Three killed in Mount Hood tragedy
TIMBERLINE LODGE, Ore. (AP) – The mountain beckons from afar, a snow-white pyramid that floats above the treed horizon like a cloud, and people cannot help themselves: They want to climb Mount Hood. Thousands come each year, lured by the dormant volcano’s reputation as a good beginner’s climb. A 90-minute drive from Portland, Mount Hood is one of the most-climbed peaks in the world. It is a place where pilgrims come to test themselves, or to drink up nature’s solace.
It is also a place to die.
On Thursday, a misstep on an icy slope set off a chain reaction that killed three people, injured 10 others and left a rescue helicopter upside down in a gulley.
This account, based on interviews with survivors and rescuers, shows how easily a beautiful day on the mountain can turn into a nightmare.
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Head lamps bob in the darkness. Crampon-fitted boots crunch into the snow’s icy crust. It is 3:45 a.m., and seven climbers, dropped off by a snow vehicle at 8,500 feet, have just started trudging up the 11,240-foot mountain.
Most of them are employees of Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue, hoping to enjoy a day off by scaling Mount Hood. Some are apprehensive – it will be the first time to the summit for Assistant Fire Marshal Cleve Joiner and his 14-year-old son, Cole – but others are more assured.
This will be a walk in the park, thinks firefighter Dennis Butler, 26, an experienced mountaineer who climbed Hood just two weeks earlier.
Winds are light, the temperature is 42 degrees, and the snow’s icy crust is firm, offering a good bite for crampons. Like the other 40 climbers registered for the day’s ascent, this group is getting an early start to avoid the soft snow that develops in the afternoon sun.
The south-side route they’re taking is called the “dog route” by experienced climbers: easy enough for a dog to make it to the summit. On a fair-weather weekend in May or June, hundreds of climbers will take to the slopes.
Yet everyone who climbs here is aware this can be a dangerous place. In the past century, 130 people have died on Mount Hood. In May 1986, seven teen-agers and two of their teachers froze to death while retreating from a storm.
As the morning light increases, the fire department group stops every half-hour so team leader Jeff Pierce can review safety measures: how to use an ice axe to stop a slide, how to rope together with climbing partners.
By 8:30 a.m., they’ve arrived at the Bergschrund, a well-known hazard about 500 feet below the summit. It is a crevasse that opens like a grimace across the face of the mountain, up to 10 feet wide, 20 feet deep, and 50 feet from end to end.
Above the crevasse, stretching up a 35-degree slope, are two other groups of climbers. In the top group, about 350 feet up the slope, are four men: William Ward, 49, and Richard Read, 48, both of Forest Grove, Ore., and Christopher Kern, 40, and Harry Slutter, 43, both from New York.
About 50 feet below them, are two Californians: John Biggs, 62, and the Rev. Thomas Hillman, 45, both of Windsor.
The fire department team splits into two roped groups. Jeff Pierce leads the first, followed by Cole Joiner and firefighter Jeremiah Moffitt. They have just made their way around the crevasse when Pierce hears a holler from above.
Somebody in the top group has slipped, and all four climbers are sliding, unable to stop themselves with their axes. Rapidly gaining speed, they plow into Biggs and Hillman.
Now six men are sliding and tumbling, flailing their legs and arms in a vain attempt to stop.
“Move right! Move right!” Pierce shouts. But there is no time. The knot of climbers slams into Moffitt, who is still tied to Joiner and Pierce, and they all start sliding.
Twenty feet below the crevasse, the four remaining members of the fire department team watch as climbers hurtle toward them.
Chad Hashbarger braces for the impact, then suddenly everyone is gone from his sight.
Down in the crevasse, men are moaning, a jumble of arms, legs and rope. Pierce finds himself about 15 feet down on a sloping ledge of snow. He has a gash in his leg from someone’s ice axe, but otherwise he is OK. He shakes his limbs and allows himself a moment of relief, then turns to the task at hand.
A minute earlier, he was on holiday. Now he is working, assessing his partners’ conditions. Cole Joiner, 14, is looking at him with wide eyes; he’s fine, except for a sore back.
