Death on Two Mountains

By WALTER ISAACSON

Accidents kill 16 on the darkest day in U.S. climbing history

As the first rays of dawn conquered the peaks of the Cascade Range last week, 23 climbers and six guides paused before attempting their final assault on the 14,410-ft. pinnacle of Washington's Mount Rainier. "The view was awesome," recalled Larry Martinson, 39, an insurance agent from Seattle. Then, while the climbers munched candy bars and took photographs some 2,000 ft. above the clouds, the morning stillness was shattered by what is surely the nation's worst mountaineering disaster.* It was only the first of two major accidents that Father's Day, the darkest day in U.S. climbing history.

Larry St. Peter, 40, a Seattle insurance broker, was among those perched at the edge of Mount Rainier's Ingraham Glacier, about 3,000 ft. from the peak, discussing the climb ahead. He recalled, "Suddenly there was a crashing sound and a thunderous roar behind us. It was as if one side of the mountain were coming down on us, an 800-ft. wall with thousands of blocks of ice tumbling down. Everybody was going 'Ooooh,' as if they were watching a Fourth 2 of July display. All I could think about was running."

Martinson, St. Peter and 16 others dug their spiked ice crampons into the glacier and worked their way to the edge to avoid being swept into a crevasse. But the car-sized chunks swept eleven of their companions farther down the slope and crushed them under tons of ice. Some were buried by as much as 80 ft. of debris. A rescue party, arriving the next day, could not find any sign of the missing eleven and doubted they ever would.

Mount Rainier, a dormant volcano about 55 miles north of Mount St. Helens, is a favorite objective of amateur climbers. But the mountain has claimed the lives of at least 66 climbers since it was first conquered in 1870. Lou Whittaker, one of the organizers of last week's ill-fated expedition, is a veteran climber whose twin brother Jim was the first American to conquer Mount Everest.

Said he: "This was the biggest icefall I've seen outside the Himalayas. You can predict an avalanche, but there is no way you can predict an icefall." (That natural phenomenon is the result of internal stress that builds up within a creeping glacier, eventually causing a wall of ice to snap away.) Said Survivor Martinson of his fallen colleagues: "They didn't have a chance."

Only hours later, another group of mountaineers met disaster on Oregon's Mount Hood, roughly 100 miles south of Mount Rainier. The victims were on an outing sponsored by the Portland-based Mazamas Club, a mountaineering group founded in 1894 and specializing in assaults on Mount Hood's 11,235-ft. peak. At the 10,500-ft. level on the dormant volcano's northeast face, one or more of the 17-member party slipped. The climbers, roped together in groups for safety, tumbled 2,000 ft. down the slope.

Robert Vreeland, 35, a biologist from Portland, remembered looking up to see some of his partners beginning to slip. Said he: "I yelled for them to self-arrest, to dig in with their axes, but they didn't have time. I braced myself. I could see I was going to be hit. I got my ax in a couple of times, but it came out. It was like a ball of people falling through the air. There wasn't anything I could do." Vreeland and eleven companions survived. Four were killed outright; a fifth died a few hours later of a heart attack.

Men and women will still challenge mountains as long as--and, of course, because--they are there. But the disasters may chill some mountaineers. St. Peter felt fortunate to be able to open a Father's Day present (a checkered sports shirt) from his son Stefan, 6, following his ordeal. He may, he says, try another assault some day, "but not this year."

--By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by Jane Estes/Seattle and Steve Jenning/Portland

* The worst accident ever was probably the death of 40 Soviet climbers on Mount Everest in 1952.

With reporting by Jane Estes and Steve Jenning

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