Posted on 12/18/2006 8:47:53 AM PST by george76
A missing climber found dead in a snow cave on Mount Hood was identified as a Dallas man who had placed a distress call to relatives a little more than a week ago, a person close to the family said Monday.
Searchers found the cave Sunday near the spot located by cell phone signals traced from Kelly James, who made a four-minute call to his family Dec. 10 just below the summit, said Jessica Nunez, a spokeswoman for the climber's family.
On Monday, a recovery team was expected to retrieve the body, which remained on the mountain over night because darkness made it too dangerous to retrieve. The search for two other climbers also was to resume on the treacherous north side of Oregon's highest mountain.
His body was found in a second snow cave near the first, about 300 feet below the summit. Rescuers found two ice axes, a sleeping bag or pad and rope in the first. It was not known if any gear was in the second cave.
Monday's search would center on possible descent routes on Eliot Glacier and Cooper Spur, relatively lower levels of the mountain, in case the other two got down that far...
"Eliot Glacier is real dangerous so we will do that by air only," Hughes said Monday. "It's a bad avalanche area with crevasses. There are still people in crevasses that have never been recovered."
Searchers dug through the first cave to ensure no one was there and took the equipment, which will be examined for clues. The second cave with the climber's body was found a short time later.
It was not immediately clear which cave was occupied first, or why or when the climber, or climbers, decided to move from it.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
An "animated" account of what they think might have happened. (Not much new info.):
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0612/map.climber.path/frameset.exclude.html
From Cascade climbers.com From one of the rescuers:
>.Quick update: sorry but again i have not read every page to see what is being discussed..bear with me. Again it would help to limit speculation at least to the folks that were there.
James did not have a sleeping bag or bivy sack. His backpack was under his torso, no insulation under his feet. Extreme living conditions existed. This is what i meant as limited equipment if you find my last posting. I did not see a stove. For all those ready to critique his gear requirements, I have also done similar routes with limited resources.
A few comments on SAR and how we plan a search may help some folk.
ONE method is to use POA (probability of Area ) and POD (probability of Detection). After looking at all the AVAILABLE facts, the search area is divided into sections. Each section is given a POA priority ie the highest priority section is searched first etc. Each team going into the field has to ask/answer questions like,
what is the percent chance that i can see/hear the missing person?
what is the percent chance that the missing person can see/hear me?
what is the percent chance that the person is consious/unconsious?
what is the percent chance that the person would be moving if s/he could.?
All these effect the probability of detection. If its cold and you are injured, you might be holed up in a tree well and so the POD is low and lower yet if you are unconsious. Please if this happenes to you. Mark the nearest Tress or Rock with some marker.
OK so when you get back to SAR base and report in, all this info is takedn down. A POA of 1 with a POD of 50% means another team will go search the same area to try to bring up the POD to a number where we can say we think s/he is not there. At any time the Sheriff can look at the map and see POA and POD as each day developes. POA's are also subject to change as more data becomes available.....hope this is clear.
On climbing, passion in this world is everything and also sadly lacking. In my experience, people that find passion in the mountains bring it down with them and share that passion with others, many non climbers. Many people would have you stay safe in your house, live without passion if it means nothing bad would happen to you..and suddenly you are 80 years old and have done nothing passionate with your life. I am not saying that you have to climb to have passion, you can be passionate about reading. Both its clear that these men were passionate about climbing among other things....sorry to veer off the climbing facts.
Quick note to Debra Leming-Ross ....Mark is one dedicated person.
Very Solid and a honor to work with.
Sean for you and all of the guys on the summit you are my heros. My brother was with you. I have the highest respect for all of you and what you do for people. I hope you are as proud of yourselves as we are of you.
Debra Leming-Ross <<
In reading the article. Everything in his conversation seemed to make sense except the part about his friends. He had the wits to call, and call the right number. I don't know. I don't get it.
Thanks.
Reading what he said, gives me the creeps. It sounds like he was calling for help, and maybe to say goodbye? Why wouldn't he call 911? The statement about his friends wasn't the only untruth was it? He said he wasn't injured, only exhausted.
>>Thanks luzi3, to confirm what he said, I was on the team that got inserted at the summit and was actually one of the two folk that found James ie I was actually in the cave on Sunday. So those were the facts. <<
This scenario, is what was actually observed by the SAR.
"He said he wasn't injured, only exhausted."
Yes, when it came to their personal conditions or whereabouts he was confusing whereas the other statements made sense.
Perhaps he didn't need to dial a number but had pre-programmed numbers to just push one button and reach his family.
If he understood anything at all, he understood that calling 911 was useless as no emergency help could get to him. It was not useless to him to reach out to his family, however.
I think he was so numbed by the cold and shock he perhaps was not cognizant of his injury. At least not by the time he made the call.
I can't judge whether or not he could have gone back to the snow cave without an axe. It just depends on the specifics so much, and I don't have them. Roamer is good to ask that of. Not that he is familiar with Mt. Hood or that specific area, but he's the one who allows for the possibility and he knows how important axes can be.
It appears that scenario regarding the fate of the other two has them going alone to the spot where two axes were found, leaving Kelly James in the snow cave, then meeting with an accident. How to account for Kelly's injury? But roamer's scenario accounts for it very well.
If the scenario of the two being without Kelly when they had their accident is correct, then yes, the ice axes would be theirs, not Kelly's. Question then: where are Kelly's tools??
That would be my assessment. They all had an accident, with James witnessing the loss of his two friends. Hurt physically and mentally, on his call to his son, he didn't have the wits about him to make the hard task of informing them and came up with all he could at the moment, that one was in town and the other on a plane.
I figure he watched the other two fall while he was barely able to save himself. He ended up being hurt and alone, unable to make it down on his own.
I don't know if the other two had cell phones that worked, but that certainly would explain why they didn't use James's cell phone that did work.
Search officially ends for the other two. The families of the two missing made the decision to end the search today.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16296529/
Very sad...May God bless all involved.
I'm sure a lot of people will keep searching as soon as it is safe to do so.
LOL! yah, probably quite wise on your part. Climbers are a cliquish bunch, and don't suffer fools well.
I hope you understand- I didn't mean to imply that you were a fool, but that they (CC.com) were up to their eyeballs in fools, and were kinda getting cranky toward strangers.
It could be misconstrued as an unkind remark. Please forgive me.
-Bruce
The traverse back to the cave seems to be over snowpack, and the trail was already "kicked in", so he had good feet... The S&R guys didn't seem to be having great difficulty moving on that trail- What I saw of it on TV... They were roped and belayed, but seemed to be moving comfortably, so it doesn't seem to be out of the question. That can be deceiving though.
This also negates one of the theories at the climbers' forum, where they suggest perhaps he dislocated his shoulder in a self-arrest, which would mean he had an axe in his hand of the arm that got injured. Right? Or is this still a possibility?
Self-arrest is a reasonable theory for the injury, but that would pre-suppose his axes were with him, and suggests that his buddies left him totally unprepared- That is the thing that bugs me the most. They would not have left him that way.
How does the possibly cut rope fit into all this?
As I said before, the rope may or may not indicate a cut-away scenario. It would be incidental until more evidence presents.
Bruce
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