Climbers On Mt. Baker

[JERRY_SANCHEZ]

Hey just heard there were 2 climbers on Mt. Baker this weekend that was stuck up there. Anyone know anything about this? There was a terrible front that moved in yesterday afternoon. I hope they make it down ok...

 

Search to resume for two climbers

05/28/2002

 

NWCN.com

 

Search and rescue crews will resume efforts Monday to locate two climbers stranded overnight in white out conditions on Mount Baker. The Whatcom County Sheriff's Office says the search will begin again at first light.

 

 

 

USGS

Mount Baker in Washington state.

Rescue workers attempted to reach the two men Sunday evening, but weather conditions held them back. Crews spent the night camping on the mountain.

 

The climbers are said to be wet and cold but uninjured. They dug a snow cave in order to stay warm, according to the sheriff's department.

 

We'll have more details when they're available.

[erik]

THE SEASON IS STARTING.........

 

HOPE THEY FIND THEM....

 

CHEERS TO SAR!

 

[Alasdair]

It was pretty crappy up there yesterday. I was on Shucksan and turned around at 8000 due to zero visiblity. Couple questions: Did they suddenly decide they were lost and get on the cell phone to get rescued? Did they try following their tracks in the snow back the way they came? Why did they not just head back down to where there was visiblity and then find their camp. The cloud level was at 7000 feet yesterday and there was very good visibility below that. I know this because I could see Baker from shucksan when I was below 7000. I know I dont have the whole story, but I am interested to see what it is when they get back. Hope they make it.

[ryland_moore]

Anyone know more details about the snowboarder who died this weekend trying to descend the Cooper Spur? That is an amazing route but I think there is some kind of hex on that route regarding descents.

[AllYouCanEat]

baker

[Bronco]

nice job guys, all in a day's work for SAR.

[RedMonk]

ryland-

there is a post about that death here..."accident on hood." prob under oregon posts section.....

[nolanr]

I got your info, looks like the second guessing hasn't gotten too bad yet. Those are my buddies and climbing partners. They went up N. Ridge, traveling light and fast, planning to do car to car on Monday. No bivy gear to speak of. From what I understand, beyond a certain point on the N. Ridge backtracking isn't a very good option. Continuing to summit and descending Coleman-Deming route is standard. I haven't got to talk to them yet, haven't got the full story. It does seem like they were on the summit pretty late, but again if descending down the N. Ridge wasn't an option, continuing on might've been their only option. I believe they were just starting to descend when the weather got really ugly. They dug a snowcave and hunkered down for the night. Good to hear they're doing fine now and were chowing down at Taco Bell in B-ham as of about 30 minutes ago. Can't believe they had an epic without me. Again I don't know all the details, but I can tell you they're experienced climbers, they're not reckless, and they're not idiots. Anybody can find themselves in a bad situation. I'm just glad they're OK.

[jhamaker]

What idiots! They should know better than to go to Taco Bell. While in B-ham, Diego's is the place to fill up.

[Dave_Schuldt]

To do such a thing with the weather forcast we had? I wonder......

[nolanr]

Yeah, about that weather forecast. I canceled a weekend long backpacking trip 'cause I didn't wanna get rained on for 3 days. The one day I was in the mountains (Sat., Gothic Basin) rained a little and had fairly low cloud cover. Sun. and Mon. were pretty good until Monday night. My point was...I have no point. Seriously, the weather forecast didn't turn out to be very accurate and I don't think they were predicting Monday night to be anywhere near as stormy as it turned out. Next second-guesser, step right up.

[tobytortorelli]

Saw the chopper flying under the cloud deck while skiing on Shuksan Arm. Good to hear they are O.K.....Did see some climbers in the "Hourglass" run on the arm,(not the climbing route higher up), who started a wet slide to clear the slope for glissading, but instead of waiting for it to descend, they started glissading right into the raging slush torrent!! Needless to say, it looked as though the first person got pummeled!! And the second person followed right behind. Alasair (sp?) I hope this wasn't you!!! Good skiing up there, by the way....

[Sleeveless]

quote:

---

Originally posted by jhamaker:

What idiots! They should know better than to go to Taco Bell. While in B-ham, Diego's is the place to fill up.

---

Uh, surely you jest .. When in B-Ham, Casa Que Pasa is the call!!! You can't beat the Potato Burritto!!

[Alasdair]

I can understand why they may have thought that the weather was OK and continued up. The clouds cleared almost completly around midnight and it stayed clear till about 8 AM. At this time the clouds totaly engulfed both Baker and Shucksan above 7000 leaving zero visibility.

[Rodchester]

FYI:

 

WHATCOM COUNTY, Wash. – Two climbers are off Mount Baker after a terrifying ordeal. The men were saved by portable radios that should have been well out of range, but their pleas for help reached a vacationing ham radio operator.

