One Miscue, and a Casual Climb Can Turn Deadly

PORTLAND, Ore. —  Perched at what seemed the top of the world--western Oregon spread out below like a carpet, clouds dotting the big green netherworld like wildflowers--Jeff Pierce didn’t expect the human missiles that suddenly came hurtling toward him, threatening to blow him off the mountain and into the beautiful blue beyond.

He heard it first, a bunch of hollering from the six climbers above him near the summit of Mt. Hood. Somebody slipped. No problem. The 38-year-old firefighter looked up, thinking he would see what he had seen dozens of times: some guys planting their ice axes and hunkering into the side of the mountain, maybe someone dangling scared but safe on a rope. No. Six guys were headed his way, going so fast they were already nothing but a tangle of rope and flailing legs and silent fear.

“Move right! Move right!” Pierce screamed to the two other climbers on his team. But there wasn’t time. Pierce slammed his ax into the snow and held on as he and his buddies joined the train wreck plummeting toward the glacial crevasse below.

“I knew I was going in,” he said.

By the time it was over--some said it took five seconds, nobody thought it took more than 30--Pierce was lying on a steep slope of snow and ice 20 feet down the chasm. One climber was lying face down on an ice shelf below; he was dead. Four others were pancaked on top of each other in a deep hole at the bottom of the crevasse. Two were still alive; they yelled when you touched them. Two were dead.

As rescuers removed the last of the three bodies Friday from a mountain that glinted with disarming grace above the Portland skyline, survivors of Mt. Hood’s second worst climbing accident--compounded by the crash of a rescue helicopter--recalled the terrifying conclusion of what was supposed to have been an easy climb.

The accident--in balmy blue weather, on what is a widely used ascent route, on the second-most-climbed mountain in the world--has sobered the mountaineering community in the Pacific Northwest and has prompted an investigation into the cause of the crash.

“This accident is going to make a lot of people start rethinking a lot of things, especially climbing with other people above them,” said John Godino, a climbing instructor for the Portland-based Mazamas mountaineering club. “It’s a real wake-up call.”

John Biggs, 62, a retired airline pilot from Windsor, Calif., was among the dead identified Friday. Also killed were William Ward, 49, and Richard Read, 48, both of Forest Grove, Ore. Seven other people remained hospitalized, including Biggs’ friend and pastor, the Rev. Thomas Hillman, 45, also of Windsor. Hillman was listed in fair condition with a head injury. A rescue specialist on the downed helicopter, Staff Sgt. Darrin Shore, 43, was in fair condition with a fractured left leg and rib.

Climbers on the mountain during Thursday’s events said the day appeared to provide a better-than-normal opportunity for reaching Mt. Hood’s 11,235-foot summit. Hard-packed snow made footings easy. The weather was the best it had been all year.

Five members of the Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue Department set out early for their summit attempt, taking along one of the men’s 14-year-old son and a paramedic from another department.

The climb was Pierce’s idea--he had climbed Mt. Hood many times--and most of the guys thought it was a great way to get some exercise and see the world from a whole new angle.

Dennis Butler, a 28-year-old paramedic, was the only other member of the group who has significant climbing experience, so it was agreed that Pierce would lead the first team up the mountain and Butler would lead the second. Assistant Fire Marshal Cleve Joiner would climb with Butler, and his son Cole, with Pierce, in deference to an old tradition of mountaineering: split up families. That way somebody always goes home.

They arrived at the mountain at 2:30 a.m., but it was so icy it took longer than expected to ski up to the 8,500-foot level, where the climb begins. They weren’t underway until 3:45.

“We took a pretty slow pace up the mountain from there,” Butler said. They stopped frequently to give the less-experienced climbers lessons in the basics of mountaineering: how to climb in crampons (the notched boot attachments capable of digging into the ice), how to dig your ice ax into the snow and self-arrest if you start to fall.

By the time they reached the wide, sloping snow field known as Hogsback for the final part of the ascent, two other climbers--probably Biggs and Hillman--were roping up to mount the 250-foot-long Hogsback spine. Pierce’s and Butler’s teams carefully crossed the most dangerous part of the route, known as the Bergschrund--a gaping crevasse where the edge of the glacier falls away from the snow and ice field of the summit--then roped up and set off.

They could see Biggs and Hillman about 150 feet above them, and higher, four more climbers, most likely Harry G. Slutter of Centerport, N.Y.; Christopher Kern, 40, of Long Island, N.Y.; and Ward and Read, the Oregon men.

