the Buttermilks and told him he needed to leave. He was violating the protective order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe looked at me and laughed,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd his friends just stood there. That was when I realized they all believed the lies about me that Charlie had told them. It was devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hedlund\u2019s longtime friend Jake Dayley points out that she suffered two traumas during this period: the assault by Barrett, and alienation from the climbing community. Close friends like Dayley stuck by her, but many others distanced themselves. Barrett had convinced them that he was the real victim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe was shunned and accused of blowing things out of proportion,\u201d Dayley says. \u201cThere were people who idolized Charlie, and he was their connection to greatness. Being around him made them feel cool. They didn\u2019t want to lose that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To protect herself and minimize near debilitating trauma symptoms, Hedlund stopped climbing. She fortified her house with locks and motion-sensing lights. She kept Mace in her home, in her car, and on her person at all times. She slept with a baseball bat under her bed and checked behind the shower curtain every time she entered her cabin. \u201cI would be awake all night, sitting on my counter and shaking, waiting for something to happen,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February 2014, Barrett was arrested in Mono County for public intoxication, a misdemeanor that in California can result in up to six months in jail. (I was unable to locate records that indicate what became of this charge.) Hedlund says that in the weeks just before and after this arrest, Barrett called her home phone in the middle of the night, breathing heavily. She could tell that it was Barrett because his number appeared on her caller ID. The drinking and phone calls were both probation violations; according to the plea deal Barrett signed in 2009, they could have landed him back in jail for up to two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the second time he\u2019d violated probation. In July 2010, court records show, Barrett failed a urine test for alcohol consumption. He was ordered by Inyo County officials to attend a 12-week substance-abuse program but wasn\u2019t given additional jail time. According to the probation officer\u2019s report, the program provider called Barrett \u201ca mid-stage alcoholic\u201d who had \u201ca history of alcohol abuse with sporadic binge episodes.\u201d The provider\u2019s recommendation for Barrett: \u201cDon\u2019t drink no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the 2014 violations, Hedlund wrote to the Mono County district attorney\u2019s office and asked that the penalties for probation violations be enforced. But a Mono County assistant DA named David Anderson informed Hedlund that the county would not be taking steps to jail Barrett, even though the 2009 plea deal stipulated that he could be incarcerated for up to a year for each violation. Anderson also pointed out that Barrett\u2019s probation could not be extended. He was just a few weeks away from completing the maximum five-year probation period and was not legally eligible for additional time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe would normally give some jail time and put him back on probation,\u201d Anderson wrote. \u201cThe only option is to sentence him to prison on his domestic violence case against you and the judge has already said he will not do that.\u201d Instead, Barrett was required to attend another 12-week substance-abuse program, and Hedlund was issued a new criminal protective order, which was cold comfort. (Anderson did not respond to an interview request.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Valarie Hannemann, a psychologist from Flagstaff, Arizona, who I asked to review court documents from Barrett\u2019s case, Hedlund\u2019s fears were warranted. Hannemann was the clinical director of crisis counseling for the nonprofit Victim Witness Services from 2018 to 2023, and she has counseled domestic-violence victims for more than 35 years. Hannemann considered Barrett to be \u201cvery dangerous.\u201d While she was careful not to diagnose him from afar, she said that he fit the mold of a certain kind of male abuser, one who often doesn\u2019t respond to anger-management classes or substance-abuse programs and sometimes ignores protective orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have very strong narcissistic characteristics and are not capable of normal relationships,\u201d she says. \u201cThey groom their victims with love bombs and then take them as hostages. And if you cross them, they will find you and hurt you. They think the rules of society don\u2019t apply to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statistics show that the threat is real. According to the Justice Department, of the nearly 5,000 women who were murdered in the U.S. in 2021, 34 percent were killed by an intimate partner<\/a>. The rate of partner homicide for women is five times higher than for men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, it seemed that Hedlund\u2019s attempts to get law enforcement and the climbing community to take her fears seriously were no match for the social capital Barrett had accrued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited to see my friend Charlie Barrett is close to releasing a new guidebook for Tuolumne!\u201d a climber named Kevin Jorgeson<\/a> wrote on Facebook in October 2014. \u201cCheck it out and pre-order your copy!\u201d Like Barrett, Jorgeson grew up in Santa Rosa and climbed at Vertex. They were born in the same year and worked together at the gym as route setters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several months after Jorgeson hailed Barrett\u2019s guidebook, he and Tommy Caldwell completed the first free climb of El Capitan\u2019s Dawn Wall in Yosemite. Their feat would be chronicled in the critically acclaimed documentary The Dawn Wall,<\/i> turning Jorgeson into a crossover star. He did not respond to repeated requests to discuss his past with Barrett.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Lucas was a friend of Barrett\u2019s who says he didn\u2019t know the real story of the assault on Hedlund. In an interview, he told me that he\u2019d heard Barrett was attacked by her dog and was protecting himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2016, Climbing<\/i> magazine published a profile of Barrett that Lucas reported and wrote. (The story was removed from Climbing\u2019<\/i>s website in 2018, after the magazine\u2019s editor, Matt Samet, became aware of Barrett\u2019s history of assaults and alleged harassment. Climbing, <\/i>then owned by Active Interest Media, is now owned by Outside Interactive.) Lucas made passing mention of Barrett\u2019s \u201clegal troubles\u201d and detailed his claim that he suffered debilitating panic attacks. These attacks, Lucas concluded, were the source of Barrett\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCharlie did not want me to put anything about his arrests in the story,\u201d Lucas recalled in an interview. \u201cMy goal was to just focus on his character as a climber. Looking back, that wasn\u2019t such a good idea. But my thinking then was that he was my friend and I wanted to believe he was a good person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around that time, Barrett met a young woman who court documents identify as \u201cK.G.\u201d and would become the subject of the current sexual-assault case. He\u2019d struck up a conversation with K.G. on Instagram and gave her a few recommendations for hiking in the Tuolumne Meadows<\/a> area. By then Barrett was no longer banned from Yosemite and was once again working for park concessions at Tuolumne Meadows. He invited K.G. to meet him and his friends on August 13 at Puppy Dome, a popular Tuolumne Meadows bouldering area, when she was done with her solo hike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While at Puppy Dome, the group asked K.G. to join them later to watch a meteor shower. K.G. agreed, and that evening she trekked with Barrett to an area where she thought they would find the rest of the group. Instead, he led her into an isolated forest. Once there, Barrett pushed K.G. to the ground, put his hands around her neck, and began strangling her. K.G. told investigators that she couldn\u2019t breathe and thought she was going to die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cShe was shunned and accused of blowing things out of proportion,\u201d climber Jake Dayley says of Hedlund. \u201cThere were people who idolized Charlie, and he was their connection to greatness. Being around him made them feel cool. They didn\u2019t want to lose that.