Angela Ha loved life so much, she refused to give it up without a fight.
When she fell while climbing a mountain in Victoria’s west last week, suffering serious injuries, she clung to life for 10 hours while a high-angle rescue team worked to save her.
Her father Daniel and sister Michelle scrambled to make it to her bedside at The Alfred hospital from their Sydney home, but Angela succumbed to her injuries at 10.30pm on April 27, less than an hour before their arrival.
It was a crushing loss for Michelle and her two other siblings, all of whom lost their great idol, but they can see beauty and poetry among the agony – knowing their sister’s final day at Mount Arapiles reflected how she lived.
“I said to Dad that people pass every day – in car accidents, in plane accidents,” said Michelle. “I’m glad she was in a beautiful place that she loved and with people she was familiar with when she died.
“She just had the biggest heart. I don’t think I have ever met anyone more dedicated to life than she was.
“It’s funny, because I was talking to her roommates here in Sydney the other day, and they were saying Angela’s bedtime was always strictly before 10pm. So it only makes sense that, you know, she had to rest.”
The four siblings are second-generation Australians – their parents having moved from Vietnam before they were born – and were raised in the tight-knit community in that part of Sydney.
When she starts talking about Angela, Michelle finds it difficult to stop.
“I just thought she was the coolest big sister … we were always making up dances to the most random songs, and she was like a cartoon character in the way that she would be having a normal conversation and just break out into a dance move. She was just a bundle of joy, she never wanted a dull moment in her life.”
Always outdoorsy, Angela was bitten by the rockclimbing bug about six years ago, moving from Croydon, in Sydney’s inner west, to the Blue Mountains to pursue her passion.
At 24, she had already completed an architecture degree; after a few overseas trips, she was preparing to start a physiotherapy course at the University of Sydney.
“She was enjoying it so much,” Michelle remembered. “She had so much to tell us every week, of things that she had learned she was practising on me and Stephanie with a stethoscope.”
But before finishing her doctorate, she wanted to return to Mount Arapiles, a placed she loved dearly.
It was during this 10-day trip with friends that Angela lost her life, falling while trying to summit a climbing route known as “Tannin”, in a section known as the Organ Pipes for its rugged tubular crags.
Angela’s passing is also felt within Australia’s broader rockclimbing community, a small group that shares Angela’s lust for life and dedication to the craft.
Mount Arapiles rises from the flat cropping fields west of Horsham, and has been a renowned climbing destination since the early 1960s.
About 45,000 climbers visit each year, some camping for weeks at the base while conquering its routes of various difficulties.
Mike Rockell, CEO of Climbing Victoria, said the whole climbing community was in mourning and that their thoughts were with Angela’s family.
“There are people that I know who know [Angela], so there’s a feeling of ‘there but for the grace of god go we’, because all of us have had close calls over time,” he said. “It’s quite sobering.”
Arapiles is the busiest location for high-angle rescues by emergency services anywhere in Victoria, with 33 in the past 11 years. Lee Lee Heah, a barrister from New Zealand, also died while climbing there in November 2024.
Rockell said the rate of serious accidents was more a reflection of the mountain’s popularity than of the danger it posed to climbers.
He also said the pathways to outdoor climbing were changing, as many people learn to climb within the safety of dedicated city gyms. Rockell warned that climbers required good mentorship to safely pursue the activity once they transitioned outdoors.
Police are preparing a report for the coroner, who will determine exactly what happened in Angela’s case.
Michelle can’t ever remember Angela wearing black, only vibrant, earthy colours, and so those who attend her funeral this week will be asked to do the same.
“She was truly always one with nature. We want people to celebrate that,” Michelle said.
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