rainier fatality

[Muir_on_Saturday]

p. i. story

 

A falling rock struck and killed a climber on Mount Rainier this morning.

 

The climber, who wasn't immediately identified, was in a group of four men who were ascending Disappointment Cleaver just as the sun rose, when the basketball-sized rock hit him on the head, said Lee Taylor, park spokeswoman.

 

"It was just one rock that came down, and the other ones didn't even know what happened," until they noticed their comrade, the last climber in the roped-together line, wasn't moving, Taylor said.

 

After 30 minutes of arduous backtracking to reach the climber, the leader of the climbing party called on a cell phone to report the death at about 6:15 a.m.

 

The climbers weren't wearing helmets, though "I don't know if that would have made any difference," Taylor said.

 

Two rangers were flown to the top of Disappointment Cleaver, 11,500 feet up the mountain, to recover the dead climber's body.

 

The other three climbers, whose identities also were not immediately released, left the fallen climber and hiked down to Camp Muir, where a helicopter flew them to Longmire, Taylor said.

 

"The three survivors are very devastated," Taylor said.

 

One of the surviving climbers is from the Seattle area, Taylor said. The other men, including the victim, are from various parts of the U.S.

 

Disappointment Cleaver, on the Ingraham Glacier route to the summit of the 14,410-foot mountain, is known for its propensity for falling rocks, especially in late summer when the morning sun can melt frozen rock and let it fall free.

 

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company

[mr.radon]

The guy that died. Sounded like a cool customer.

 

See:HOMER

[Dru]

It happened in Russia too.

 

Rescuers find one man alive, two dead, after devastating Russian avalanche

 

 

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AP) - One man reported missing after a devastating avalanche in southern Russia was found unhurt Monday, but more than 100 people remain missing and authorities fear that number could increase.

Two bodies were found, a duty officer at the headquarters for the rescue effort said, bringing to eight the number found. Emergency officials have said they fear that as many as 150 people were killed in Friday's avalanche.

 

"I haven't lost hope, but when I saw from a helicopter what had happened, the conclusions are not comforting," said Lev Dzugayev, the top aide to the president of North Ossetia, the small Russian republic in the mountains near the Georgian border where the disaster happened Friday.

 

The disaster happened when a chunk of glacier about 150 metres high broke off from beneath a mountain peak and roared down the Genaldon and Gizeldon gorges at more than 100 km/h, uprooting trees and accumulating mud and rocks as it went.

 

According to a list compiled from inquiries from relatives, 113 people are missing, said Alan Doyev, a press spokesman for the Interior Ministry of North Ossetia. The list could grow, Doyev said, as information comes in on shepherds and watchmen at remote tourist camps high in the mountains.

 

One watchman was found unharmed near the mineral lode where he works, said Boris Dzgoyev, the head of North Ossetia's Emergency Situations Department.

 

Among the missing were popular Russian actor Sergei Bodrov and a crew shooting a movie he was directing in the area. Officials said 49 people from the film crew or local support staff were missing, while nine were safe: seven who were not with the others and two who got out of the disaster area.

 

In an interview published in the newspaper Izvestia on Monday, one of the seven said he was at his hotel when the disaster happened, and received a call on his cellular phone from a woman in the crew who said the avalanche was bearing down.

 

"The girl only had time to say that an avalanche was headed for them. After that the connection was cut off, and whenever I tried to call, nobody answered," Izvestia quoted the man, Alexei Ternovsky, as saying.

 

Officials feared hikers and campers may also have been in the area, a popular destination for excursions among residents of the regional capital Vladikavkaz.

 

Rescue workers continued efforts to clear the main road up the mountain under treacherous conditions. In 2½ days, the workers have managed to clear barely two kilometres of the road, which is covered with ice, sludge, trees and rocks.

 

Dzugayev said the damage could reach the equivalent of about $20 million Cdn, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

 

Searchers are facing new hazards, too, including rising temperatures which were expected to top 25 C. The water level was expected to rise sharply in some places, including two lakes being formed by the melting ice, and several villages were threatened by flooding, ITAR-Tass reported, citing Russia's Meteorological Committee.

