ALPINE SPORTS AND GEOLOGIC PROCESSES
decent weather for your day or weekend, but it also includes considering the state of the snowpack and/or glaciers. Warm weather preceding a climb can mean additional rockfall, as the unrelenting freeze-thaw cycle unleashes a fresh round of bombs and missiles. So, the popular vision of climbers working out in the gym, running hills, and sharpening ice axes is more realistically expressed as a religious addiction to weather web- sites, radar images, snowpack reports, and temperature plots.
It was a rare weekend when all of the influences appeared to come together to provide three team-mates and me with the opportunity for an attempt at Mt. Washington of the High Cascades. We determined that we had a 24-hour window to attempt the 3,000’ generic approach hike through typically soggy, mosquito infested lake country in order to attempt the 500’ technical ascent of the volcanic plug that comprised the summit structure. The weather would turn to rain on Sunday, so we had one day to make it happen. We studied the routes, and chose our plan of attack. The four of us would climb in two rope teams, ascending in series to the summit, followed by a rather precarious rappel-descent back to the shoulder of the mountain. We would walk out to the car in the late afternoon, in the failing light of an early summer’s evening. The plan was to take 12 hours roundtrip, from the car.
party dislodging rocks above us. This can be a show-stopper, and we all knew that our climb was in doubt. After another minute of hiking, one of my partners stopped dead in his tracks, stiff and staring.
“Those aren’t bags… they’re bodies!”
We all stared for a hot second. He was right: two bodies lay beneath the route, a coiled mass of ropes around them that stood out in bright relief against the snow. We all knew instantly that our climb was over as we rushed closer to see exactly what had happened. At 25 yards out, one of the bodies moved… and then yelled to us.
What we found can only be described as a mess of human suffering. They had begun climbing the route, the same that we had intended to climb, on Wednesday morning. Into the second pitch (rope length), the lead climbed while the belay remained at the anchor that he had built. The lead fell, all of the protection he had placed, failed. He whizzed past the belay, shock loading the anchor. The belay failed, and they plummeted the remaining 150’ together, landing in a broken heap of twisted rope and agony.
It was now approximately 11:00 AM on Saturday. Seventy- two hours had passed, and there they were, exposed, lying on the snow, no water, broken bodies. But they somehow managed to stay alive, and the four of us knew precisely what to do. A cell phone with barely a signal, we called Mountain Rescue HQ, at the Sheriff’s Dept., and were patched through to the Oregon Air National Guard. We needed air support or they were going to die. A patient attendant was assigned to talk to them, constantly talking, assessing their injuries, and provid- ing what little care we could. They were scared, and they knew they were not yet “out of the woods”. Broken tibias, fibias, femurs, pelvises, a humerus, internal and external bleeding. Compound fractures, no less. A ledge needed to be excavated in the steep snow terrain to provide a stable platform to work on, and a “bomb-proof” anchor needed to be prepared to lower the litter and attendant once we began the evacuation.
Figure 3: Mt. Washington in the High Cascades of Oregon, USA. Source: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives.
A typical oh-dark-thirty start: strong coffee and little else to eat as we drove up into the mountains on a cold early sum- mer morning. We parked in a wilderness area at 5,000 above sea level. The mosquitoes were living up to their end of the bargain, so we bathed in the strongest repellant money can buy. Anyone with enough blood left to stay conscious at the end of the approach hike gets to climb! As we hiked, we talked of the route ahead, and all of the special precautions we knew we must consider for this route, on this mountain. The rock qual- ity is not highly regarded, meaning the protection we would place along the route (camming devices and soft metal chocks designed to arrest a fall) would have to be carefully considered. We had all heard more than one story about perfectly placed protection pulling 500lb chunks of weathered andesite free, with tragic results.
We weaved along the gendarmes of rotten rock along the arching ridge that lead to the summit pinnacle. As we crested the last rise, we all noted the brightly colored backpacks lying at the base of the route. Nuts! Other climbers got there before us, and were already on the route… meaning we would now have to worry about the objective dangers posed by an unknown
The less injured climber confided in us that after the fall, he decided that he would just have to “suck it up” and walk out. His tib/fib (lower lef) fracture had actually broken through the skin (compound) and had been driven into the gravel upon impact, plus he had lost a lot of blood. He took one step, and promptly passed out. That was when they realized neither of them was going anywhere. He made an insulated ground pad with the rope, he braced his partner’s broken femur by tying his good leg to it, and they settled in for the long wait. If no one had come to climb this weekend, this last day before the Sunday rain, they would have died there.
Figure 4: The Oregon Air National Guard Pavehawk hovers uncomfortably close. Source: Jeffrey Frederick © 2000
www.aipg.org
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