Trip: Dome Peak -- rescue, thank you, & gear -
Date: 6/21/2015
Trip Report:
On Saturday, June 20, my partner and I headed into the North Cascades with the plan of spending 6 days in the Dome/Sinister Gunsight area. We spent the first night on Iswoot Ridge, and then on Sunday moved camp up to the Dome-Chickamin col. After a quick trip up to the main peak, we descended back down the Dome glacier with the plan of climbing to the SW summit of Dome via the standard route (steep snow face to mid-5th rock ridge), then traversing the ridge back to the main summit and back down to our camp.
But things did not go as planned. Just a step below the top of the snow slope that leads to the SW summit, my partner slipped and fell. He was in the arrest position for the top half of his fall but the slope was steep enough that he couldn't stop. He slid the length of the slope and landed on the lip of the bergshrund just above the flats on the glacier below.
A team of six from the Everett Mountaineers was descending from the standard route and came over to help with the rescue. We're incredibly lucky they were right there when the accident occurred and were so willing to take hours out of an already long day to help us. We're also incredibly lucky that Everett Mountain Rescue was able to airlift him to the hospital in Arlington within hours of the fall. He's been discharged from the hospital and is recovering remarkably well.
Unfortunately we wound up leaving quite a bit of gear at the bivy site at the Dome-Chickamin col. I'm going to try to get back up there to retrieve it sometime in the next few weeks. If anyone is headed to the area before then and feeling tremendously generous, I'd be grateful for anything you're willing and able to bring down.
We really dodged a bullet on this one -- thanks primarily to luck and the help of others. Not a scenario we plan to repeat.
