What happened up there in 1986 goes by sterile and historical names that strip away all emotion, making it impossible for newcomers to Portland to understand what unfolded over four days, beginning on May 12, on a mountain that, when the weather is clear, is such a part of our daily lives here in the city. So here are the facts: Thirteen people — three adults and 10 students from Oregon Episcopal School, an elite private school in Southwest Portland — failed to return from what was supposed to be a one-day spring hike to the top of Hood. The party got lost. Two came down to get help, leaving behind 11 who were trapped, for four days, in a snow cave. Nine died.
It was May, 1984. Fresh out of college, I’d spent my first year of enforced adulthood teaching at Oregon Episcopal School in southwest Portland. With the school year drawing to a close, I’d volunteered to be a chaperone for the annual sophomore class climb of Mt. Hood. The climb was an OES tradition designed to be a team-building exercise. I’d always wanted to climb a mountain, so I anticipated the impending trek up the mountain as something of a rite of passage. I had no idea that something which had been sold to me as little more a long, steep hike would turn so malevolent so quickly.
Our group began the ascent at about 2:00 on a beautiful, crisp, crystal-clear morning. Within a couple hours, the weather began to rapidly deteriorate. Shortly after sunrise, my climbing group was roped together to ensure everyone was accounted for. By the time we’d reached 10,000 feet (Mt. Hood is 11,249’ high), we were in total white-out conditions, unable to see past our outstretched arms. Our guide determined it would be best to turn around and return to Timberline Lodge. That quickly become a fair bit more challenging than expected.
On the slope we were traversing, the fall line down the mountain leads straight into a crevasse. Being in total white-out conditions as we were is incredibly disorienting. It was difficult to know where we were in order to determine the fastest and safest route down. After stumbling around for what seemed like half of forever, we chanced upon orange route markers left in place by a climber who’d preceded us up the mountain. We followed the route markers down to the Palmer chairlift, and followed it down to Timberline lodge.
That might sound pretty straightforward, but in fact was anything but. It’s difficult to fully convey the fear we felt- that I most certainly felt- as we carefully negotiated our way off the mountain. I lost a contact lens, and most of what I was wearing (turns out I was spectacularly ill-equipped) was soaked, leaving me not far from hypothermia. I was scared, but didn’t think there was any reason to be overly dramatic about it once I was back in front of a roaring fire.
It wasn’t until two years later that I fully grasped just how close I and everyone else in my climbing group had come to not making it off the mountain…and how close we’d come to having this story be about us.
Fast forward to May, 1986. I was no longer teaching at OES, having just returned from a year teaching in Cyprus. Once again, OES sophomores prepared to climb Mt. Hood…and the new group was every bit as unprepared, ill-equipped, and poorly provisioned as my group had been. Unfortunately, the good fortune which had assisted my group in successfully making it off the mountain two years prior never found them.
Caught in virtually identical white-out conditions, they were unable to negotiate their way off the mountain. As they’d been taught (in much the same half-afternoon of training my group had undergone), they dug a snow cave and huddled together to wait out the storm. Unrecognized until is was far too late was that no one on the climb- with the exception of the professional guide- was anywhere nearly properly equipped to survive the extended exposure which would be their undoing. Clothed in absorbent wool and cotton, they eventually succumbed to hypothermia.
The short version is that nine people I knew died on the mountain. Some had been colleagues, some had been students. A few had been on my climb two years earlier. None of them deserved to die
That was when I become fully cognizant of how agonizingly close I’d come to a similar fate two years earlier…and it was months before I was fully able to process and resolve the admixture of conflicting emotions I experienced in the aftermath of that tragedy. Thirty years later, time has dulled the pain I wrote about ten years ago. The passage of time has rendered some of the facts a bit fuzzy around the edges, but the broad outline is as horrible now as it was then.
I moved to Oregon in part because I wanted to climb mountains. I’ve never been able to get past the pain and anguish enough to try again. I’d known that climbing had the potential to be dangerous, but I’d never considered that so many people I knew could be taken in such horrific fashion.
I can’t imagine I’ll ever forget the accident on Mt. Hood…or how close I came to suffering the same fate. Thirty years on, though, it seems a good time to finally let it rest. Absent new information or a compelling reason to change my mind, I don’t intend to write about this again. I could have died, but I didn’t. Several people I knew did. I don’t know that I could possibly hope to add anything new to this story so many years later. Many lost far more than I did- friends, family members, loved ones- and I think it’s a good to time to refrain from re-opening that wound.
I am- will forever remain- grateful that for whatever reason I was able to walk off Mt. Hood. I just wish that those who died two years later Could have been spared.