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Data on men who assault women show that strangulation is a primary indicator of intent to kill, increasing the victim\u2019s chances of death by more than 750 percent<\/a>. Prosecution documents cite this as a strong indication of Barrett\u2019s \u201cextremely high capacity for violence, including violence resulting in death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a March 2023 motion from the prosecution, Barrett then pulled K.G.\u2019s pants down and \u201cviolently raped her.\u201d After the incident, Barrett led K.G. to his employee cabin, where she spent the night with Barrett, who slept on top of her. K.G. stayed with him  the next day and evening \u201cout of fear,\u201d according to court documents. He allegedly sexually assaulted her two more times\u2014during a hike and in an employee shower. K.G. later explained to investigators why she didn\u2019t attempt to run away or call for help. If she had, K.G. feared, Barrett would\u2019ve tried to kill her later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although K.G. didn\u2019t report the assault to federal authorities until April 2020, she responded to a text from Barrett after their trip and said that she no longer wanted to see him. \u201cI don\u2019t hang out with guys who rape me,\u201d she wrote. This angered Barrett, and over the next several years, according to prosecution filings, he became obsessed with either winning K.G. back or terrifying her into staying silent. \u201cShe monitored social media [for things Barrett might post about her], because she was worried Barrett would come after her,\u201d one investigator wrote. Another court document noted: \u201cBarrett harassed and intimidated K.G. by sending her text messages designed to show her he was still aware of her location.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October 2019, in part to distance herself from Barrett, K.G. moved to east-central Kentucky\u2019s Red River Gorge<\/a>, a popular climbing area inside Daniel Boone National Forest. A few days after she arrived, court records say, she got a text from Barrett, who had apparently heard about the move and followed her. \u201cHey, know we had a weird time and don\u2019t want any awkwardness,\u201d he wrote. \u201cHope you\u2019re crushing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett also apparently interfered with K.G.\u2019s ability to find employment in her new location. The owner of a restaurant where she applied for a waitressing job would later tell federal investigators that Barrett approached him and said that K.G. was \u201cinsane and would cause problems for his business,\u201d according to a report. The owner said he \u201cexpressed concerns\u201d to law enforcement about Barrett stalking K.G. Investigators would add this to their lengthening list of Barrett\u2019s attempts to frighten and intimidate his victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tuolumne
Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park (Photo: Tom Grubbe\/Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Around this time, Barrett decided that the Yosemite rangers were after him again. An investigator\u2019s report described how Barrett focused on one of the rangers who\u2019d arrested him in 2005, telling \u201cseveral friends in person and via text over the course of a couple of weeks that he was going to murder\u201d the ranger\u2019s twin nine-year-old daughters. He also talked about taking revenge on Lonnie Kauk, who he believed had betrayed him in the Hedlund case. He started using fake Instagram accounts, with no photos or profile information, as a tool for harassment. According to court documents, federal investigators who seized Barrett\u2019s laptop as evidence for the Yosemite case stated that he\u2019d used this tactic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll these fake Instagram accounts were just hating on me,\u201d Kauk says, describing comments he got when he posted photos from climbing and snowboarding trips. Based on how much Barrett had bad-mouthed Kauk to others in the climbing community, Kauk assumed that he was the troll. The comments, attached to photos of first ascents by Kauk, included taunts like \u201cI\u2019m going to kick your ass\u201d and \u201cthe Bishop climbing community hates you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kauk is a climbing ambassador for La Sportiva, and he says that Barrett posted negative comments about him on the brand\u2019s social media pages. Barrett would send Kauk texts full of eyeball emojis and call him at all hours from what Barrett would later describe to investigators as burner phones. Kauk told me that when he was interviewed about the assault of K.G. in Yosemite, he learned that some of the other climbers who were interviewed said Barrett had told them he wanted to \u201ckill\u201d Kauk. \u201cI was always looking over my shoulder,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Barrett frequently told friends that he was going to kill himself, and he seemed to mean it. One of the most dramatic incidents played out in Yosemite\u2019s Tuolumne Meadows in September 2016, when Barrett sent text messages to a friend telling him that he had two handguns\u2014a .44 and a .45. According to a Park Service report, Barrett said that he was \u201cgoing to die with her,\u201d though it was unclear who he meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The friend called 911. The park\u2019s special response team was dispatched, and negotiators found him in the forest and coaxed him out. He didn\u2019t have any weapons on him. He was taken to Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, where he was held for psychiatric evaluation, then released a few days later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By late 2016, Barrett had a new girlfriend, a young woman who court documents identify as \u201cE.B.,\u201d a climber and Pilates teacher based in Sebastopol, just west of Santa Rosa. They dated for a few months, but she broke it off as a result of what, in court documents, an investigator called \u201cincreasingly volatile behavior, including attempts to ascertain her movements and prevent her from seeing friends.\u201d After the split, Barrett showed up uninvited at E.B.\u2019s house, demanded to see her, and was allowed inside. He then took her phone away and, according to what she told investigators, \u201cheld her down and raped her.\u201d After that, E.B. would no longer let Barrett in her home, and he repeatedly attempted to break in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Sebastopol police report describes a break-in attempt that occurred on January 7, 2017, prompting E.B. to call 911. \u201cDispatch advised me that she could hear over the phone [E.B.] yelling at Barrett to leave her alone,\u201d the responding officer wrote. \u201cDispatch advised that she believed Barrett was actively attempting to force entry through the back of the residence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police arrested Barrett in front of E.B.\u2019s house. He insisted that he was not Charles Barrett and \u201cwas just passing through.