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i've been following the posts here from the beginning, to gain better info about the mt hood search and rescue op. i prefer cc much more than the media- so thanks to all the posters. and thanks to all the SR crews out there- you guys are just amazing. i'm a novice rock climber and have only a couple of friends that are expert climbers. (btw, i have fallen in love with mt hood over the last week and really hope to get out there one day.) i really want to comment on the speculation part, somewhat from the family's point of view. my brother was in an accident 5 years ago-he crashed in an aerobatic plane with another pilot - both were experienced and skilled. i know it's not rock climbing but it's also an extreme sport and when this occurred a lot of speculation came from everywhere. my borther thankfully survived but was fighting for his life in a hospital for a long time. unfortunately the other pilot died in the accident. of course it had much much less media coverage than mt. hood this week; most of the speculation came within the flying community but also within our close circle of family and friends. my point here is that we all speculated what went wrong. how can this happen? we went over the radio transmissions before the crash, we tried to gather all the facts, all the details to rationalize how this could happen to them. but a time came when we all realized that this kind speculation is not doing anyone any good and that we should just accept that we are human and that accidents happen. and that once they do you cannot go back and change them. extreme sports have a very little margin for error, this is why people are attracted to them. you are able to control a situation that naturally does not seem controllable. one of the NTSB investigators said to me accidents happen to the best of the best. i think this applies here: Kelly, Jerry and Brian were one of the best. they lived doing what they loved. and they spent their last days on this beautiful mountain high in the sky. my heart and thoughts go out to their family and friends. i can only imagine how hard this is but remember all the good times and remember their passion for life and sport. (btw when the official accident report was released by NTSB more than a year later most of the speculators did not show much interest in it- i guess it was old news by then.)

http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?vidId=57406&live=yes

if Fuggedaboudit is Jerry Nikko Cooke, there's a great story about his climb on Mt Rainier-Emmons Glacier: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=4&Number=481415&Searchpage=1&Main=35435&Words=Fuggedaboudit&topic=0&Search=true#Post481415 hope tomorrow brings some good news.