FTV: Code 1244
First the disclaimer: my wife and I are not mountain climbers but we have hiked up many slopes near our home turf in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Even though they are called ‘mountains’ (ie: The Porcupine Mountains, The Huron Mountains), they are mere foothills when compared to the mountain ranges found in the western states. We have been on a few of the tourist accessible hikes in and around the WOAS-FM West Coast Bureau in Eugene, Oregon, but none of these excursions would qualify as ‘mountain climbing’. Still, we both hold a certain fascination for nonfiction books and articles written about mountain climbing. When she stumbled upon the story recounted in the book CODE 1244 – The 1986 Mount Hood Tragedy by Ric Conrad (Kahuna Books, 2019), she was not able to find it via the Ontonagon Township Library Interlibrary Loan network. Eventually, she found a copy to borrow through the OTL (after paying a modest shipping fee) from the Whatcom County Library System in Bellingham, Washington.
My wife reads books at a much faster pace than I do so with time to spare, she recommended that I check it out before it had to be returned. Neither of us were familiar with the events that took place on Mount Hood in 1986. The fact that the only loaner copy we could find came from Washington state was a hint that the reporting about the tragedy was localized in the Pacific Northwest. In 1975, I took a college graduation trip to visit my good friend Mitch who was living in Lake Oswego, Oregon just outside of Portland. On the flight in from Chicago, the pilot announced we were arriving early so he took us on a 360 degree ‘sight seeing’ tour around Mount Hood. Unfortunately, I was on the right side of the plane and when he banked to the left to fly around the peak, all I could see out my window was sky and ground zipping by the windows to my left.
During my visit, we took a couple of tours, first traveling west to the Pacific Ocean at Seaside before turning our attention to the east. Mitch and I drove over the southern slope of Mount Hood on the way to a hot spring resort in the high desert in the inter-montain basin. On our way, we made a brief stop at the Mount Hood Ski area to take a look at the Timberline Lodge ski chalet. Since the WCB relocated to Eugene, we have only seen the mountain from a distance while visiting Portland. Mitch still lives just outside of Portland in Boring, Oregon so I asked him if he had read CODE 1244. He said he knew of the events written in the book but had never seen the book itself. He asked me to fill him in when I was done with it.
The amount of research Conrad put into this book is obvious when one scans the eight pages of additional references he cited and the forty three pages of footnotes he meticulously cataloged in the endnotes. The book’s overleaf summary states, “[Conrad’s] in depth examination of the 1986 Mount Hood Tragedy is drawn from law enforcement reports, documents provided by Portland Mountain Rescue, and recorded interviews with rescue workers. Friends and family of the missing climbers, and members of the actual party. Conrad eventually realized that narrative nonfiction was the best way to tell the story.” It would take him four years to write the book.
The twenty climbers are introduced in the first chapter by detailing how they went about their last minute tasks before leaving on the hike. The Oregon Episcopal School is a private preparatory school located in Portland, Oregon. Their curriculum includes different outdoor challenges, one of which is a hike on the upper reaches of Mount Hood. The mountain is the second most hiked peak in the world after Japan’s Mount Fuji with some 10,000 climbers attempting to hike to the summit each year. The peak hiking season stretches from April to mid-June and the OES hike Conrad covers took place on May 12, 1986. The mountain is also considered to be one of the deadliest in the Cascade Range with more than 150 deaths since they began to keep records, 46 since 2002. The difficulty lies in the technical aspects of the climb that require ice axes, crampons, and ropes. Falling rocks, crevasses, and changeable, often volatile weather conditions further enhance the dangers faced trying to summit Hood.
The Mount Hood hikes were populated by first time climbers who were typically sophomores at the OES. A few older climbers who had experience in the climb came along to make sure the younger students had someone to aid them if they ran into difficulties. There were four members of the Advanced Climbing Team (ACT) on the May 1986 outing. The hike’s leader was Father Tom Goman, a forty-one year old who taught calculus, chemistry, ethics, and religion at the school for the past seven years. He was also the chess team advisor and known for his generosity of, “…time, attention, money, clothing, food, books, or climbing equipment…without the need for reciprocity.” Father Tom had been climbing mountains since he was thirteen and over the years had done most of the major Cascade peaks in Oregon and Washington. He was a member of the American Alpine Club and had at least a dozen summits of Mount Hood behind him.
The OES program supplemented their team with hired consultants, usually from the Pacific Crest Outward Bound school also based in Portland. Ralph Summers was contracted to accompany four hikes that spring. When he found out he had a conflict with one hike later in May, he asked a fellow Outward Bound employee named Dee Zduniak to take his place. To prepare her for that hike, he invited her to come along as an extra body on the May 12, 1986 trek. The school group boarded a bus and departed for the adventure at 11:30 p.m. on May 11 for the seventy mile drive up to the Timberline Lodge. Zduniak had arrived there early and while she was waiting for Summers to arrive, she had a conversation with one of the bartenders there. When asked if there was a hike going out that night, she replied, “We’ll just climb a few pitches and then turn back.” She had been monitoring the weather reports and the severity of the forecast convinced her that it would be an abbreviated outing. There was no pressure on the group – the students received credit for making the attempt and even if they became ill or bowed out before the group left the lodge, they would still be given credit for the activity.
The group arrived at Timberline and assembled at what is known as the ‘Climber’s Cave.’ The required paperwork for the hike was filled out and filed as the ACT students helped distribute the equipment each student would need. At 2:45 a.m., they headed up the mountain. As they departed, Father Tom told one of the ACT students, “There’s a storm coming in. We’re probably going to have to call this one early.” With another ACT member out front, Conrad describes the scene: “Molly took the lead, post-holing up to her calves in the snow. Her headlamp illuminated the terrain directly in front of her, while the students she was leading used flashlights. Father Tom had instructed her to maintain a steady pace, keeping the Magic Mile chair lift towers far off to her left, as a guide.” As a good hike leader is instructed to do, she kept an eye on the younger students.
Fifteen minutes into the hike, she instructed them to take a breather and had them remove one layer of clothing so they would not overheat. This gave Goman, Summers, Zduniak, and ACT aid Mick to catch up (they had remained behind to finish the paperwork). The younger climbers had complained about the pace Molly was setting so she promised to slow down a bit.
Experienced mountaineers know leaving early affords them with better snow conditions. The group’s adult leaders had all seen the weather forecast and set off with a shortened hike in their minds. The adults also made it a point to move up and down the line of hikers to assess how they were doing. The rule of thumb is, “Never move faster than your slowest member can go.”
One of the hikers named Hilary began to feel sick and her mother (another adult volunteer on the trip) informed Goman that her daughter was feeling ill. At 3:15 a.m., she headed back to the lodge with Hilary and the party was reduced to 18 climbers. Between 5:30 a.m. and 8:20 a.m., student Courtney began questioning if she should go on. She had tweaked her back during javelin practice and her inner voice began telling her to, ‘go down’. When ACT member Lorca began having cramps, Goman instructed the two of them to return to the lodge and if Lorca’s symptoms got any worse, he told them they should call a doctor. Courtney felt bad about turning around, but Goman assured her there would be another chance and besides, he said, “We’re probably going to turn around anyway.” By the time they reached Timberline at 9:05 a.m., they could still see the rest of the group ascending near the Palmer snowfield.
School dean Marion Howell was on the trip and she was struggling a bit when the two girls had turned back. She decided to tough it out and continue the climb. By 9:15 a.m., they were nearing the upper shack of the Palmer chair lift. They were at 8,700 feet with another 2,700 feet left to climb to the summit. Student John told ACT member Mick that he needed to turn back. Surprisingly, Goman mocked John, asking him “What? You are going to give up on what could be one of the greatest moments of your life?” Marion was still slowing down and Goman also called her to task, asking, “What’s the matter Marion? Can’t take it any more?” With the departure of Mick and John, the climbing party was down to fourteen. The rest pressed on and reached the base of the Triangle Moraine at 10:55 a.m. Gorman took the precaution of planting trail wands every 200 feet or so to help them identify their route when they came down.
The last of the remaining group to turn back was Dee Zudniak. Near the top of the Triangle Moraine (about 9,700 feet), symptoms of snowblindness began to bother her vision. She had experienced a similar problem ascending Mount Adams and as her vision began to grey-wash, she could no longer see shadows or the difference between light and dark objects. When she told Goman and Summers she would have to turn back, she asked if they had a ‘summit or bust’ attitude. Both replied they expected to turn back ‘should the need arise’. It was 11:30 a.m. and as she turned back, Zhudniak noticed a cloud cap had descended over the mountain. She could no longer see the Palmer chair lift shack below her and had to rely on the trail wands to find her path down the mountain.
When the group reached an area called the Upper Hogsback on the Coalman Glacier, the wind picked up and heavy snow had begun to fall. At 3:20 p.m., Summers assessed the deteriorating conditions and told Goman, “I think we should get out of here.” Goman agreed and somewhere around 10,700 feet in elevation, they began feeling their way back down the mountain. The snow was beginning to cover their old trail. As the wind and snow increased, they had to resort to using a compass to show them the direction they needed to go. The normal ‘escape’ bearing back to the Lodge is 180 degrees but for some reason, they decided to follow a 160 degree bearing.
To complicate matters, student Pat began to fade, probably because he had recently recovered from a flu-like illness. He needed assistance to stay upright and his body temperature was getting dangerously low. In the blinding conditions, Summers and Goman decided they were not going to make it down the mountain at this rate in the worsening weather. They had been expected back at the lodge at 6:00 p.m. At 7:05 p.m., they began digging out a snow cave that, at 4 X 6 foot chamber located at the end of a short tunnel, was barely big enough for all of them to get into. With the snow threatening to bury the entrance, they took turns having a couple of the group go outside to clear the tunnel while giving the rest a little more room. It was an uncomfortable night and by morning, with the storm showing no signs of abating, Summers and ACT Molly made the bold decision to try and hike down the mountain to get help.
In the disorienting blizzard, Summers told Molly that their only choice was to keep moving, otherwise they would die. They were not exactly sure where they were until they stumbled upon a sign indicating they had reached the Texas chair lift on the southeastern side of the mountain.
Finally, they knew where they were and at 9:45 a.m., they arrived at the Ski School Office located at Mt. Hood Meadows. With the rescue teams trying to simply survive on the mountain searching for the climbers during the horrendous blizzard, the remaining 11 were still stranded in the snow cave Summers and Molly had departed from at 8:00 a.m.
The volume of people and organizations involved in this effort was staggering. Time, however, was not on their side. When the weather cleared enough for helicopters to start shuttling search teams to various points on the mountain, the sheer enormity of the task became clearer. Searching for the snow cave was truly akin to looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The first clue that they were getting close arrived when three bodies were spotted curled in the fetal position – one was at the top of a snow ridge and two were at the base of the same snow covered ridge. The crowd of family and rescue personnel at the Timberline Lodge grew hopeful when they heard that ‘survivors’ had been found, but by this time, everyone was grasping at straws of hope.
The three hikers were flown by helicopter to two hospitals in Portland where medical teams there began emergency warming procedures. With core body temperatures of 41 degrees F, care was taken to try and revive them. They were able to get the heart of one of them to show some activity, but it could not pump enough blood to save him. The three were pronounced dead when all the measures that could be undertaken proved unsuccessful.
Finding three hikers who had left the snow cave to try and save themselves narrowed the search area. Lines of rescuers probing with long metal poles eventually found the group’s cache of equipment. The snow cave entrance was located nearby buried under four feet of fresh snow. Upon digging out the entrance, they found two hikers in the entry way who were still alive, but just barely. The other six had perished. The two still breathing had been positioned on the legs of Marion and Father Tom, no doubt keeping them out of the cold water that was covering the bottom of the snow cave. The entrance and airholes had all been blocked by new snow so with the lack of oxygen, the survivors were very close to death when finally pulled from the cave.
The six deceased were given similar warning treatments in Portland, but all succumbed to acute hypothermia. The two who were still clinging to life, responded to treatment but had to undergo a long and difficult recovery. Giles, the male, lost both his lower legs (one above the knee, the other below the knee), but went on to raise a family and return to his lifelong favorite sport, skiing. The female survivor, Britton, recovered with fewer ill effects. She later joined the peace corp before returning to school and becoming a doctor. The seven who survived because they had trekked back down the mountain before the weather changed were damaged in other ways having lost so many of their fellow students and friends as were the family members of the victims.
The questions about how this tragedy happened were never answered to anyone’s satisfaction.
The biggest one, of course, is still, “With the dire weather forecast that was broadcast for Mount Hood that day, why didn’t they all reverse course?” Considering how many times the expedition leaders (Sullivan and Father Tom) told those at Mount Hood and members of the group that they would no doubt be returning without making the full hike to the summit, this one still nags at those who were involved in the rescue. There is an actual condition called ‘summit-itis’ that experienced climbers say often compels people to put themselves at risk when a hike should be abandoned. We may never know for sure if this was one of those cases.
Top Piece Video: This is such a downer story, I thought we could leave a bit uplifted with an all-star version of River Deep, Mountain High