\u201d He was charged with three misdemeanor counts, which could have landed him in jail for two years. In yet another deal, the Sonoma County district attorney dismissed two of the charges, and Barrett pleaded no contest to misdemeanor trespassing. He got a 24-month suspended sentence, conditional on him not harassing or contacting E.B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E.B. obtained an emergency protective order in January 2017, which Barrett promptly violated. Court documents describe how he went to the home of a friend, a well-known climber, and attempted to use his mobile phone to call and harass E.B. The friend later told investigators that he\u2019d refused to let Barrett use the phone, but heard from E.B. the next day that Barrett had somehow called from his number \u201cto threaten her life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E.B. would later tell federal investigators that fear of Barrett prompted her not to challenge the plea deal or Barrett\u2019s violation of the protective order. According to court documents: \u201cBarrett threatened that if she continued to pursue the charges against him he would \u2018ruin her life\u2019 and do \u2018unspeakable things\u2019 to her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Wickwire, a climber who grew up in Davis and was a longtime acquaintance of Barrett\u2019s, was in the process of purchasing a home in Las Vegas when he heard from Barrett in mid-2017. Barrett said that he was moving to the city and needed a place to live. He wanted to be closer to a girlfriend there, a nurse, and spend the winter climbing in the Nevada desert. Could Wickwire help him out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wickwire says he knew Barrett had a \u201ccheckered past\u201d when he agreed that summer to rent him a room, but he decided to trust him. Wickwire let Barrett move in after closing on the house in October. \u201cCharlie seemed like a really nice guy at first,\u201d Wickwire says. \u201cHe is really good at fooling people. He fooled me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the 2008 assault on Hedlund, Wickwire told me that he\u2019d heard about it from other climbers who explained it away. \u201cThe story that was told to me was that one day at the Buttermilks, Charlie and his girlfriend got in a fight,\u201d he says. \u201cShe spit in his face and he backhanded her. That was why he did six months\u2019 jail time. People were saying they both had blame.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day in November 2017, not long after Barrett went to Las Vegas, Stephanie Fort\u00e9 was shocked to see him climbing at her gym\u2014and, later, to discover that he was living in her hometown. According to her account in a police report, Fort\u00e9 did not want Barrett invading her safe space or posing a risk to other women. She talked to gym management about Barrett\u2019s criminal history and after repeated requests succeeded in getting him banned from the facility that month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Alex Honnold\u2019s knowledge of Barrett\u2019s violent behavior primarily consisted of \u201crumors heard around the campfire,\u201d and those rumors were often dismissed: \u201cPeople cut him more slack because he is incredibly talented, and he wrote those guidebooks and established really hard climbs.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Around this time, the nurse Barrett was seeing broke up with him. According to a report filed four years later by a federal investigator working on the Yosemite case, who\u2019d collected information on other victims, \u201cShe said she broke up with him \u2026 because of abuse directed at her, combined with the way he described past incidents of physical and sexual abuse involving other women. She described their relationship as going from extremes where Barrett was loving and caring and then him immediately changing and becoming physically aggressive and verbally berating her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life also became difficult for Wickwire. On Facebook, Barrett repeatedly posted that he was going to commit suicide, causing distant friends to call 911. The police would show up at Wickwire\u2019s house to do a welfare check, and Barrett would jump the back fence to get away. Wickwire says that he started locking his bedroom door at night, because Barrett would sneak into his room to use his phone for harassment calls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe trashed my house,\u201d says Wickwire. \u201cHe was probably drinking 30 beers a day. He wasn\u2019t violent. He was just drunk 24\/7.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wickwire and Barrett agreed that Barrett would move out on December 1, which he did, with the understanding that he would stay away from the place going forward. But in response to being banned, Barrett began making physical threats. Wickwire showed me text messages that said things like \u201cYou\u2019re not gonna walk for a while. Stupid fuck\u201d and \u201cEver taste pavement? I have people who have your address.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett also threatened the nurse. According to a federal investigator\u2019s report, he gained admission to the hospital ER where she worked by saying that he was suicidal. Then he got out of bed and followed her around, causing staff to worry about her safety. The investigator also described Barrett phoning the nurse and impersonating a police officer \u201cto make her believe he had actually killed himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe would come home and find Barrett sitting in her backyard,\u201d the report says. \u201cShe feared to leave her home because he parked in front of her house, or down the street, and he would follow her if she left.\u201d The nurse obtained a restraining order in June 2018, saying that she was terrified Barrett was going to kill her. In this instance, the police apparently couldn\u2019t locate Barrett, and the order was never served.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, most of Barrett\u2019s anger would be aimed at Fort\u00e9. He took being banned from the climbing gym as a declaration of war, and he embarked on a nearly five-year campaign of retaliation that would turn her life upside down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 2017, while Fort\u00e9 was visiting her family in New Jersey for the holidays, she got a disturbing text message from Bill Ramsey, her friend and next-door neighbor in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longtime climber in the area, Ramsey had received a series of text messages from Barrett warning that he was going to \u201ctake care of\u201d Fort\u00e9 and then kill himself. According to the police report about this incident, Ramsey had initially tried to support Barrett when he moved to town, but now he was worried about Fort\u00e9\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett knew that Ramsey was Fort\u00e9\u2019s neighbor, and he continued sending cryptic, sometimes ominous messages to Ramsey that later would be filed with the Mono County Superior Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTell Stephanie she won,\u201d he wrote on December 19, 2017. \u201cI have friends that are going to her house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to court records, Ramsey sought to distance himself from Barrett, who was living out of his truck and traveling between climbing areas in 2018. But the text messages kept coming, even though Ramsey rarely responded. Barrett threatened Fort\u00e9 with violence as well as a defamation suit. Ramsey shared the messages with Fort\u00e9, who had blocked Barrett on her phone and social media accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTell Stephanie she is warned,\u201d Barrett wrote on March 25, 2018. \u201cI\u2019m going to court.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 5: \u201cYou there? I\u2019m killing myself tonight. Thanks for the good times. Yeah tell Steph she won.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

August 10: \u201cDude, Stephanie is about to get worked. You can text me if you want. She\u2019s done though.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal investigators would later learn that in 2018 Barrett told a friend, a professional climber, that he planned to kill Fort\u00e9. The friend said he didn\u2019t take the threat seriously and wrongly assumed that it had something to do with Barrett having a \u201ccrush\u201d on Fort\u00e9 \u201cfrom a long time ago,\u201d according to court documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett repeatedly posted on social media that Fort\u00e9 was determined to ruin his life. In September 2018, he removed his Facebook profile photo and replaced it with a picture of Fort\u00e9 climbing. He found other photos of her online and posted them as well. One showed Fort\u00e9 smiling and sitting at the base of a climb. Barrett\u2019s caption read: \u201cI don\u2019t always ruin people\u2019s lives but when I do, I smile.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett named a new climbing route in Tuolumne Meadows \u201cFuck You Steph Fort\u00e9 Fuck You.