A school trip up to the summit of Mount Hood turned into a nightmare
when the storm of the century forced the group to turn around just below the summit.
And this would just be the beginning of their ordeal.
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Just before midnigh on Sunday, May 11th, 1986,
15 students gathered together at the Oregon Episcopal School in Southwest Portland.
This small private academy hosted a program called base camp for its students
which offered an optional trip up the nearby Mount Hood.
That night, all of the students were gearing up for this ascent
and within 12 hours, they hoped to be standing at the top of the 11,249-foot (3,429-meter) summit.
In just the 10th grade, the program was supposed to teach the students
all about problem solving and teamwork in a challenging environment.
And so leading up to their ascent, the students were taught all of the basics of technical climbing and snow.
For months, they had practiced how to step kick on the ascent,
to plunge step on the dissent,
how to perform a sitting glissade,
how self-arrest in a fall,
and even some basic first aid.
Over the decade that this program had been run, there had been dozens of successful ascents
and the students loved it.
That night before they left the school, they checked to make sure they had all of their equipment,
which included carabiners, harnesses, crampons, a field stove, a sleeping bag, a tarp, and some first aid kits.
From the school, they drove to the Timberline Lodge,
which is a ski resort at the foot of Mount Hood
where they picked up their ice, axes, helmets, and one sturdy shovel for digging snow.
They didn't know it yet, but this would become their most crucial piece of equipment up on the mountain.
After collecting their last pieces of equipment,
they got back on the school bus at 3:00 AM
and then it took them up the 90-minute forest service road to the base of the trail.
Leading the students that day was 42-year-old chaplain and priest Thomas Goman.
In total, there were 15 students,
one of the student's mothers, one administrator and two mountain guides for a total of 20 people.
The temperature that morning was comfortably above freezing.
And because they had left so early, they would have plenty of daylight,
even if their day ran much longer than expected.
This is crucial on a mountain.
Navigating in the dark is almost impossible,
so you need to make sure that you budget much more daylight than you expect to need.
That morning, the students set off on a path that starts at around 6,000 feet (1,829 m) in calf-deep snow.
Although they only had 5,000 vertical feet (1,524 m) to travel,
The total length of the round trip would be about six miles (9.65 km).
In the darkness before dawn, everything was calm and quiet
except for the sound of their footsteps in the snow.
Their goal, the summit of Mount Hood, is part of the cascade volcanic arc
and sits about 50 miles (80.4 km) Southeast of Portland.
It's the highest mountain in Oregon and the fourth highest in the entire cascade range.
In addition to its height,
its prominence gives it that picturesque mountain view towering above the surrounding area.
Because of its height as well, it's a glaciated peak with 12 permanent glaciers in the snow fields,
giving it the feel of a much taller mountain,
along with much of the associated danger.
As with most people who attempt to summit Mount Hood,
they would be following the route along the south side of the mountain.
This route ascends along the eastern edge of the Timberline ski area
and parallels the famous Palmer chairlift all the way up to 8,500 feet (2,591 m).
Beyond the Palmer chairlift is the famous Crater Rock
which is a large outcropping in the crater-like ridge that forms the summit,
Hogsback, which is a massive mound of snow and ice,
and then finally the Pearly Gates,
that are the final rocky icy obstacle right before the 11,249-foot (3,429-meter) peak.
And although the root up the south face is about as straightforward as they come,
It doesn't mean that there isn't some risk involved.
In fact, this ostensibly easy climb is a contributor to the number of deaths that have occurred on the mountain.
Over 120 people have died on Mount Hood
which is equal to some of the other Great North American peaks
like Mount Denali and Mount Washington.
It's permanent glaciation gives it the same avalanches and crevasses
while it's quickly changing weather can turn a simple ascent into a disaster waiting to happen.
It's crucial to have an experienced guide who's familiar with those risks to ensure a safe ascent.
With this group of students, Thomas Goman was that guide.
He had made this climb 18 times in the past decade and there had yet to be a single incident.
When he took the job at Oregon Episcopal a decade earlier,
he was already an experienced mountaineer.
And his experience in the mountains, coupled with his educational background,
made him the perfect fit to lead the students.
He held a degree from Harvard and a doctorate from Claremont
and was considered to be the brain on campus.
In his years at the school, he was beloved by the students.
However, one student would later write that Tom had a recklessness about him.
According to the 19-year-old senior Joel Schalit,
Tom was subtly, but seriously troubled.