Moffitt is lying on the snow, face up, conscious but in pain. Slutter has a broken jaw, but he’s able to walk.
A few feet away, pancaked into a three-foot-wide crack, are four bodies and a lot of rope. They had a harder fall, slamming at high speed into a wall of ice on the downhill side of the crevasse before dropping down.
Pierce and Slutter start sorting out the tangle of climbers jammed into the crack. They pull Christopher Kern off; he has a broken pelvis, shoulder and leg. Hillman has a head injury and bruises all over.
Pierce checks the three others. No pulse, no breath. Biggs, Read and Ward are dead.
Within minutes, other climbers, including two physicians, have hurried to the crevasse. Cleve Joiner calls 911 on a cell phone, and while they wait for help from the mountain rescue teams, they drag the wounded men out of the crevasse and into the sun. Joiner fights back tears as he sees his son is OK.
An hour or so later, the injured men are stabilized, and Pierce has a chance to breathe. He feels lucky to be alive, and he thinks this ordeal will soon be over.
But it has only just begun.
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At the Air Force Reserve’s 304th Rescue Squadron in Portland, the airmen wear patches that read “These things we do that others may live.”
Now, with climbers injured on Mount Hood, it’s time to live up to the motto.
Helicopter pilots Grant Dysle and Kelvin Scribner climb aboard their 10-ton Pave Hawk, a modified version of the Army’s Black Hawk helicopter, capable of operating at altitudes up to 14,000 feet.
Four other crew members scramble aboard: flight engineer Martin Mills, rescue officer Ross Willson, and pararescue specialists Andrew Canfield and Darrin Shore.
By 1:40 p.m., they’re at the mountain, hovering over the Bergschrund, challenged to keep the chopper stable in gusty winds and the thin mountain air.
Two of the injured climbers have already been flown to safety. Now Jeremiah Moffitt is in a rescue basket suspended by a cable beneath the chopper.
Rescue workers huddle over him, securing straps so he can be hauled up.
Suddenly the cable goes limp. Somebody in the chopper has punched an emergency release button, and the cable drops down.
What’s going on?
Pierce wonders, then quickly sees the answer. The helicopter is backing off and dropping down the slope, slowly twisting clockwise as it goes. If the cable had not been cut, Moffitt and several rescuers might now be sailing through the air.
Rescue workers watch in disbelief as the helicopter slumps down with a muffled thud onto the steep slope.
Its rotors catch in the snow and shatter, flying every which way. The helicopter rolls sideways down the mountain, the stumps of its rotors still turning.
Over and over the helicopter rolls. Crew members fly out of the open door, tumbling into the snow. At least one is rolled over by the chopper before it stops, upside down, 1,000 feet down the slope, with its two pilots still hanging in their harnesses.
Rescue workers dash downhill, expecting to pull bodies from the snow, but all the crew members are alive.
Mills has internal injuries and a broken leg and wrist. Canfield has scrapes on his face and injuries to his neck. Shore has a broken leg and rib. Dysle, Scribner and Willson walk away with minor cuts and bruises.
Up at the crevasse, Pierce is exhausted. His leg is throbbing and he knows it will be hours before the survivors are off the mountain.
More helicopters clatter in. More snow vehicles roar up the slopes. This time, all goes by the book.
As the last of the injured are taken away, pillows of rime ice on the ridges sparkle in the late afternoon sunlight.
Pierce can’t help thinking: It’s a beautiful day for a rescue.
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The next morning, young Cole Joiner is saying he’ll never climb a mountain again. Hashbarger says he’ll wait for a good long while.
But Dennis Butler has a different reaction.
Having just seen his walk in the park turn disastrous, he waxes eloquent about the heroic struggle to maintain control in the face of chaos.
“It’s a battle between me and the mountain,” he says, and he clearly relishes the prospect of more.
Before Thursday’s climb, he had been planning to go rock climbing on Mount Rainier this summer. He still plans to go, saying he can’t see any reason why he shouldn’t.
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EDITOR’S NOTE – David Foster is the AP’s Northwest regional reporter, based in Seattle.