\u201d He promoted the route to his approximately 5,000 Instagram followers, and in October 2019 it was posted on the best_of_8a Instagram account. The Tahoe Quarterly<\/i> piece came out around that time, and ESPN.com profiled Alex Honnold in September, describing Barrett as Honnold\u2019s friend and climbing partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honnold discussed that period with me at length in the summer of 2023. He mentioned that his friendship with Barrett was sporadic\u2014\u201cI would see Charlie once every few years for like a day or two,\u201d he said\u2014and acknowledged that he had a \u201cblind spot\u201d about him like many people did. Honnold\u2019s knowledge of Barrett\u2019s violent behavior primarily consisted of \u201crumors heard around the campfire,\u201d he told me, and those rumors were often dismissed: \u201cPeople cut him more slack because he is incredibly talented, and he wrote those guidebooks and established really hard climbs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honnold said that he\u2019d heard stories about a female professional climber he knew who\u2019d been in a relationship with Barrett and got \u201cpunched in the face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought: That\u2019s crazy,\u201d Honnold said. \u201cBut then I immediately thought: Maybe he was really drunk and they were fighting and that\u2019s how he ended up punching her in the face. And she is a very strong person who holds her own.\u201d (The climber, who Honnold named, did not respond to interview requests.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honnold said that he tries to see the best in people and always hoped that Barrett would turn his life around. \u201c[The violence] was a step beyond what I could imagine,\u201d he says. \u201cWhich I guess is why I had a blind spot around it. And the depressed-alcoholic thing is an easy way to mask some of the actual violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late 2019, Fort\u00e9 was twisting in the wind, feeling unsupported by the climbing community and law enforcement. Even though she\u2019d taken no action against Barrett since raising alarms at the climbing gym in 2017, he seemed certain she was out to get him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Barrett was climbing in Kentucky in 2019 and 2020\u2014where K.G. had moved\u2014tires on his truck were slashed. He said on Instagram that Fort\u00e9, who was living in Las Vegas, might have done it. Later, when two different girlfriends broke up with Barrett, he blamed it on Fort\u00e9. \u201cHarsh reality to wake up to,\u201d read an Instagram post from August 2021. \u201cSteph 2 Charlie 0.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett occasionally succeeded in sending Fort\u00e9 messages, by using his fake Instagram accounts. These eventually became part of materials retrieved from Barrett\u2019s laptop and phone that prosecutors sought as evidence of how Barrett tried to intimidate people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On May 14, 2020, using an account called Shuan_5540, he said of Fort\u00e9: \u201cYou are an absolute piece of shit human but I am sure you know that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From fro_mtt on September 3, 2021: \u201cYou\u2019re going down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett told friends that he was trying to get his life back and was working on filing a defamation suit against Fort\u00e9. He said that women were conspiring against him to capitalize on #MeToo. He often closed his online complaints about Fort\u00e9 and others with the hashtag #MenToo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By late 2021, Barrett knew that he might be going back to prison soon; federal authorities had opened an investigation into his 2016 assault of K.G. in Yosemite. Kristy McGee, the lead detective, had worked on more than 100 sexual-assault cases for the National Park Service\u2019s Investigative Services Branch and had formally interviewed Barrett in July. For Barrett, this was no scuffle with the county sheriff. Things were getting very serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 2022, Barrett showed up at the Mammoth Hospital emergency room asking for help. He was admitted January 5 at 2 a.m.; a Mammoth Lakes police report filed two days later, at the request of worried hospital staff, described him as a \u201csuicidal and homicidal patient.\u201d Barrett said that he intended to drive to Las Vegas and kill Fort\u00e9. He also said that he was being investigated by federal authorities for sexual assault and gave them McGee\u2019s phone number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hospital staff called McGee, who contacted Fort\u00e9 the next morning to inform her of the threat. Meanwhile, Mammoth police helped Fort\u00e9 obtain a criminal protective order against Barrett from a judge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett was held overnight in the ER, where he was evaluated by a staff physician. She would later tell police that Barrett described wanting to kill Fort\u00e9 because Fort\u00e9 had \u201cruined his life,\u201d but he couldn\u2019t describe how or give her examples. The physician added that Barrett said \u201che wanted to cut the legs off of everyone that has ruined his life.\u201d She felt \u201cuneasy about being around Barrett,\u201d so she left the room he was in, according to a report. She believed that his threats should be taken seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett was transferred from the ER to a regional mental health facility for 24 hours of evaluation and placed under a mandatory hold to prevent him from leaving on his own. Mammoth police were waiting for Barrett in the parking lot when he was discharged. After an interview at the station, he was arrested on two felony counts: stalking and making criminal threats. While in a holding cell, he tied a shoelace around his neck and then to a doorknob in what he claimed was a suicide attempt. An officer intervened and untied him. Barrett was released on bail on January 8. Court records show that he went back to harassing Fort\u00e9 and other women, using burner phones and fake Instagram accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of three years, Fort\u00e9 had taken strong steps to protect and isolate herself. In 2018, she stopped climbing and invested in a security system for her Las Vegas home. In 2019, she closed her PR agency, not wanting to maintain a public profile. The 2022 death threat pushed her deeper into hiding. She moved to a high-security gated complex and turned down work that required her to appear in public. Hedlund, too, was still on Barrett\u2019s mind: she got a middle-of-the-night call from him in June 2022, after her protective order had expired. It sent her into a tailspin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 2022, Barrett was offered another deal, this time by a Mono County deputy district attorney named Tobias Hasler. He pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of threatening with intent to terrorize. The stalking charge was dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I researched Barrett\u2019s legal history, I was struck by how often he\u2019d been offered deals. But several attorneys I consulted\u2014people with years of experience litigating the kinds of charges Barrett faced\u2014weren\u2019t surprised. They said that there\u2019s always pressure in criminal cases to reach a deal instead of going through a costly trial. Being a white male probably helped Barrett, too: prison sentences for black men are typically 20 percent longer<\/a> than for white men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