Over his years at the school, Tom had mentored Joel
and Joel even looked up to Tom as sort of a father figure.
He had even stayed at Tom's house, along with Tom's wife on several occasions.
To illustrate what he meant, he cited one incident in particular
where he was attending an expedition led by Tom in one of his advanced rock climbing courses.
The students were brought up to an outcropping of rock above Sandy River,
where they were supposed to anchor a repel line to some trees and then practice belaying one another.
Because of the height and their inexperience with the skill,
the students were nervous and hesitant to begin belaying one another over the precipice.
To demonstrate that it was safe, Tom went to the edge of the cliff,
took off his helmet, yelled, "On belay."
and then swan dived off of the cliff.
Joel and the others watched as Tom was successfully caught by the rope,
but then smashed against the jagged rocks on the cliff side.
He would go on to do this another seven times and each time he smashed into the rocks.
By the end, he was covered in blood and the students were thoroughly freaked out.
In any case, the forecast on the day of their climb wasn't great.
There was a multi-day storm moving into the area
that was expected to hit that evening with high winds and lots of snow.
Tom assessed the forecast and decide that they would make the ascent anyway,
figuring that they would be down the mountain before the storm hit.
And even if they weren't, they would miss the worst of it.
And at dawn, a couple hours into their climb,
the weather was still mild.
The wind was barely blowing and visibility was good
so the group trudged on.
The first two individuals to turn back were a mother and her daughter who was one of the students.
She had a stomach ache and with the difficulty of the climb, she didn't feel good enough to continue.
Initially, Tom pressured her to keep going, but eventually relented
and so they watched as the rest of the group slowly made their way up the slope and out of view.
at 7,000 feet (2,137 m), at a small lodge known as the Silcox Hut,
two more students decide to turn back.
One girl was having bad cramps and so another student went with her
to make sure that she wasn't alone on the way back.
Shortly following that, two more students decide to turn back.
And then at 11:30 AM, one of their guides also needed to turn back
because she started to experience mild snow blindness.
This is a phenomenon that frequently occurs at high altitudes in bright, snowy conditions.
It's almost like a sunburn to your eyes that occurs from too much exposure to UV light.
The reflective snow on a mountain side can accelerate this process and lead to pain and damage to the eyes.
Of the original 20, only 13 remained to make a final push for the summit.
However, within two hours of the guide's departure,
the storm swept in and started to get really bad.
With the wind picking up and the snow coming down steadily,
Tom still hoped that the group could make the summit.
They continued for a little while longer, but the weather worsened and their pace slowed to a crawl.
The other guide with them, a man named Ralph Summers
was getting worried and starting to question Tom's judgment
because Tom was determined to make it up and down before the storm was at full force.
At 2:00 PM at just over 11,000 feet (3,353 m) and just 250 feet (76.2 m) below the summit,
Ralph managed to convince Tom that they needed to turn back and right away.
The visibility was reduced to just the distance between the person in front and the person in the back.
And the wind and snow risked wiping away the tracks from their ascent.
Ralph had Tom lead the group on the way down
to ensure that they followed their ascent tracks while he followed the group from behind.
Now, the route that they followed is a really straightforward route.
Even in rough weather with low visibility,
it should be an easy descent provided that you follow your ascent tracks or follow a compass reading.
Unfortunately, this was no ordinary storm.
The first member of their group to start having issues was one of the smaller students.
He was light and lean and had minimal protection against the cold.
By 3:30 PM, he was slurring his words and eventually collapsed in the snow
and asked the group to just let him sleep.
These were all classic symptoms of hypothermia
and the group had barely descended to just below Hogsback at 10,500 feet (3,200 m).
They had another 4,000 vertical feet (1,219 m) to descend.
In contrast to a clear day when they'd be easily visible from the Timberline Lodge down below,
they might as well be on the moon.
Visibility was just 20 feet (6.1 m) now and the wind was blowing so hard
it was becoming hard to distinguish the ground from the sky.
This can cause a sense of vertigo because if visibility gets bad enough, you literally can't see your feet as you step.
All of the students huddled around the fallen boy and placed him in the single sleeping bag
that they had brought with them.
Then, another student named Susan
took off her jacket and boots, and then got into the sleeping bag with him
to use her body heat to help warm him up.
Ralph got the stove, going to boil some water and then dissolved some lemon drops
in the water to make a warm sugary drink.
Between the warm water and the sleeping bag, they successfully warmed up the hypothermic student,
but it took almost an hour.
