By Noelle Crombie and Joseph Rose
The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)
Copyright 2007
All Rights Reserved
PORTLAND — Rescuers who scaled Mount Hood to help five lost climbers said Sunday that the men’s lack of experience, poor mountaineering skills and unfamiliarity with the terrain contributed to their ordeal.
Caught in a snowstorm on the mountain’s south side, the men returned to Timberline Lodge at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday.
All five of the Portland-area climbers --identified by police as Brian Anderson, 24, Ben Elkind, 22, Bryce Benge, 29, Jeremiah West, 28, and Brian Weihs, 39 --were in good health, said Lee Eby, Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
The climbers, who had planned on a one-day trip Saturday, called police with a cellular phone when they were stymied by whiteout conditions Saturday evening. They had maps, a global-positioning system and mountain locator unit with them, but two rescuers told The Oregonian on Sunday that the men did not use the equipment, and in some cases, did not know how.
However, Elkind said Sunday that he didn’t quite understand the rescuers’ frustrations with him and the others in the climbing party.
“We had everything we needed to spend the night on the mountain,” he said. “We weren’t just going up there blind. . . . We just took a wrong turn.”
What’s more, Elkind said, the group was experienced enough to know that they should turn around when they strayed from their route, with the daylight dying and a storm approaching.
“We didn’t keep going up, trying to summit,” he said. “We didn’t wait until dark. It was great weather all day, but we knew about the storm coming in. We knew we had to turn back.”
The rescue crew --including the sheriff’s department and Portland Mountain Rescue --decided the 20-degree temperatures and winds only reaching 30 mph were mild enough for them to set out in the dark. They left from Timberline Lodge in a snow cat shortly after 10:30 p.m. Saturday, Eby said.
But, according to one rescuer, the team received a strong signal from the climbers’ locator unit, which placed them near the lodge, meaning the men had walked out unassisted.
“These guys had the correct equipment: maps, compass, altimeter, cell phone, mountain locator unit,” said Steve Rollins, one of five rescuers who went as far as the Palmer snowfield Saturday night. “They knew a storm was coming in. Once again, we have a group not appreciate the strength of storms on Mount Hood.”
Rollins said an interview with the climbers after they were off the mountain also revealed a lack of familiarity with the mountain’s basic geographic features. He said the group ended up on a gully south of the Leuthold’s Couloir --an area that presents a challenging climb.
Rollins said the climbers seemed to rely on each other’s climbing experience, which wasn’t extensive.
Judith Deitz, the mother of climber Jeremiah West, said Saturday’s trip was her son’s first major climb since joining the Mazamas mountaineering group.
“He has been getting ready for this climb with this group of people for some time now,” she said Sunday.
West, a Portland resident, is a mechanical engineer at Freightliner, Deitz said. She heard about the climbers’ predicament through a phone chain Saturday afternoon.
“I got a call at 11:30 last night from Jeremiah,” she said. “He said, ‘We’re fine. We’re coming off the mountain.’ I said, ‘Good.’ ”
Rocky Henderson, a Portland Mountain Rescue volunteer, said he spoke with one of the climbers by cell phone at about 7:30 p.m. Saturday. He said the group was calm but frustrated that they couldn’t find their way down the mountain.
Henderson said the climbers failed to use their GPS tracking tools to find their way. Experienced climbers will typically use the tracking systems to mark their route. Henderson said the system offered a high-tech way of “leaving crumbs.”
Elkind, whose year of mountaineering includes two previous unsuccessful attempts to summit Mount Hood and Mount Adams, agreed that the group’s unfamiliarity with the mountain’s geography caused a lot of problems.
“We took some wrong turns,” he said.