need to know
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In 1986, 20 people – 15 of them high school students – set out for a hike on Oregon’s Mount Hood
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This rate hike would end in disaster, and a People magazine article details what happened
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For days, some teenagers huddled in a homemade snow cave, with some eventually succumbing to the frigid temperatures.
The climb on Mount Hood continues despite weather service forecasts of snow. What’s more, it was a rite of passage at an Episcopal school in Oregon in 1986 and part of a required outdoor program called “Basecamp,” when 20 people, including 15 high school students, set out to hike the 11,245-foot peak.
Among the students was 15-year-old Richard Haeder, who, as a 1986 People magazine article detailed, appeared shaken the day before a planned hike in May. That’s when he called the school chaplain, the Rev. Thomas Goman, an experienced hiker and a member of the trekking team, to express his concerns.
Gorman’s father, who climbed Mount Hood 17 times, told PEOPLE that he assured the boy: “[Richard] He would rather not travel, but he feels like he has no choice in the matter. “
The students were accompanied by Goman, one of the students’ mothers, Dean of Students Marion Horwell and two tour guides: Dee Zduniak and Ralph Summers of Outward Bound.
AP Photo/Michael Hinsdale
On May 16, 1986, eight missing climbers were found in a snow cave on Mount Hood, Oregon, and rescuers lifted one of them out of a helicopter.
The teens and their guides and chaperones were preparing to hike the southern slopes of Mount Hood, Oregon’s tallest mountain and the world’s most climbed mountain outside of Japan’s Mount Fuji. If the weather turns bad, they head down to the warm cabins below.
As People magazine details, climbing Mount Hood is like a final exam for the school’s students, who learn survival skills in “Base Camp” classes.
When the day came, People wrote, the teens were each wearing three pairs of socks and several layers of clothing, as well as carrying axes and sandwiches. However, no one brought overnight gear or thermal blankets. No one seems to have heard that “at least four other groups from Portland have canceled expeditions over the past three days due to weather forecasts,” People reported.
So, on that spring Sunday, a group of us set out at 2 a.m. (a typical time for a day trip to the South Face).
AP Photo/Jake Smith
A helicopter flew to Mount Hood on May 15, 1986, as rescue efforts continued for missing Oregon Episcopal School students and staff.
Less than an hour after setting off, the group encountered a strong snowstorm, and six members decided to turn back (according to school policy, second-graders are awarded if they choose to descend the mountain after hiking 500 feet).
The six people heading to the hut were told that other members of the climbing team would join them by 6 p.m.
Some people never do this.
Search team members later determined that by 4 p.m., clouds had begun to cover the summit, reducing visibility to almost zero, forcing the remaining members to turn back less than 100 feet from the summit.
Temperatures also dropped, with wind chill coefficients about 50 degrees below zero.
Then: snow.
When one of the boys developed hypothermia, the rest of the group spent two hours digging a snow cave and then gathered around the boy in an effort to warm him.
As senior Molly Schula, 17, describes oregonian After: “People were shaking. When the boy’s temperature dropped, we decided to keep trying.”
The next morning, one of the tour guides, Ralph Summers, decided to take student Molly Schula with him to get help. A few hours later, the two found themselves at Mount Hood Meadows, a ski resort three miles southeast of Snow Cave.
At this point, 31 hours after the group’s first expedition, a search team (complete with Sno-Cats and helicopters) was already combing the mountain looking for the group.
Rescuers found nothing and the weather even forced them to turn back for their own safety.
Rescuers set out again the next day and encountered three frozen children: 15-year-olds Erin O’Leary, Alison Litzen-berger and Eric Sandvik.
All three were rushed to Emanuel Hospital in Portland, where, according to People , “doctors managed to get Eric’s heart started and keep it beating for nearly four hours” before declaring him dead, while the other two were never revived.
The next day, after spending 89 hours on the mountain, rescuers discovered the snow cave with eight people inside. Two of them, Brinton Clark and Giles Thompson, 16, were alive and groaning but had slow heartbeats and low body temperatures.
As People magazine points out, the job of moving everyone was arduous, requiring seven men to “lift each climber more than 700 feet up the snow to the helicopter.”
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From a 1986 People magazine story: “Giles’ legs had to be amputated above the ankles, but both young men had good chances of recovery. Neither Susan McCleve, 17, nor Patrick McGinnis, 15, showed vital signs when they arrived at University Hospital. Marion Howell, 39, a teacher, died at St. Vincent’s Hospital, 15 Tasha Amy died at Emmanuel Hospital. Richard Hyder and Pastor Gorman were hooked up to a heart-lung machine at Good Samaritan Hospital, but it was too late. Richard died at 10:53 p.m., and Father Tom died 12 minutes later.”
A total of nine hikers, including seven students, died, making the incident the second-deadliest alpine accident in North American history.
As Haider’s father, Richard Haider Sr., told People at the time, “I’m heartbroken. This could have been avoided.”
Two surviving students, Brinton Clark and Giles Thompson, spoke about their experiences at Willamette Week in 2004.
Clark reportedly spent six weeks recovering in the hospital, eventually returning to OES and later graduating from Stanford University with a degree in human biology. She went on to serve in the Peace Corps in Ghana before attending medical school.
Meanwhile, Thompson’s road to recovery has been more difficult. Doctors amputated both of his legs (one above and one below the knee) and removed muscle tissue from other parts of his body.
“After a few nights in there, I lost consciousness,” Thompson told the outlet. “I don’t remember if I thought I was going to die. I just remember that it was completely unreal. I don’t remember it happening to me.”
Read the original article on People