In that hour, they lost precious daylight.
The storm continued to get worse and the other members of the group started to get cold as well.
In particular, Tom seems to have gotten much colder than the others realized.
When they started descending again, Tom made a navigation error.
What should have been a simple compass reading,
Tom had miscalculated by 20 degrees.
With their tracks wiped away in visibility severely reduced,
They were actually heading sideways across the slope instead of down.
At some point, Ralph and Tom had switched places
and so Ralph was leading the group when he noticed a large crack along the ground.
He was worried that they were over an area called White River Glacier,
which he knew had deep crevasses.
Even worse, in a storm like they were in, the wind can cover the openings with a thin layer of ice and snow,
giving them the appearance of solid ground when in actuality,
they're a death trap for any unsuspecting climbers who misstep.
He called back to the others to follow his exact footsteps and to watch out for the large crack in the ground.
By now, he couldn't even see most of the others because visibility was reduced to just 10 feet (3 m).
And although they weren't aware of it at the time,
this storm was one of the worst storms in recorded history on Mount Hood,
with winds up to 103 miles (166 km) per hour.
They struggled onward for a little while longer when all of a sudden,
Ralph's foot plunged over the edge of an ice crevasse.
Thankfully, his weight was on his back leg so he didn't fall in,
but he was able to look over the edge and see the 30 feet (9.1 m) of darkness
that he would've fallen into had he not caught himself.
At 7:00 PM and still at 8,200 feet (2,499 m) with the sun dropping below the horizon,
the group decided that they needed to dig a snow cave and prepare to spend the night on the mountain.
The storm was still getting worse and they were lost in the dark.
There was just no way that they could keep descending.
But because they were supposed to return that day,
they knew that the parents and faculty would alert authorities as soon as they were late for their arrival time.
They just had to last in the storm until morning when it was light out for rescuers to find them.
Or so they thought.
Ralph and Tom took turns digging with the shovel they brought
and over the course of an hour,
they managed to create a space in the mountain side that was six-feet-wide (1.83 m),
eight-feet-long (2.43 m) and four-feet-high (1.22 m).
The students crawled in and wedged themselves side by side,
but it was only big enough for six people at a time.
Between the hard-packed snow and the storm, they just weren't able to make the cave any larger,
so they had to rotate in and out of the cave.
Tom was in the first rotation outside of the cave and his poor condition was very apparent now.
He was shivering violently in the extreme winds and cold.
Inside, the airflow was poor and it was claustrophobic being jammed together in the dark.
The body heat of everyone inside was also causing the walls to melt and turn into slush and ice water on the floor.
Anyone who was in the middle was essentially laying in a puddle of water and soaking their clothes.
Over the course of the night, they all struggled to keep the entrance open as the wind and snow slowly covered it over.
And at some point, the shovel was ripped away from the entrance,
leaving them with only their ice axes to dig themselves out.
By Tuesday morning, at first light, Tom couldn't even count 10 because of how hypothermic he was.
Ralph decided that they couldn't wait for rescuers to arrive.
He needed to try to get down and tell rescuers their position as soon as possible.
Another member of the group named Molly also volunteered to go with him.
And then the two of them set down the mountain.
At the same time, as they suspected, rescuers had already been assembled and were preparing to start their search.
A number of different rescue and volunteer groups had arrived at the Timberland Lodge throughout the night
to the now Category 2 hurricane force winds blowing on Mount Hood.
One rescuer who had climbed Mount Hood 460 times
said it was the worst weather he'd ever seen on the mountain.
Visibility was just arm's length and the winds were steady at 100 miles (161 km) per hour,
making it nearly impossible to stand.
At 9:00 AM, the search was in full force,
but the conditions made it almost impossible to make any progress.
The rescuers had brought these large, all-terrain vehicles called Tucker Sno-Cats
and they were literally being toppled over because the wind was so strong.
Miraculously at 9:50 AM, Ralph and Molly managed to make it the Mount Hood Meadows ski resort.
Despite going two miles (3.21 km) in the wrong direction, they had managed to glissade almost the entire way down.
An out of sheer luck, they stumbled on another structure on the mountain side.
They were able to get in touch with rescue teams to give them a better idea of where everyone else
was stuck in the mountain still.
But by the afternoon, almost 24 hours after the storm started,
four feet (1.22 m) of snow had fallen on the mountain.
That evening, the entrance to the cave was almost completely shut.
The group knew that if it closed, they would be completely out of air.