 

Ryan Dunham and Doug Miller didn't know if they would ever make it into the arms of their loved ones again. The experienced climbers were trying to reach the summit of Mount Baker in a day, but zero-visibility at the top quickly turned their journey into a battle for survival.

 

"We were trying to find a route off the summit. Doug was pointing me in the right direction with the compass. It was a complete whiteout. I couldn't see. I walked off a cliff," said Dunham.

 

Luckily uninjured, the men dug a snow cave and repeatedly called for help on their portable radios.

 

Paul Schmitz and his wife were driving home from vacation. He happened to pick up the frantic calls for help on his receiver. He called for help and minutes later a rescue operation was underway.

 

"I feel very good about it. It's an honor to be able to help out like that," says Schmitz.

 

Poor visibility prevented a rescue helicopter from reaching the men and by late morning, the climbers were walking down the mountain, while rescuers were headed up to meet them.

 

The rescue team finally reached them Tuesday afternoon and gave them food and water before heading back down the mountain.

 

Paul Schmitz says he's eager to meet the two climbers. No doubt they'll want to meet him, too.

[iain]

That's a great story. Were they using a 2-meter VHF to contact the ham guy?

 

[ 05-29-2002, 08:27 AM: Message edited by: iain ]

[DPS]

While I don't want to second guess anyone's decisions, I would like to point out that descending the North Ridge of Baker would be a fairly easy prospect for two 'experienced' climbers. There are only 2 pitches of steep terrain on the route, easy to rap with v-threads or bollards.

[Attitude]

Let's recap this story.

 

Two experienced climbers climbing fast and light head up the mountain on a one way route into iffy weather. The weather turns bad.

 

They continue traveling through a whiteout, and one falls off a cliff because he couldn't see.

 

They dig a snow cave and spend the night.

 

The next day the weather improves and they walk out.

 

SAR delivers them takeout along the way.

[iain]

The word "experienced" is a little blurry. Is the guy who's climbed Mt. Hood 50 times in stellar conditions more experienced than the one who survives a one night ordeal in a blizzard? I've always put little weight on that adjective in the reports.

 

Note: I am in no way suggesting that these guys did or did not belong there.

 

Did Bellingham MR respond to this one?

[oldclimber]

I'm interested in the question iain asked-- what kind of radio were they using; frs, gmrs, ham?

As a climber and ham radio operator I'm glad to hear that hand held radios are still useful in the mountains. It seems like cell phones are all the rage for getting help these days. I'd even be interested in the specific frequencies they were transmitting on.

Did the so. Brother this weekend in low visibility, but not white out conditions. The climb went fine, just couldn't see any thing.

[Alasdair]

That was definatly not be getting pummeled by wet slides on shucksan. I was at the very top of the ridge, and there is no way anyone could have seen me when I was up there because the visibility was zero.

[nolanr]

I'm not even going to try to recap the whole story. Let me point out, although all of us already know this, that media reports sometimes contain glaring inaccuracies. The climbing community gets ahold of the media reports and the second guessing insues.

 

The radios were those little talk-about thingies, Motorola 2 way radios or whatever. They're only supposed to have a range of about 2 miles but the ham radio operator picked them up approx. 60 miles away. Their primary reason for trying to make contact w/ the outside world was that one of the guys is married and he just wanted to get a message to his wife to let her know they were okay but were going to be stuck on the mountain overnight. It wasn't a case of "Mommy, come save us!" They didn't even know there was a SAR operation underway until Tues. morning. It turns out that was very fortunate, they were not in real good shape by then. They felt like they could have gotten all the way down on their own Monday if the weather conditions were better, but the night in the snow cave really took it out of them.

 

They said all of the SAR guys were awesome. Here's to SAR.

 

One of the guys WAS big into the Mark Twight fast and light principals. Not anymore. He's going to have a book burning festival, and Twight is going to be the featured author. That stuff just leaves a very slim margin for error, and when weather conditions get real bad it's pretty dicey. He's going to start taking bivi gear along on cragging trips now. Not really, but a few extra pounds of lightweight sleeping bags or bivi sacks would've been worth more than their weight in gold for the guys Mon. night.

 

Anyway, I saw both of them on Wednesday, they're pretty worn out but recovering, humbled, doing some rethinking of the whole climbing thing, but I don't think either of them is going to totally quit doing it. Maybe no more 1 day pushes on volcanoes, at least.

 

And I know all of you are sitting there thinking "That'll never happen to me, 'cause I'm smarter, or a better climber, or make better decisions, or whatever." That's exactly what they always thought until Monday. Just keep that in mind. It really can happen to anybody. I'm just so thankful it didn't turn out the way it did for the climbers on Rainier.