The Avalanche

On a clear and frosty Seattle morning, the vast white bulk of Mount Rainier sometimes seems to be floating low in the southern sky. East and west, the peaks of the Cascade and Olympic ranges run off sharp, cold and glistening along the horizon. Looking at them, Seattle likes to reflect that the frontier still exists: the mountains are still as pitiless--and as alluring--as they were when Henry Yesler's little sawmill was first cutting Douglas fir logs and Indian war canoes still coursed Puget Sound's lonely arms of green tidewater.

To many a Northwesterner--among them lean, soft-spoken Berne Jacobsen, 46, city editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer--the mountains are a vital part of life. When he was younger, Jacobsen went north in the Jack London tradition, to the greater ranges of Alaska, and later wrote of handloggers, prospectors, coastal fishermen. By the time his only child, Keith, was born, Jacobsen was claimed by the chores of the city room. But as the boy grew, the father found time to take him into the mountains on innumerable weekend trips.

Keith Jacobsen became a husky 17-year-old who lived, like many of his friends, for little but the challenge of the peaks. A fortnight ago, just after dawn, he climbed out of an automobile at the summit of Washington's crag-hung Snoqualmie Pass. He slipped on his pack, snapped on his skis and, with two teen-age pals behind him, set off on an overnight climb to Snow -Lake in the untracked high Cascades. The boys toiled steadily; by half past twelve they had passed through a draw at 4,200 feet and were beginning the last, long climb to the lake where they planned to camp.

They never got there. Edward Almquist, the last boy in line, bent over to adjust his skis, heard a sound like "rumbling drums," glanced up, and saw the smoking, tumbling white front of an avalanche racing down upon them. He yelled, fled, fell. When he got up, the mountains were silent again. Keith Jacobsen and the second boy, Larry Schinke, had vanished. Survivor Almquist started the 4 1/2 miles back to the pass. He broke one ski. But he plunged fearfully on, waded along the Snoqualmie River until he found a familiar landmark, then took off through the snow again. It was only 3 o'clock in the afternoon when he burst out near a ski lodge at the road, yelling, "Help! Help! Avalanche!"

"The Weather's Terrible." Back up in the mountains, Larry Schinke was keeping a terrible vigil. When he recovered consciousness he found himself under the snow, his feet higher than his head, and with one arm thrown up over his face. The arm made a small air pocket and allowed him to breathe. But, wise in the survival rules of mountaineering, he moved not a muscle for fear of re-starting the slide. He did not know how deep he was (actually he was down only three feet), but he could see light through the snow. He assumed that all three boys had been buried, presumed the party would not be missed for 36 hours. He prayed. Melting snow ran into one of his ears--drop by drop--like a Chinese torture. The bad air made him sick and he vomited. But he kept himself motionless, hour after hour, as darkness fell--and as a rescue party, guided by his friend Eddie Almquist--battled upward through a blinding blizzard.

That night, at the state highway patrol's crowded, overheated headquarters in Snoqualmie Pass, City Editor Jacobsen paced, smoked cigarettes, listened to the crackle of short-wave radio and the sound of his own reporters yelling into a hand-cranked telephone. "Listen," one reporter called, "22 really hot mountain guys started up and had to come back. The weather's terrible. Hell, yes, you can call it a fierce blizzard."

The Tip of a Ski. But the first rescuers pressed on in the darkness. At 9:55 the radio rasped: "We've located Larry Schinke. He's alive." Larry had seen the faint glow of a flashlight through the piled snow, had yelled, and had been rescued safe & sound. But the searching party, continuing on its way, reported no sign of young Keith Jacobsen. Back in the state patrol headquarters, the PI's managing editor Ed Stone took Keith's father gently by the arm, led him into a side room, told him to stretch out on an army cot. Jacobsen obeyed numbly.

At dawn there was still no sign of Keith, although knots of determined new rescuers had been pressing up into the mountains all night long, with poles, shovels, lights, food. But at 8 a.m. the radio announced that the tip of a ski had been sighted, that a body had been located--that Keith was dead. As the radio began blaring its message, Managing Editor Stone reached fiercely for the door to Jacobsen's little room and slammed it shut. From the other side the boy's father quietly opened it again. He stood in the doorway, red-eyed, unshaven, motionless. When the radio finally stopped, Jacobsen went back to the cot and sat down. Then he put his head in his hands and wept.

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