For our third trip up the south side of Mt. Hood from the parking lot of Timberline Lodge, Derek, our friend and guide Bob and I hit the slopes at 11:45 Tuesday night. Five long years had passed since our last trek in May 2001. Hood had received a lot of great snow, icy perfect for climbing at that hour and into the wee morning hours in its frozen stability. A crescent moon lit the star-filled sky for a few hours as we walked the steep route by the Palmer chairlifts. We were making almost too good a time when we reached the top of the lifts. Bob was rightfully concerned that arriving to more difficult territory in the dark would be unsafe, so we hunkered down for 45 minutes to rest and gain some time toward daylight. Crisp wind chilled Derek and me. Bob had lava in his veins. I couldn't feel my fingers. Sensation returned as we began to move again to the steeper grades. Our moon had vanished so we resorted to flashlights. Hours into this process I fell into a rhythm of breathing, looking ahead to my climbing partners, focusing on the flashlight beam, becoming one with the icy crunch of crampons. Time disappears at a point with the habit of muscle movements taking over, a kind of sleepwalk climbing, because our bodies know we're exhausted and should be in bed. We stop again to rest for a half-hour somewhere midway between the lifts and Hogsback ridge. Pitch black; I look at Bob and Derek sleeping when my camera flash illuminates them for a millisecond. I can't sleep and decide to move on ahead because I know I'm the slow one in the group, but they wake up and are ready to go anyway. A slight natural glow becomes evident as my flashlight sputters and dies. I can see my feet and begin to see the surrounding expanse more clearly. The wind and my second wind kick in as we near Hogsback. Everything is at a more extreme sideways angle as we continue. Reliance on the ice axe becomes a key for balance on the left side upward slopes. Left foot, right foot, ice axe, repeat another few feet. Brighter skies and more energy. I'm feeling better than when I started four or five hours earlier. Other climbers are in view. We see them roping up on Hogsback to start the last steep ascent. More rest at Hogsback for us. Cameras come out, the available light adequate to showcase the growing beauty. Jefferson and the Sisters growing pinker in that sunrise blocked from our view by the towering rocks I can't remember the name of. The stench of rotten eggs is a little ill-making as steam boils nearby. Bob ropes us up. He's in the lead, me in the middle, Derek third. Have to keep just a little slack, constant awareness of ahead and behind. We go for the steep section of the Hogsback. In photos it looks like a precarious ridge, falling off on both sides, but there's at least eight to ten feet of flatness to this ridge top to stay within. Previous boot prints and ice axe pokes give us lots of options for stepping upward. The only thing consistent is up, with the myriad foot shelves falling at different heights, widths, lengths and depths from each other. It becomes a focus point to place each foot correctly, aware of the steel spikes grabbing, you don't think about the steepness. The crevasse is mostly iced over with a snow bridge. We don't have to make a path around it this year. Bob encourages us to get over it, no reason to stop for a view. I give a brief glance to the deep pit and only now recall that this has been the scene of a few accidents over the years for those stories that make the news, but at the time of going over, my head is clear of any trepidation. At the top of Hogsback we take a different route to the left through a skinny chute, the Pearly Gates. We'd gone to the right before. This way seemed longer and narrower. My backpack skims a slightly tapered sky wall. Ice particles jar loose and tinkle down behind me. A few hundred feet and the sky is brighter at the summit. 7:30 and we're greeted by the surrounding view of St. Helens, Ranier, Adams, Jefferson and the Sisters you're put in your place as the speck of humanity that you are. The horizon line flows around in the ultimate panorama. Do we really need to be leaving? Bob wants to beat any heat that might affect our safety going down, so after numerous photos in 30 to 45 minutes we begin our descent. Derek leads the way; I'm in the middle, Bob grounds his ice axe in as far as he can with each step, wrapping excess rope around the shaft at the steepest part through the chute. If something's going to happen it should be here, and then we wouldn't go very far because Derek and I are also stabbing the axe to the gills with each step before moving on to the next comfortable footfall. We reach Hogsback and free ourselves of the rope. We've got a long way to go, but we're done with the danger. Now the pain starts with the awkward fitting boots already playing havoc with our sore feet. Bob moves on down the mountain, Derek next but slower, me slowest. It's traditional to become separated at this point because it's a walk in a snowy park. You begin to see the paths people have made on their rumps. It definitely speeds up the process to glissade down these things. If there is a next time, I'll