So three of them squeezed their way out to try to widen the entrance.
But after they made it out, they couldn't get back in.
They tried desperately to dig away the snow and ice,
but because of severe hypothermia, they lacked the coordination to do it.
The last thing anyone from inside the cave remembers is a boot trying to jam its way inside of the opening
before leaving once again.
Now, the three individuals were trapped outside with no way to get back in.
Early on Wednesday at 2:00 AM, the weather started to clear.
Rescuers assembled once again, and prepared to continue the search.
Then at 5:45 AM at sunrise, they managed to see two black dots in an area known as White River Canyon.
They got there as fast as they could only to find that they were two lifeless bodies
curled up in the fetal position.
They were the bodies of two of the individuals who got stuck outside of the cave.
Another team nearby found the body of the third individual.
They seemed to have just collapsed while walking and died on the spot.
All three of them died of hypothermia.
Despite the three individuals being clearly deceased,
it was somehow miscommunicated that they had found three survivors.
As they arrived back at the Timberline, tragically,
hopeful rescuers and parents were greeted with three bodies instead of three survivors.
This was a crushing blow to everyone that hoped they would be getting good news.
With the weather now clear enough to fly helicopters up the mountain side,
the search was able to accelerate its progress.
Ralph was brought up in one of the helicopters to point out where he thought the cave was,
but the wind and snow had completely erased any trace the cave or their tracks.
Between the dozens of rescuers, over 5,000 man-hours had been spent searching since they had began
and they had yet to find a single trace of the remaining individuals.
On Wednesday afternoon, a rescuer named Richard Harder
had a hunch that the search team had been focused on an area too high up the mountain.
After finally managing to get on a fly-by mission,
he leaned out over the hatch of the helicopter and dropped a flare onto a spot at about 8,200 feet (2,500 m) up.
This idea was initially met by resistance,
but he was eventually able to organize a team and go comb the area.
Starting at 8,500 feet (2,591 m), the search team walked slowly down the mountain side,
three feet apart (0.91 m) and pushing 10-foot (3.05 m) avalanche poles into the ground.
This was a final desperate measure because in 20 minutes,
the search would be called off once again for the night.
But at 5:38, they hit something.
The team frantically dug into the snow
and once they had made a large enough hole, one of the rescuers put his head down and smelled the air.
The smell coming from the ground was bad,
which let them know that they were on the right track.
Then after some more digging, they heard the cries of one of the surviving students --
a girl named Brinton Clark.
After digging some more, they were able to see in and saw Giles Thompson
and under him was Brinton Clark.
They were the last two people alive inside of the cave.
Brinton's core temperature was measured to be just 74 Fahrenheit or 23 degrees Celsius.
Giles was in even worse shape
and the rest of the individuals in the cave were almost completely frozen.
Because of the way that they had been jammed in the cave,
Brinton was kept warm by Giles who was wearing particularly thick wool gear.
This gear kept him alive
and the two of them survived as a result.
A helicopter rushed them into the city and into a hospital where Giles immediately went into cardiac arrest.
The surgeons had to open his chest and actually massage his heart by hand to keep him alive.
Over the next three months, doctors struggled to keep him alive,
but eventually, they were able to stabilize him,
but he would lose his legs in the process.
Brinton who was in better shape upon arrival to the hospital made a full recovery.
In the disaster, seven students and two staff died.
Three died outside on the mountain
and another six died inside of the cave --
all of hypothermia.
An investigation following the event determined that the critical error
was not turning around at the top of the Palmer Lift.
Prior to that conditions were reasonable enough to think that an attempt could still be made.
Beyond that, Tom's conditions seemed to have been worse prior to what everyone thought.
And his judgment seems to have been impacted by the cold.
Despite his supposed recklessness, in 18 attempts over the previous 10 years,
he had turned back on two separate instances because of poor conditions.
Ultimately, the severity of the storm and the speed that it developed
led to a series of poor decisions, leading to the deaths of nine people.
After the 1986 disaster, Oregon Episcopal never ran another expedition up to the summit of Mount Hood.
The parents of one of the deceased students sued the school and were awarded $500,000 as a result.
And many of the surviving individuals,
even the ones who turned back prior to the storm,
moved away from the area and into careers that revolved around helping others as a way to cope with the events.
Hello everyone. My name is Sean and welcome to Scary Interesting.
If you made it this far, I just want to thank you for watching.
This is part five of the series -- Mountain Climbing Disasters.
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