 

Authorities said the six bodies rescuers found Saturday and Sunday were mangled. Forensic experts managed to identify only one, a 77-year-old watchman whose corpse was found in the river the avalanche followed.

[mr.radon]

The NTSB posting of HOMER's crash. Pilot error!

 

Homer's Alaska crash

 

Bad luck twice.......

[David_Parker]

RE: Russian avalanche. 113 missing... That's a lot of climbers on one rope. Did the mountaineers start up a Russian branch?

[fern]

not funny

[carolyn]

I glanced at this post earlier in the afternoon, but didnt follow thru on reading the article.

The details were brought to my attention while answering a "climbing" call at the store and I found myself speaking to a reporter from our local news. NOT cool!

 

It is really tough news for myself and others in this community to swallow. Ed truley was an inspiration and will be missed by many.

[Fairweather]

My heart aches for this guy's wife and children. I understand that he had two.

 

I heard that Jim Wickwire was leading this climb. If this is true, it continues the "unluckiest" streak in the history of mountaineering. (for partners deceased, that is) I don't believe in karma or luck, but if they exist JW's are rotten.

 

[ 09-23-2002, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: Fairweather ]

[salbrecher]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fairweather:

My heart aches for this guy's wife and children. I understand that he had two.

 

I heard that Jim Wickwire was leading this climb. If this is true, it continues the "unluckiest" streak in the history of mountaineering. (for partners deceased, that is) I don't believe in karma or luck, but if they exist JW's are rotten.

---

It's not Wickwires that is rotten, it's his partners.

[Dru]

stefan that is dangerously close to blaming the victim. you think this guy DESERVED to be hit by a rock?

[ILuvAliens]

This happens every time someone post about a death. Someone says something that gets taken out of context. I think it was inocent.

[Scotch-a-Go-Go]

Ed Hommer was from Duluth, Minnesota. I didn't know him but my wife's family did. This is the account in the Duluth paper. I'm suprised that it seems logical; most news stories about mountain accidents don't.

 

Anyway, a tough break and sad.

 

Posted on Tue, Sep. 24, 2002

 

Hommer killed by falling rock

Duluth double-amputee was climbing Mount Rainier

BY STEVE KUCHERA

NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

 

Twenty years after the mountains took Ed Hommer's legs, they took his life.

 

A falling rock killed the Duluth climber Monday morning on Washington's Mount Rainier. Hommer, 46, was training for his second attempt to become the first double-amputee to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world's highest point.

 

"He's going to be missed far and wide by a lot of people," said Brian McCullough, a climbing partner and longtime friend from Talkeetna, Alaska. "He was a unique spirit, there's no doubt. He was a leader, not a follower."

 

Hommer, an American Airlines pilot, had three children and had been climbing for 26 years.

 

Kandace Olsen, communications manager for Great River Energy, worked with Hommer as he prepared for an unsuccessful attempt to scale Mount Everest last fall. Hommer offered her instructions should he die climbing the mountain.

 

"You just tell people I died doing what I loved," he told Olsen. "I believe Ed died doing what he loved the most."

 

Hommer died at about 6 a.m. Monday when a basketball-sized rock hit him in the head, killing him instantly, as he and three teammates were ascending Disappointment Cleaver.

 

Rangers with the National Park Service believe the rock was loosened from the top of a 400-foot outcrop.

 

"Ed Hommer was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Nick Jiguere, one of two climbing park rangers who recovered Hommer's body later Monday. "It was a matter of circumstance. There have been lots of close calls from Disappointment Cleaver rock fall."

 

The other climbers didn't know anything had happened until they noticed that Hommer, the last man in the roped-together line, wasn't moving, Mount Rainier National Park spokeswoman Lee Taylor said. None of the other team members were injured.

 

CALL FROM THE MOUNTAIN

 

The team's leader, Jim Wickwire, 62, of Seattle, called park rangers by cell phone at 6:16 a.m. and told them one of his party had been killed by a rock. The two climbing rangers were airlifted by helicopter to above the accident scene, then climbed down to remove Hommer's body.

 

Wickwire and the other two climbers, Tim Herlehy and Scott Rose, both of San Diego, Calif., descended back to Camp Muir on the mountain, then were airlifted off Mount Rainier by helicopter.

