RAFU WIRE SERVICES
MOAB, Utah — A Japanese couple from Torrance were identified on Monday as the couple that died in a fall while hiking in Arches National Park in Utah last Friday.
Toshiaki Amimoto, 65, and Etoko Amimoto, 60, of Torrance, and a 30-year-old man were traversing a steep slope in a sandstone bowl adjacent to Delicate Arch in Arches National Park on Friday about 7:45 a.m., when all three fell, according to a statement from the Grand County Sheriff’s Office.
“The weather at the time of the accident was intermittent rain and snow with temperatures in the low 30s,” the sheriff’s office said.
The surviving man, another family member, was flown by medical helicopter to a local hospital with serious injuries.
Amimoto was a senior vice president at Takenaka Partners LLC. A graduate of Waseda University, he received his MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA. Prior to joining Takenaka Partners, he worked for the Nippon Credit Bank Ltd. and was responsible for the international banking and capital markets areas in London and Tokyo. He also worked as a director in the Financial Advisory Service practice of KPMG LLP and focused on mergers and acquisitions, and valuation of companies.
The accident remained under investigation Monday by the U.S. Park Service and Grand County Sheriff’s Office.
The 46-foot-tall Delicate Arch is the largest free-standing arch and the most widely known of the 2,000 arches in the park, which draws more than 1.5 million visitors per year. Delicate Arch is one of the three main arches featured on Utah license plates. The trail to the iconic arch is three miles long with a 480-foot climb.
The Delicate Arch Trail was closed temporarily on Friday but reopened later in the evening. Park rangers posted a tweet warning visitors that “winter conditions make for slippery hiking; proceed with caution.”