remember to bring something to sit on. My pants aren't cutting it. Derek has found success however and slides many hundred of feet away. This is the part of the process that I'm not particularly fond of. I'm as slow going down as climbing up. Well, at least the guys will get a nice rest while they're waiting for me in the parking lot. Maybe they'll go to the lodge and have a beer or something while they're waiting. But in the distance is Derek's familiar red coat. He's seated and a couple of people seem to be hovering around him. Why is he just sitting there? My pain fades and an urgency makes me move down faster than I thought possible. I reach him. He says he may have broken his ankle. While glissading at a pretty good clip, his right crampon made contact with the ice and jerked his foot back in an unnatural position. He heard something pop. Was it his foot or the boot? No matter, he's in too much pain to stand on it. The two people working with him have some kind of medical background. Then a group of five people come including a 75-year-old retired anesthesiologist named Tom. Doctor's code: stay with the patient. Our cell phones have run out of juice. Theirs work. They call for a mountain rescue. I give Derek a bottled water. We have a conversation that covers whether we can get Bob's attention since he's already down the mountain so far, should I stay with Derek or move on down, not knowing what kind of vehicle will transport him down, would there be any room for me in the vehicle or would I have hours ahead of me getting down the slopes? He's surrounded by all these Good Samaritans. I should probably get on down the mountain so I don't delay their eventual wait for me. So off I go. Even more people arrive to offer assistance. Back to the pain and the windy, bright slopes. Derek's accident happened maybe 750 feet above the Palmer lift. I take a half hour to get there. I glance back and see nobody has magically appeared to transport him down. I'm descending next to the massive lift poles with inactive chairs hanging in mocking silence. It's around noon. Another half hour passes and I see a snowcat hundreds of feet below making its way toward me. I step aside and see a driver carrying two guys in the cab. They go to the top of the lift and a little bit farther and stop for quite a few minutes. They must be there to help Derek but they aren't going all the way to get him. Is that as far as the snowcat can go? I realize that if they load him into this thing, there will be room for me. I hope they return the same route. Another half hour and the snowcat is rumbling down towards me. It only has the driver in it. I flag him down. He's a wary dude with a number of piercings and an attitude. "I'm the injured climber's brother," I yell over the motor. "If I don't get down to the parking area, they're going to beat me down and be waiting for me. We'll be needing to get him to the hospital!" He gives me an "I hate climbers" look and radios his boss. I hear him say "injured climber's brother" in the racket and he motions me around to the passenger side of his beast. I can't get the door open. More looks like "you really are an idiot aren't you" and I finally get in. He says this was usually a $150 an hour ride but they're making an exception. Back on the slopes with Derek, the two mountain rescue guys were busy fitting Derek into a special sled to transport him down farther toward the top of Palmer lift. It turns out that unless the emergency is life-threatening, the snowcats are not allowed past a certain point because of their impact on the natural surroundings. A different snowcat was obviously going to be coming up, one more suitable for medical transport. My fears of delaying Derek getting to the hospital once down to the parking lot were unfounded because his wife, Deanna, had been called to meet him. I got down, disoriented, went to the wrong parking lot, got my bearings and hobbled to Bob. Incredulous, he didn't know what to think. It took him a few minutes to process the news. So that's why he saw all the emergency vehicles pass by as he caught a few winks in the car out of the wind. He was certain someone higher up than us had run into trouble, but the thought had entered his mind because we were taking so much longer to get down than usual. He thought we were taking it extra easy with lots of breaks. We talked to the emergency crew and got news that they were loading Derek and making their way down. When he arrived at the parking area they put him in the back of an ambulance for a more official check over. Deanna arrived and took him to the hospital where he was diagnosed with a severe sprain. Bob was a little down. He had taken so many people up and never had an accident. But as I write this on the Sunday five days after, Derek is doing well, stumbling around but mostly off his crutches. The high of making it to the top for a third time was not totally diminished by this freak accident. If anything, the kindness of strangers willing to give their afternoons to a worthy cause had its own rewards. Humanity on the mountain and a story we'll always remember.
Doug
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