Climbers Missing on Mount Hood

A Mountain of Risks and Mirrors

By Dan Richardson, 12-20-06

It’s strange what fascination the mountains hold for humans.

Nearly two weeks ago, three climbers climbed Mount Hood. We all know their names and details by now, how they appeared to have summitted, but suffered some injury, and been slammed by the ferocious storm that roared through the Northwest. It looks increasingly like none of them made it safely through that.

We all know, too, about the media eruption that followed the lost climbers. The grim-faced television reporters, with their breathless nightly news accounts. The extra-bold headlines.

That same storm that appears to have killed Kelly James, Brian Hall and Jerry “Nikko” Cooke also killed three other adventurers in Oregon — three sailors whose catamaran capsized in the storm. And heavy weather seems to have taken three others on the water, fishermen missing since Saturday when their boat sank at the mouth of the Rogue River.

Precious few national TV crews bothered to make the drive to the coast, though. The sea, perhaps, fascinates a few, while the mountains awe the many. Regardless, for those poor men and their families, the news was much drier, lacking the trappings of a story with legs.

Which is perhaps for the best. Because they won’t have to overhear the coffeehouse comments and avoid the endless letters to the editor castigating their husbands, sons, brothers for taking risks and costing public search-and-rescue dollars. No, the judgment of the sedentary is unleashed entirely on the mountain climbers.

Climbers should carry insurance, say many in the letters to newspapers, on the street, and in the Internet fora. Maybe they should be hit with a rescue bill, too — well, you know, if they’re found. On Metafilter, the popular talk-about-everything site, the climbers-must-pay thread has drawn 200 comments, more than any other recent topic. And at least one national TV program went out of its way to highlight the cost of the search — as if to say, “See what these bozos are costing us?”

There’s no word on how much the average viewer has cost the mountain climbing community, though. You know, Mr. and Mrs. Public? The ones with the high-fat diets and coach-loafing lifestyle, who vastly outnumber climbers and cost them higher taxes and health care prices? How many mountain searches would it cost to treat one uninsured person with chronic heart disease?

The people in harm’s way — the searchers, most of whom are volunteers — don’t complain much, it should be noted. Not only is the idea of paying for rescues borderline unethical and complicating (people will hide rather than face a rescue bill), the matter is pretty well settled in their minds.

Portland Mountain Rescue, one of the primary groups on scene during mountaineering accidents on Hood, explains its voluntary, non-profit and self-funded philosophy: “PMR does not place judgment on the mountaineering community, but we stand ready to help if accidents happen - regardless of how they may have occurred. ... The fact of the matter is that many of the people we rescue are generally good people who simply made a mistake. If you ask most active outdoor enthusiasts, they can probably list one or two incidents where they made a mistake, were lucky, and learned from their experience. For those who make an error and are not so lucky, PMR is there to help.”

Mountaineers also note that climbers make up a tiny fraction (like, 3 percent) of National Park Service rescues. Most rescues, accidents and outdoors deaths are the mundane fatalities of fishermen, sailors, hikers and boaters.

There are few calls for Billy Bob Boater to register each time he braves the lakes, or for Huffy the Hunter to carry rescue insurance. True, the Mount Hood three could have saved their families all sorts of grief, and the searchers much time and effort, had they bothered to carry a personal beacon. But the point remains: Many people run as much risks at routine outdoors activities — swimming the Sandy River, hiking in the Columbia Gorge — as the climbers did on Hood.

One climber and volunteer searcher has penned an editorial that argues that, for all its presumed cost and risk, climbing mountains imbues mountaineers’ lives with greater depth, and inspires those around them. Writes he, “We need more people in this world like Jerry Cook, Brian Hall and Kelly James.”

Perhaps mountains fascinate us because they act as mirrors of our hopes and fears. In them we see a sharper, grander vision of life, if we’re open to that frame of mind. One climber commented during the hot back-and-forth on Cascade Climbers that “The goal of life isn't not to die, because we will all fail at this.”

Or else, we glimpse the terrifying abyss of mortality; and out of our fear we grow angry at those who walk the edge of the chasm. The three climbers, like the famous Kim family of last month’s search-and-rescue circus, made errors that, compounded with the weather, cost their lives. Errors that they could have avoided — should have avoided — or at least mitigated. I wonder, though, if those who spout indignantly about those crazy, reckless people who climb mountains aren’t really raging against themselves.

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