SALON

Friday, Jun 22, 2012 7:46 AM UTC

Mount Rainier ranger killed in climbers’ rescue

By

Topics: From the Wires,

LONGMIRE, Wash. (AP) — A Mount Rainier ranger slid more than 3,000 feet to his death as he helped in efforts to rescue four injured climbers who fell on a glacier, a National Park Service spokesman said.

Ranger Nick Hall was helping to prepare the climbers to be taken from the 14,411-foot Washington state peak when he fell shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday, said Mount Rainier National Park spokesman Kevin Bacher.

Bacher said Hall, 34, didn’t respond to attempts to contact him and was not moving, and he was dead when other rangers reached him at the 10,000-foot level several hours later.

Park officials notified relatives and other rangers before announcing Hall’s death late Thursday.

A Chinook helicopter from Joint Base Lewis-McChord plucked three of the injured climbers off the Cascade Range mountain Thursday night while one member of the party from Waco, Texas, remained overnight, waiting out a worsening storm in the company of park rangers.

Bacher says all four had injuries that were not life-threatening. None was immediately identified.

Worsening visibility and 40 mph winds kept rescuers from removing the other two climbers late Thursday.

Storms on Mount Rainier are notoriously fierce and obstinate.

“We were lucky to get two off the mountain,” the spokesman said.

About 10,000 people attempt to summit the massive volcano each year, with most doing so in the summer. Only a few hundred climb the iconic mountain in the winter.

The Texas climbers were roped together when they fell on Emmons Glacier on Thursday. The two women at the end of the rope ended up in a crevasse. Rangers who responded to a cell phone call helped them out.

Hall is originally from Patten, Maine, the park spokesman said. The Seattle Times reports Hall had been with Mount Rainier National Park’s climbing program for four years.

His death comes during what has proven a difficult year for park staff.

On New Year’s Day, Mount Rainier Ranger Margaret Anderson was fatally shot as she tried to stop a man who drove through a tire chain checkpoint near Longmire. The 24-year-old man, Benjamin Colton Barnes, was suspected in a shooting early New Year’s Day in Seattle, and his body was found the next day about a mile away in the snow.

In mid-January, an elite mountain rescue team went up the mountain in search of two campers and two climbers who failed to return during a storm. The four were not found.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
140 points141 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
124 points125 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
109 points110 points | 84 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
98 points99 points | 28 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
76 points77 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations