Death by Descent

Twenty members of a Portland, Ore. mountainclimbing club who call themselves Mazamas (after the Indian word for mountain goat) rode in a bus early one morning last week to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, on their way to a fateful climb. Over 50 times the Mazamas had climbed the11,253-ft. mountain. They considered it a routine expedition.

At 4 a. m., under a sky clear except for a few flaky, high clouds, the climbers left the lodge, 16 on skis with "climbers,"* four on snowshoes. They followed a snow-tractor's broad track for two miles, then cached snowshoes and skis and began to hike. At a chute near a crag called Crater Rock, they affixed crampons (spikes) to their boots to insure their footing on ice. Split into three strings, they followed two trailbreakers, cutting steps ahead, up Zig Zag draw to the west of Crater Rock, to within 50 feet of the top ridge.

Suddenly a squall struck the party. Rare air, steeps, ice are hazards climbers expect to overcome, but blizzards and high wind are hazards they run away from. Leader Joe Leuthold at once gave the order to descend. The wind was so sharp the Mazamas had to back down the draw. Ice crusted their goggles; sleet froze on their faces and clothes. After the party had reached the base of the chute, they broke strings, reassembled, continued the descent. Some of them were not dressed warmly enough for the extreme cold.

Leader Leuthold noticed that Mrs. Dorothy Clark, one of the party's two women, and Roy Varney, a veteran climber from Oregon City, were lagging, staggering. Varney said he could hardly see. Two Mazamas, themselves weak, were assigned to support each of them. Then Leader Leuthold broke a climbing rule--that an expedition's leader, like a sea captain, must follow all others out of trouble. He donned skis, tumbled, slid, rolled down to Timberline to fetch the snow tractor. At the lodge he found that the driver was miles away, the key lost.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Clark made the descent safely, but Varney collapsed. Three men lashed him to a pair of skis, tried to drag his body down. As they tugged the bogging load through fresh snow, Varney's arms slowly clinched above his head, stark frozen. In the end, almost frozen themselves, the three men abandoned their clubmate, limped to safety.

Next evening the Mazama Club assembled in their Portland headquarters to discuss Varney's death. As they talked they discovered to their horror that another of their party, Russell Gueffroy, a Vancouver teacher and electrician, had not been seen since he had picked up his skis at the cache near Crater Rock and had wandered down the mountainside. They learned that his car was still parked near Mazama Lodge, that he had not reported for work Monday morning. Next day the Mazama Club trudged up Mt. Hood again with little hope of finding Russell Gueffroy-under 19 inches of fresh powder snow.

After a fruitless 24 hours, the party stumbled on Gueffroy's skis. By prodding with bamboo poles through the new surface snow, searchers were able to tell where his feet had broken through the crust of the old snow. So they followed his trail, every few feet digging down to the crust to confirm their soundings. All that day and half the next they followed his confused, straggling steps deep into Sand Canyon.

The one thing freezing men want more than anything else is rest. Under the protecting branches of a tall fir tree in Sand Canyon they found Russell Gueffroy, less than two miles from safety, sitting down to rest, frozen, with one wrist fractured, his goggles still on his face, his knapsack still on his back.

*Climbers are strips of sealskin, canvas or plush attached to the bottom of the ski, or metallic flaps attached to the centre or back of the ski to assist in climbing slopes.

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