I, like every climber on this board, is very happy no one was injured....
That being said... let's learn from what went wrong. The details on what went wrong are sketchy... to say the least.
Question: Did this team knowingly decide to take this odd route???
Question: Did they just end up over in this canyon by accident and then decide... Hey... let's take this route?
I can't figure out why new climbers would knowingly decide to take a "more" difficult route the first time????
Question: I was actually climbing Mt. Hood at the same time this team was. I encountered no poor visibility, exceptionally clear skies and unusually warm temperatures. In other words, the entire Saturday morning was "ideal." This team became lost during these conditions???? Somthing funny here....
Question: I have never seen so many climbers on Mt. Hood as there were Saturday morning. I'm estimating 200. I checked out early back at Timberline and the stack of climber registrations was at least 3" thick with multiple team members on each form. In other words, the mountain was a'glow with clearly visible headlamps all the way to the top. Why didn't they see this.
IMHO... from all that I have read about this topic (ie. news reports/message boards).... These guys must have been hypothermic.
Climbing weather as ideal as Saturday morning was seems to fool a lot of new climbers. Some take their jackets off because they start sweating and don't realize the wind is stealing the heat/energy away from them at a faster rate than they can make it.
Anyway... there's my two cents....