 

Wickwire was with Hommer on Mount Everest for part of last fall's expedition until health problems forced him off the mountain. His 1978 ascent of Pakistan's K2 ranks as one of the most remarkable accomplishments by any American climber. K2 is the world's second-highest mountain.

 

"Wickwire is an experienced climber and is well-known in the climbing community," Taylor said. "The other two were not experienced climbers. It's my understanding they had sponsored some of Ed's earlier trips."

 

A POPULAR ROUTE

 

The route Hommer and his teammates were ascending on Mount Rainier is the most popular on the peak.

 

"On this side of the mountain, it's the easiest route to the summit," Taylor said. "But this time of year, climbing conditions have deteriorated a bit and there's more rock fall danger" since melting snow and ice have exposed more of rock.

 

Hommer was the sixth climber killed this year on Mount Rainier, which annually attracts about 11,000 climbers. Since 1887, 76 climbers have died on the mountain, four of them killed by falling rock.

 

Hommer understood the risks involved in climbing.

 

"The mountain ultimately decides who succeeds, who fails, who goes home and who doesn't," he said last year after failing to summit Mount Everest.

 

During the same interview, he announced he would return to Mount Everest. Great River Energy helped sponsor Hommer's 2001 Everest climb. Olsen said Hommer had submitted a funding proposal last week for a second Mount Everest expedition in May.

 

"He didn't believe in failure," Olsen said.

 

HOMMER'S HISTORY

 

Hommer nearly died on Mount McKinley in 1981 when his small commercial plane crashed on the mountain after being caught in a severe downdraft. He and three passengers were trapped for five days by a winter storm.

 

When it was over, two passengers -- one was his brother-in-law -- were dead, and Hommer lost the lower part of both legs to frostbite.

 

But Hommer didn't let the twin amputations stop him. Fitted with prostheses, he became the first double-amputee to receive a medical certification to fly commercial airliners. An American Airlines pilot, Hommer lived near Fish Lake, north of Duluth.

 

"He's one of the greatest guys I've ever known," friend and climbing partner Scott Anderson, of Two Harbors, said. "He inspires a lot of people to try new things or to improve what they're doing."

 

Besides returning to flying, Hommer also returned to climbing, setting his sights on the 20,320-foot summit of Mount McKinley, North America's highest peak and the mountain that had cost him his legs.

 

Bad weather in 1998 -- which contributed to three deaths in other parties -- foiled Hommer's first attempt to climb Mount McKinley. But the next year he became the first double-amputee to climb the mountain.

 

EVEREST'S CHALLENGE

 

With McKinley behind him, he turned his attention to Mount Everest -- at 29,035 feet, the world's highest peak.

 

Last October, his first attempt to scale Mount Everest was called off when he and his team, hampered by bad weather, had to turn back 3,000 feet short of the summit.

 

McCullough was one of the climbers who rescued Hommer in 1981, and was with him on Everest.

 

"He had a way about him. He was fun to be around," McCullough said. "When we were back at base camp (on Everest), we were just howling at his antics. He was a natural comedian.

 

"He never, ever whined... and he had huge, huge sores," where his false limbs met skin, McCullough said. "Yet he would go day after day. It was incredible. You didn't get the impression he was handicapped, because his spirit was not handicapped."

 

Hommer formed the nonprofit foundation High Exposure to help get prostheses to those who need them in Nepal and to raise money for U.S. children who have lost limbs and need prostheses.

 

"He helped many patients," said longtime friend Tom Halvorson of Duluth, who made Hommer's prosthetic limbs. "Not only inspiring them by what he does, but he would like to sit down and talk to other amputees and let them know that his life was not always a bowl of roses. It was a very tough road from the time he was injured in 1981 to being able to stand on top of McKinley.

 

"He was a very caring, friendly, articulate professional by day," Halvorson said. "And he liked to play the role of a dirtbag climber by night. Ed loved to climb. He loved the mountains."

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News Tribune staff writer Melanie Evans and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer contributed to this report.

[Dru]

Its cool he had a job and he still liked to play dirtbag. Me too! Anybody got any leftovers?

[allthumbs]

I never could understand the reasoning behind these verbal autopsies. Again, for the umpteenth time this year, condolences to family and friends.