On Instagram, Jon Krakauer pushed back at a poster who defended Barrett. \u201cSexual assault is probably the only crime in which the victim is assumed to be lying,\u201d he wrote. \u201cYou should be much more concerned about the victim getting a fair trial, not Barrett.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Barrett soon returned to his old routine. He texted Bill Ramsey in June, asking Ramsey to take his side while saying something ominous about Fort\u00e9. \u201cIf you want to be part of the stand against women ruining men you\u2019re more than welcome,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI am so damn happy she\u2019s going down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On August 29, during a hearing at the Mono County courthouse, Barrett appeared before Judge Mark Magit and was given a deferred judgment for the misdemeanor violation, with no jail time. This in spite of the lengthy investigation report filed by Mammoth Lakes police, which chronicled Barrett\u2019s stalking behavior and death threats aimed at Fort\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort\u00e9 was terrified by the prospect of Barrett being free. In a victim\u2019s impact statement she read at the hearing, she talked about how various police officers had advised her to buy a gun to protect herself. \u201cBarrett can snap, and victims end up dead,\u201d one told her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday I am begging the court to help me not to end up as that victim,\u201d she said. \u201cI do not believe the plea deal or telling Mr. Barrett not to drink will bring this to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Fort\u00e9 finished, Magit emphasized to Barrett that he was not to contact her under any circumstances. He told Barrett that it was time to straighten up, mentioning his reputation as an accomplished climber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re \u2026 in that subculture of incredibly brave people who free-climb up mountains that most people wouldn\u2019t even think of climbing at all,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is strength. That is perseverance. That is mental discipline that few ever reach. But you need to apply that to your personal conduct as well.\u201d With that, Barrett was free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not for long. When he walked out of the courtroom, he was immediately arrested by federal authorities. During a September 2, 2022, detention hearing in Fresno, federal judge Barbara McAuliffe denied Barrett\u2019s release on the grounds that he was an ongoing threat to the safety of his victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems likely, judging by pretrial court filings, that Barrett\u2019s lawyers will attack K.G.\u2019s credibility. Court documents say that she \u201ctakes medication to treat a bipolar diagnosis,\u201d and that, at the time of the incident, she maintained a personal website \u201cdedicated to amateur erotic photos.\u201d When she and Barrett met in Yosemite in August 2016, the defense says, she used her phone to show Barrett photos in which she was posing \u201cbound and topless.\u201d In a responding motion, the prosecution pointed out that \u201cthere is no logical connection between seeing erotic photos and consent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McAuliffe granted a motion from the defense to question K.G. about the photographs during the trial, noting in a ruling from last November: \u201cDefendant argues that seeing these photographs gave him a reasonable impression that K.G. expected to engage in rough sex with him.\u201d McAuliffe also granted a request for Barrett\u2019s attorneys to obtain records from K.G.\u2019s mental health providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motions from the prosecution indicate that its case will focus not just on the Yosemite sexual-assault charges, but on a pattern of predatory behavior revealed by Barrett\u2019s decades-long criminal history with women like Hedlund, Fort\u00e9, and E.B. This is an approach made possible by a 1996 rule of civil procedure called Rule 413<\/a>, which allows the court to admit evidence of prior sexual assaults when a defendant is accused of this crime. Finally, it appears, the criminal-justice system is prepared to connect the dots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The federal courthouse in Sacramento, site of Barrett\u2019s trial (Photo: Rojer Wisner<\/a>\/Creative Commons<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

News of Barrett\u2019s arrest rippled across social media and climbing websites in September 2022. In threads on MountainProject.com<\/a> and Instagram, people wrestled with what to make of the news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some wondered if it could be true. Charlie seemed like such a nice guy. Why did the victim wait so long to report the assault? Why did she stay with him after he attacked her? Remember, several people cautioned, Charlie is presumed innocent until proven guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That month, author and climber Jon Krakauer weighed in, posting on his Instagram page about Barrett\u2019s arrest and urging other victims to contact police. In a lengthy response thread, many female climbers expressed gratitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWow, I\u2019m blown away that he\u2019s not able to hide behind the bro code and sweep it under the rug,\u201d a poster called @ambersand wrote of Barrett\u2019s arrest. \u201cThanks for doing the unpopular thing in standing with women and helping get in front of victim shaming\/blaming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krakauer also pushed back against some who seemed to defend Barrett. A poster called @justanotherpaleoguy complained that Krakauer\u2019s words were hurting Barrett\u2019s chances of getting a fair trial. \u201cBest to leave the police work to the police,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd please bear in mind he might actually be innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf Barrett had been arrested for a different crime, I doubt you would be posting this,\u201d Krakauer replied. \u201cSexual assault is probably the only crime in which the victim is assumed to be lying. You should be much more concerned about the victim getting a fair trial, not Barrett. Rapists almost always escape accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Lucas, who broke with Barrett in 2017, can understand why some people, out of misplaced sympathy for his problems, might want to protect him. Lucas believes that these feelings helped keep Barrett in a position to victimize people far longer than should have been possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCharlie had climbing, which gave him a way to grow and focus, and offered him a good life path, but ultimately it wasn\u2019t enough,\u201d he says. \u201cHis behavior toward women got more aggressive over the years. It\u2019s a hard subject to talk about because many climbers feel complicit in what happened. If someone is misbehaving in our community, what is our responsibility to intervene?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Mike Wickwire, Barrett\u2019s arrest forced a reckoning with a passion that\u2019s been central to his identity. In September 2022, he posted on Facebook about his uncomfortable realization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis man has been a parasite in our community for decades and we (myself included) have enabled him,\u201d he wrote. \u201cCharlie is a talented climber and extremely gregarious plus his history of mental health issues made it easy for all of us to make excuses for him. We as a community failed. We failed his victims and allowed him to continue victimizing. I hope that he is finally held accountable and that the women he violated find some closure. Let\u2019s do better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wickwire recalls instances where other climbers lied about their ascents and were quickly banished. \u201cNo one would climb with them or believe what they said,\u201d he points out. But when it came to stories about Barrett\u2019s violence against women, people were too willing to look the other way\u2014even after Barrett was arrested and a detailed indictment from a federal investigation was posted online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a dissonance between how climbers think of themselves and what they actually do,\u201d says Kimbrough Moore, a longtime climber, a guidebook author, and a philosophy professor at San Francisco State University. \u201cIn my experience, the climbing community has been hostile to women who have come out saying they were assaulted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Barrett, Moore says: \u201cI have never heard of anyone doing more to harm the climbing community than Charlie. He has used his status as an elite climber to hurt people for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moore doesn\u2019t think that the climbing world is any worse than society in general when it comes to sexual assault and harassment. But it\u2019s also no better, he says. Results from the 2018 Safe Outside survey<\/a> support this view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of more than 5,000 climbers who participated\u2014about half of them men and half women\u201447 percent of women and 16 percent of men said they\u2019d experienced sexual assault or harassment during a climbing activity. These results are similar to various studies<\/a> of the U.S. workplace, which generally show that some 38 percent of women and 14 percent of men have experienced sexual harassment at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople often climb because it gives them meaning and joy,\u201d Moore says. \u201cIt would be helpful for them not to limit their experience to only meaning and joy.\u201d Moore believes that being aware of bad actors in climbing\u2014and life in general\u2014doesn\u2019t detract from the positive aspects of the sport and is critical for creating a safer community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need to have your mind open to the possibility of climbers being hurt by other climbers,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you\u2019re not looking around and seeing a messy community, then you\u2019re not seeing the community for what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI have never heard of anyone doing more to harm the climbing community than Charlie,\u201d says Kimbrough Moore, a longtime climber and a philosophy professor at San Francisco State University. \u201cHe has used his status as an elite climber to hurt people for a very long time.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

