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Climbers return to Mount Hood one month after tragedy

A month after a climber was found dead in a snow cave right below Mount Hood's 3,425m summit and the search was abandoned for his two climbing partners, a hardy sense of normalcy has returned to the mountain's climbing scene.

Two breaks in winter storms, including one last weekend, have drawn back many climbers who prefer a winter's snow-blanketed Hood to its gravelly summer form.

Local climbers say they have been humbled by the tragedy, which spurred plenty of discussion about what went wrong on their home mountain. But their desire for the solace, challenge and sense of mortality found on the big, dormant volcano seems to have diminished little.

Pete Guagliardo, who said he had been up Mount Hood three dozen times, has reached the summit twice in recent weeks. He said only the heavy snow accumulation on the north face was keeping him off the route where the three men were lost.

"If the north face was clean right now, I'd be thinking of going up there," said Guagliardo, who lives in nearby Portland.

"It's weird how quickly that feeling subsides," he said about the initial urge to hold back.

Climbers are no longer holding back -- in taking on the mountain and speculating about what went awry on that fateful climb last month.

Guagliardo and other Mount Hood regulars said much of the public discussion after the climbers' disappearance in a howling blizzard had missed the mark.

Too much emphasis was put on the climbers' failure to carry an electronic locator unit, some said, and not enough on their lack of overnight camping gear.

Rescuers have conceded that a locator unit, which sends out a tracking signal, would have done little to help the stranded men, because a week's worth of storms kept rescue teams off the mountain's highest points.

Some of the mountain's most seasoned climbers questioned the decision by the three men to climb with minimal gear in the hope of moving quickly.

One of the lost climbers, Jerry Cooke of Brooklyn, New York, mentioned the group's intentions of going "fast and light" -- as the increasingly popular strategy is known in the climbing community -- on the cascadeclimbers.com Web forum in November; Kelly James of Texas was found without a stove in the snow cave.

"I wouldn't hold it against someone who traveled without a stove, but that's how you make water from snow," said Iain Morris, a member of the Portland Mountain Rescue team, which searched for the three men. "If you don't have a stove, then you potentially don't have anything to drink."

Guagliardo also speculated that the three climbers' decision-making might have been affected by their having traveled a great distance to climb the mountain.

"We've all been there at some point," he said. "It's different when you've put all your eggs in one basket trying to get someplace and are trying to make a climb happen."

Jarod Cogswell and Michael Leming were climbing and marking the day four years ago that Leming and some Portland Mountain Rescue teammates had pulled Cogswell and a group off the summit in a blizzard. Leming was also on the search for Cooke, James and Brian Hall.

Despite frostbite from the last rescue effort, Leming said: "All of the rescuers just love being on the mountain. We get jacked up for rescues and hopefully I'm getting some positive karma from it."
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