Climber who fell on Mount Hood dies. Rescuers bring down others stranded

Update: The climber who fell on Mount Hood was pronounced dead after being flown to a Portland hospital, officials said.

He has not been identified.

A snowcat brought down two male climbers and a woman who couldn’t walk was lowered on a sled by rescuers, Clackamas County sheriff’s spokesman Brian Jensen said Tuesday night.

Three other climbers in a different group were able to descend on their own.

Initial post: Rescuers hurried to Oregon’s tallest mountain Tuesday after a climber fell nearly 1,000 feet and seven others were stranded near the summit.

Details about how the climber fell were not immediately available, but the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office said he slid 700 to 1,000 feet from the Hogsback area.

KOIN-TV’s live stream of the rescue showed people performing CPR on the injured climber, whose condition was not immediately known. He was lifted into an Oregon Army National Guard’s Blackhawk helicopter about 1:35 p.m.

A group of four stranded climbers were also in the Hogsback area near the 11,240-foot summit dealing with falling rock and ice. Hogsback is an 800-foot ridge that leads to the Pearly Gates, ice chutes which guard the summit.

“I don’t know that any advice has been given (to them) yet,” Russell Gubele of Mountain Wave Search and Rescue told the Associated Press. “We have to get some folks on the scene to do some assessing.”

Mount Hood is known as a dangerous peak, mostly because of regular ice and rockfall near the summit. Temperatures were above freezing at Timberline Lodge, where climbers start their ascent. Freezing level was around 9,000 feet, below where the climber fell at 10,500 feet.

“This is the kind of weather conditions and the time of year where you often get falling ice, falling rocks and problems,” Gubele said. “It sounds like the conditions up there are very unsafe right now.”

More than 10,000 people attempt Mount Hood each year, making it the most visited snow-covered peak in the country, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

This story was originally published February 13, 2018 at 1:35 PM with the headline "Climber who fell on Mount Hood dies. Rescuers bring down others stranded."