After Barrett was arrested in August 2022, Bonnie Hedlund started climbing again for the first time in more than a decade. She has not yet returned to the Buttermilks\u2014a place that remains extremely triggering\u2014but says she\u2019s \u201cworking up to it.\u201d And while she no longer sleeps with a baseball bat under her bed, she still checks behind the shower curtain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A large part of Hedlund\u2019s adult life has been consumed by trauma, but what worries her most is Barrett\u2019s younger, more recent victims\u2014especially if there are some who are reluctant, for whatever reason, to talk about what happened. For those women she has three words: \u201cI believe you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Trial: Barrett Sentenced to Life in Prison for Rape<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In February 2024, accomplished California climber and guidebook author Charles Barrett was sentenced to life in prison for the rape of a woman in Yosemite National Park. The ruling, made by U.S. District Court Judge John A. Mendez, comes after a weeklong February trial in which a jury found Barrett guilty of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact. All of the case\u2019s proceedings were held in Sacramento.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBarrett\u2019s long history of sexual violence supports the imposition of a life sentence,\u201d said U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert in statement released shortly after the sentencing. \u201cHe used his status as a prominent climber to assault women in the rock-climbing community, and when his victims began to tell, Barrett responded by lashing out publicly with threats and intimidation. This case is a testament to the courage of the victims who reported these crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When given the opportunity at today\u2019s hearing, Barrett declined to make a statement to the court before his sentencing was delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett, 40, has been in federal custody since August 2022, when he was arrested for sexually assaulting a fellow climber identified as K.G. in court documents. K.G. testified during the trial that she initially connected with Barrett through Instagram in 2016, when he offered her advice on a weekend hiking trip she was planning in Yosemite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After completing a solo day hike on August 13, 2016, K.G. met Barrett and his friends in Tuolumne Meadows, where he was working for a Yosemite concessionaire and living in park housing. She agreed to accompany Barrett to watch a meteor shower, but instead of rejoining the group of friends as she had expected, Barrett led K.G. into a remote forested area, where he pushed her to the ground and strangled her. According to a May 15 sentencing memorandum filed by the prosecution, Barrett \u201cforcibly raped\u201d K.G. that night and then again the next day in an employee-housing shower. She was 19 years old at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett\u2019s February trial not only involved testimony from K.G. but also from three other female climbers who had been sexually assaulted by him. These assaults were not charged by federal authorities because they occurred on lands outside federal jurisdiction, but they were introduced at the trial to demonstrate Barrett\u2019s pattern of predatory behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An extensive investigation<\/a> that I wrote for Outside,<\/i> published shortly before the trial, detailed how Barrett stalked and harassed his victims, causing them to fear for their lives. My story also chronicled how Barrett used his notoriety in the climbing community, which was bolstered by his relationships with well-known professional climbers, to prey on women and mask his criminal behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over a 14-year period, nine protection or restraining orders were filed against Barrett for incidents that involved the harassment or assault of at least six women; these included death threats, trolling on Instagram, and impersonating a police officer. Since Barrett\u2019s conviction, two additional female victims have been named in court documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cBarrett\u2019s long history of sexual violence supports the imposition of a life sentence,\u201d said U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert in statement released shortly after the sentencing. \u201c\u2026This case is a testament to the courage of the victims who reported these crimes.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In K.G.\u2019s victim-impact statement\u2014submitted to the court before sentencing\u2014she described in graphic detail what she experienced during the assault, when Barrett not only raped her but strangled her to the point that she had trouble breathing. \u201cI realized he wouldn\u2019t hesitate to choke me to death if he decided it was in his best interest,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI could feel it in his grip\u2014that he would not only kill someone, but he would do it with his bare hands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prosecution\u2019s sentencing memorandum also describes how J.V., another female climber who testified at the trial, was \u201cstrangled and raped\u201d by Barrett \u201con the first night she met him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data on men who assault women show that strangulation is a primary indicator of intent to kill, increasing the victim\u2019s chances of death by more than 750 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A legally mandated presentencing investigation conducted by a federal parole officer, which involved interviews with Barrett and a full tally of his criminal history, advised the court that, based on federal guidelines, Barrett should receive a sentence of 40 years. In the prosecution\u2019s sentencing memorandum, however, attorneys petitioned for a life term, stating that Barrett was \u201cincapable of acknowledging wrongdoing,\u201d and that incarceration would be the only way to protect his victims\u2019 safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A supplemental May 28 memorandum from the prosecution described recorded calls Barrett made from jail during the past several weeks that showed \u201ca mentality of victimhood that cannot be rehabilitated.\u201d In conversations with family members, Barrett said his case was the result of a \u201cNational Park Service conspiracy\u201d and that \u201cthey have it out for me.\u201d As a result, he said, he feared for his life. He also stated in the calls that he was writing a book about his experience, which would include claims that he\u2019s a victim of the #MeToo movement. During a May 13 call to an uncle, Barrett described the trial\u2019s testimony as \u201crandom girls saying whatever they wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett\u2019s two public defenders, Timothy Hennessy and David Torres, petitioned the court in a May 7 sentencing memorandum, asking that Barrett not serve more than 15 years. After today\u2019s hearing, Torres told Outside<\/i> that they plan to pursue an appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Barrett was convicted on sexual assault charges, the primary fear expressed by his victims was that he would eventually carry out his threats to kill them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe trauma of being raped is extensive, as is the re-traumatization of being a victim in a rape case,\u201d K.G. wrote in her statement. \u201cBoth are secondary to living under the threat of murder.