What happened next is just a guess. Someone in the group at the top slipped--a crampon that didn’t get a toehold in the ice is all it would have taken.

All four men tried to arrest their fall but failed. They careened down into Biggs and Hillman, who began screaming “Arrest! Arrest!” but were hit so hard they were knocked down the mountain too.

Next in line was Pierce, Cole Joiner and another firefighter, Jeremiah Moffitt. They had no time to get out of the way. “I was in full arrest being dragged into the Bergschrund and it was pretty obvious to me I wasn’t going to stop,” Pierce said.

The falling bodies quickly accelerated to terminal velocity--possibly 125 mph--on the smooth, hard-packed snow. “When we started seeing them come down the mountain, they were pretty much like missiles,” said Chad Hashbarger, 33, the Fire Department’s fitness specialist, who was roped up with Butler and barely escaped the melee.

“Right when the team started coming down, we were all yelling at each other to hunker down.... And then, how do you describe someone going from zero to a hundred, it was just like that. It was an incredible amount of speed.... They were sliding, tumbling; everything just got all tangled up. Ropes and everything. They became one big ball.”

Instead of sailing on down the mountain to certain death, all nine climbers slammed into the lip of the crevasse and down the icy chamber, with some of the worst injured packed into a small recess at the bottom. The firefighters called that “the hole.”

“One of them, I could only see a leg sticking out of the pile,” Pierce said.

In moments, the firefighters went from terrified participants to rescuers. Pierce, who suffered only a gash to his leg, began triaging the other men in the hole--including Cole, who was looking at Pierce, he said, “with big eyes”--while Butler hauled out of the crevasse rescue gear he had taken up the mountain for just such an emergency.

While Cleve Joiner called for help on a cell phone, the paramedic on Butler’s team, Selena Maestas, began preparing to give first aid. Butler and others set up a system of ropes and pulleys to haul out the most critically injured.

Steve Boyer, an emergency room physician who had been climbing the mountain with another party, climbed down into the crevasse and began assessing the injuries, while Hood River, Ore., physician Jim Pennington, climbing with his son and daughter, helped treat victims awaiting transport in the helicopters.

“Everybody was doing a real good job, really calm and really helping,” Pennington said. “I spent three or four hours getting people out, and it was that long before the helicopter finally started doing its thing. We had all the victims right next to the Bergschrund, trying to keep them warm and keeping them still.”

Climbers from all over the mountain--48 in all--started shedding their clothes and lending them to the injured.

Kern, the most seriously hurt, had a broken pelvis and internal bleeding that forced him in and out of consciousness. “We were having a real hard time keeping him warm because of the internal bleeding into his pelvis. With everything we were doing, he was getting less and less alert,” Pennington said.

“At first he was talking and saying, ‘I’m cold,’ and shivering. Then it got to the point where he stopped talking.”

Hillman also appeared seriously injured but remained stable. Both men were evacuated on helicopters when the Pave Hawk arrived for Moffitt, who had a broken arm and some cuts.

Moffitt was on a gurney tied to the helicopter cable when some witnesses said the wind seemed to shift and the helicopter foundered. “My first indication that something was going wrong was the cable coming off, and the helicopter was basically heading down the mountain,” said Pierce, who was helping load Moffitt onto the craft.

The helicopter “seemed to wobble,” Pierce said, then turned left, hit the ground and rolled. “If the pilot had gone to the left, he essentially would have taken out everybody who was on that ledge, and that was eight or nine people.”

Witnesses said the crash was almost silent, the noise muffled by the snow. “To see one hit the snow and for everything to be just eerily quiet, just made it that much more surreal,” Butler said.

In the end, only four of the copter’s six crew members had substantial injuries.

Air Force Col. Mark Kyle said Friday an accident review board has been convened to determine the cause of the crash. Authorities said the copter was well within its operating limits, though flying at 10,500 feet, with strong winds swirling around the mountain, can be treacherous.

Officers said they immediately scrambled additional helicopters after the crash.

“There was a definite pause in that room” when the crash happened, said Maj. Jeff Macrander of the 304th Rescue Squadron. “All the folks on the phone stopped talking, that kind of thing. But we are professionals. We had our pause, and then we went right back to work.”

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Times staff writer John M. Glionna and researcher Lynn Marshall contributed to this report.