ALPINE — After a short delay for bad weather, Utah County Search and Rescue crews found the body of missing 20-year-old hiker Nathan Wallace just after noon Tuesday.

Crews rappelled off a 200-foot wall in the Alpine Wilderness Area and found Wallace's body face down in a drainage ditch filled with 20 inches of water.

Wallace and his friend Eric Monfrooy, 21, both of Salt Lake City, started climbing Lone Peak mountain Sunday morning.

They had each lugged 30 pounds of hiking gear for nearly five hours to a base camp but were too tired to do the planned rock climb. They stashed the gear and started hiking back down.

But they got lost, and in the fading sunlight, Wallace lost his footing on the moss-covered rocks.

He slipped off the trail and fell 200 feet, the last 20 feet a free-fall into the river below, said Lt. Darren Gilbert of the Utah County Sheriff's Office.

Monfrooy yelled for his friend but couldn't search the steep muddy area in the dark and spent the night sleeping on a rock.

By Monday morning, his cell phone had gained enough battery power to make a one-minute call to police, who were able to help him off the mountain around 10 a.m.

Weather played a constant role in the rescue efforts. The search Monday was stopped just before 6 p.m. with concern over an approaching thunderstorm, Gilbert said.

Tuesday morning, a severe thunderstorm kept searchers off the mountain until almost 11 a.m. Technical problems with the Department of Public Safety helicopter also delayed transporting of searchers.

More than two dozen members from Utah County and Salt Lake County search and rescue teams combed the mountain and manned the command post.

Wallace's mother and father started climbing Tuesday to search for their son. However, because of the dangerous nature of the "hot zone" — where searchers believed Wallace slipped — only search and rescue members were taken via helicopter up the mountain, Gilbert said.

Rebecca Wallace described her son as an avid sportsman who loved snowboarding, long boarding and skateboarding. Rock climbing was his favorite.

"We've been hiking, climbing (for years)," Rebecca Wallace said. "I've been carrying him in a backpack (hiking) since he was a baby."

Neither Wallace nor Monfrooy had climbed Lone Peak before, Monfrooy said, but both were experienced climbers.

Climbing was what Wallace talked about at work, too, said Wendi Lund, general manager of Takashi Sushi in Salt Lake City, the sushi bar where Wallace had worked since May.

Wallace and the other outdoor-enthusiast sushi chefs would swap stories about good climbing locations and great hikes.

"He was an awesome employee," Lund said. "He was very friendly, very polite. This is such a great loss for everybody."

The business has set up the Nate Wallace Fund at Zions Bank with all the donations going to his mother, who lived with him.

"He's a sweet young man," Rebecca Wallace said. "Just a sweet, wonderful kid."

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