\u201d She added that the threat \u201cwas so alarming and foreign to those around me that I hid the central conflict of my life from almost everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another victim statement written for the court, Stephanie Fort\u00e9, who was sexually assaulted by Barrett in 2010, detailed how he terrorized her for five years. Barrett\u2019s campaign of revenge against Fort\u00e9 began in 2017 after she privately petitioned management at her Las Vegas climbing gym to ban Barrett in order to protect the safety of women at the facility. Like K.G., Fort\u00e9 found little support from a disbelieving climbing community or a criminal justice system that seemed to downplay the danger Barrett posed to his victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to court records, Barrett told a male climber friend in 2018 that he planned to kill Fort\u00e9. The friend did not report this threat to police; he later told National Park Service investigators that he didn\u2019t think Barrett was serious. But in January 2022, when Barrett announced to staff at the hospital in the nearby town of Mammoth Lakes that he wanted to kill Fort\u00e9, he was arrested by Mammoth Lakes police on two felony counts: stalking and making criminal threats. He was then released on bond the next day and continued to harass Fort\u00e9, according to court records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her statement, Fort\u00e9 described the financial and health impacts caused by Barrett\u2019s violent and ongoing threats on social media. \u201cHe crafted a narrative of being my victim,\u201d she stated. \u201cHe told his followers I was stalking him. I wasn\u2019t safe anywhere because the internet and Mr. Barrett were everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the Mono County deputy district attorney handling her case struck a plea deal with Barrett and reduced the two felony charges to a single misdemeanor count of threatening with intent to terrorize. The stalking charge was dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI realized he wouldn\u2019t hesitate to choke me to death if he decided it was in his best interest,\u201d the victim identified as K.G. wrote in a pre-sentencing statement. \u201cI could feel it in his grip\u2014that he would not only kill someone, but he would do it with his bare hands.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In a conversation following the February trial, Fort\u00e9 told me that the Mono County District Attorney\u2019s office never investigated her case by interviewing witnesses. And she was not informed of the plea deal with Barrett until nine days after it was finalized; nor did the DA\u2019s office facilitate restitution as required by Marsy\u2019s Law<\/a>, <\/i>which protects victims\u2019 rights. Additionally, when Fort\u00e9 was granted a protective order against Barrett following the January 2022 death threat, she said Mono County refused to include online harassment as part of the order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie Hedlund, who was assaulted by Barrett in front of witnesses at a popular California climbing area in 2008, had a similar experience with the state\u2019s justice system in Inyo County. In her victim-impact statement submitted to the court for the recent Yosemite case, Hedlund described how Barrett had been charged with felony domestic violence for the attack against her. But she was informed by the Inyo County victim\u2019s advocate that the district attorney planned to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor. Hedlund quickly drove four hours from her home to the DA\u2019s office to demand that they not reduce the charge, because doing so would threaten her safety. She was successful, but, according to her statement, she was also \u201cunnecessarily demeaned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Inyo County DA\u2019s staff said disturbing things to me,\u201d Hedlund wrote. \u201cThey included: \u2018Well, I heard he is a great athlete.\u2019 \u2018He is a great climber.\u2019 And \u2018If you are so afraid [of him], then why are you here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No court documents had been filed by the defense at press time to reveal what the arguments for an appeal might be. However, the defense will not be able to employ the same legal strategy used by attorneys for Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, whose 2020 rape conviction was overturned in February by the New York Court of Appeals, on the grounds that testimony from other victims interfered with a fair trial. A foundational strategy used in prosecuting Barrett\u2019s case was Federal Rule 413<\/a>, which allows the testimony of uncharged victims in sexual assault crimes. The rule applies to all federal sexual-assault cases and is also allowed in 16 states. But it is currently not codified in New York state law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a statement released shortly after today\u2019s hearing, Yosemite National Park superintendent Cicely Muldoon said Barrett\u2019s life sentence \u201csends a clear message about the consequences of this criminal behavior.\u201d She also noted that \u201cit makes Yosemite a safer place for the climbing community, park visitors and our employees.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Barrett\u2019s victims, who testified at his trial, several told me they hoped their speaking up about what they experienced would help prevent a future serial predator from being able to embed himself in the climbing community the way Barrett did. For these women, the life sentence is a hard-won and bittersweet victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe life sentence is a relief,\u201d Fort\u00e9 said after today\u2019s hearing. \u201cBut it does not undo the damage Barrett caused. The life I\u2019d built crumbled under the weight of years spent living in fear of being killed while people looked away. I hope both the local jurisdictions that failed his victims and the climbing community will see this case as an impetus for change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Charles Barrett just lost his court appeal (Photo: Mono County Sheriff’s Office)
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Charles Barrett Loses His Court Appeal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In a ruling issued on December 8, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court\u2019s conviction and life sentence<\/a> of accomplished California climber and guidebook author Charles Barrett<\/a> for the rape of a woman in Yosemite National Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett was found guilty by a federal jury after a February 2024 trial of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact. He received the maximum sentence of life in prison in June 2024 from U.S. District Court Judge John A. Mendez. Mendez noted that the harsh penalty was warranted because of Barrett\u2019s \u201cpattern of terrorizing his victims\u201d and \u201ca clear lack of remorse.\u201d Prior convictions, including felony domestic violence and making criminal threats, were also a factor in the judge\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett, 41, has been in federal custody since August 2022, when he was arrested for sexually assaulting a fellow climber identified as K.G. in court documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After learning of the court\u2019s ruling against Barrett\u2019s appeal, K.G. told Outside<\/em> that the 18-month appeal process had caused her tremendous anxiety and fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was afraid for my safety in the panicked way I was before Barrett was detained,\u201d K.G. told Outside. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea that it could all come undone after we\u2014the other victims, the investigator, the prosecutors, the rest of the legal team, my family, my allies, and myself\u2014had done everything we could to pursue safety through the legal system was utterly terrifying,\u201d K.G. added. \u201cI started safety planning, considering where I could hide out and how I could leave the country to evade retaliation were the conviction to be overturned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett\u2019s History of Sexual Assault and Violence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

K.G. testified during the trial that she initially connected with Barrett through Instagram in 2016 when he offered her advice on a weekend hiking trip she was planning in Yosemite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After completing a solo day hike on August 13, 2016, K.G. met Barrett and his friends in Tuolumne Meadows where he was working for a concessionaire and living in park housing. She agreed to accompany Barrett to watch a meteor shower, but instead of joining the group of friends as she had expected, Barrett led K.G. into a remote forested area where he pushed her to the ground and strangled her. According to a May 15, 2024, sentencing memorandum filed by the prosecution, Barrett \u201cforcibly raped\u201d K.G. that night and then again the next day. He also sexually assaulted her. She was 19 years old at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett\u2019s February 2024 trial not only involved testimony from K.G. but also from three other female climbers who had been sexually assaulted by him. These assaults were not charged by federal authorities because they occurred on lands outside federal jurisdiction but were introduced at the trial to demonstrate Barrett\u2019s pattern of predatory behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An extensive investigation by Outside<\/em><\/a> published shortly before the trial detailed how Barrett stalked and harassed his victims, causing them to fear for their lives. The story also chronicles how Barrett used his notoriety in the climbing community, which was bolstered by his relationships with well-known professional climbers, to prey on women and mask his criminal behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over a 14-year period, nine protection or restraining orders were filed against Barrett for incidents that involved the harassment or assault of at least six women; this included death threats, trolling on Instagram, and impersonating a police officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett\u2019s attorneys immediately appealed both the June 2024 sentencing and his conviction. Donald B. Marks, who represented Barrett at a November 20 hearing before a Ninth Circuit panel of three judges, contested evidence presented at the trial as well as the justification for the maximum sentence. Marks did not respond to Outside\u2019s <\/em>repeated requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe there are issues of credibility,\u201d Marks said during the hearing, regarding K.G.\u2019s trial testimony. \u201cAnd there are issues with whether the assaults occurred based on a lack of consent.\u201d Marks told the Ninth Circuit judges that he thought it was a \u201che said, she said\u201d case because there were no eyewitnesses to the rapes. He also contended that Barrett\u2019s conviction was unwarranted due to the fact that he was intoxicated during the assaults and \u201clacked the capacity to form the requisite intent to commit the offense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Ninth Circuit judges Karen E. Schreier, Mary M. Schroeder and Michelle T. Friedland were not persuaded. \u201cUltimately, whether K.G.\u2019s testimony was believable was a question for the jury to determine,\u201d wrote Judge Schreier in the court\u2019s December 8 ruling, \u201cand it is well established that the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness may be sufficient to sustain a conviction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some Closure for Barrett\u2019s Victims<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Court documents show that Barrett vowed during recorded phone calls from jail to seek revenge against victims who testified at his trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephanie Fort\u00e9, another climber who testified at Barrett\u2019s trial, said the appeal ruling represents an important milestone for Barrett\u2019s victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe appeal shadowed everything,\u201d said Fort\u00e9, who was sexually assaulted by Barrett.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett left death threats for Fort\u00e9, and also stalked her for several years. \u201cThis ruling does more than offer relief to those harmed by Barrett,\u201d she added. \u201cIt validates voices like mine, uncharged victims, and sets a precedent that will help future survivors. That matters, especially to those wondering if their story will be believed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Bonnie Hedlund, one of Barrett\u2019s first known victims, she spent December 8 putting up Christmas decorations and feeling a sense of safety and freedom that she had not experienced in decades. Barrett knocked Hedlund unconscious at her home in 2006. He then assaulted her again at a campground in 2008, punching her repeatedly in the head until she was bleeding and dropped to the ground. She has lived in fear of Barrett attacking her again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure if there is ever true closure after trauma happens in your life,\u201d she reflected on December 8 after news of the ruling. \u201cIt\u2019s more like learning to carry an emotional backpack you never asked for but over time you figure out how to walk with it. Today, the backpack feels a lot lighter, like someone removed a few extra rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett is currently serving his sentence at United States Penitentiary Tucson in Tucson, Arizona. It is described on the Bureau of Prisons website as a high-security penitentiary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available. To reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline, call 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For support outside the U.S., visit <\/i>findahelpline.com<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have information related to this case or believe you may be a victim of Charles Barrett, the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office asks that you submit a tip <\/i>online<\/i><\/a>, call 888-653-0009, or email <\/i>nps_isb@nps.gov<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note, March 11, 2024:<\/b> This story has been updated to reflect additional information about the crimes committed by Charles Barrett against the victim identified as K.G. The account, published on January 31, 2024, by writer Annette McGivney, relied on what <\/i>Outside and McGivney believed were the most reliable facts available in court documents prior to the first day of the trial, on February 5. McGivney has since learned from other court documents, including a pretrial prosecution brief that became publicly available on January 29, that some of the federal government\u2019s earlier motions had omitted important details about K.G.\u2019s 2016 encounter with Barrett in Yosemite National Park. These details have been corrected in our text. (K.G. and the other witnesses testifying at Barrett\u2019s trial were advised by the prosecution to avoid speaking to the media and were not interviewed for this story.)<\/i> Additionally, when describing the indictment against Barrett, <\/i>Outside and McGivney<\/i> used the term \u201csexual assault charges.\u201d More precisely, Barrett was accused and found guilty of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact. <\/i>\u2014Alex Heard, editor in chief, Outside<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n

He Was a Celebrated Climber. For Years, Women Warned About Him. Then a Jury Convicted Him to Life in Prison. Charles Barrett remained a prominent California climber despite years of violence, threats, and warnings from women. He was eventually convicted of sexually abusing a woman in Yosemite, sentenced to life in prison, and lost his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":7430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main"],"modified_by":"Outside Editors","acf":{"article_authors":"Annette McGivney","send_as_draft":false,"send_as_paid":true,"send_as_featured":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7431"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7451,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7431\/revisions\/7451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/outside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}