AN UNEXPECTEDLY LONG DAY ON MT. ELLINOR
by Christine Troy
T
he weather was forecast to be beautiful and sunny, perfect for my first provisional lead, an A-level climb up the SE Chute of Mt. Ellinor in the Olympic Mountains. Our team of eleven had two recent BCEP grads and nine experienced climbers including a PMR member, backcountry ski patroller, nurse, doctor, and Wilderness First Responder (WFR). As we met at the Lower Trailhead, I was a tad self-conscious about the amount of gear I was carrying. Would I really need two puffy jackets, an insulated pad, bivy bag, shovel, and huge amount of food for this straight-forward climb on a gorgeous spring day with a highly capable team?
The climb to the top was fun and uneventful in nearly perfect snow conditions. We enjoyed the views from the summit, took pictures, admired the mountain goats, then prepared to descend. Two short glissades got us to the top of the main chute which was the last technical section before the two-mile trail back to the cars. It was just after twelve o’clock. There were rocks in the top of the glissade chute so we opted to plunge step down below the rocks before attempting to glissade again. It was at this point that one of the experienced climbers slipped. While attempting to self-arrest, one of their feet hit something in the snow, resulting in a severely broken ankle. The climber slid to a safe stop on a flatter section, and the team sprang into action to assess the patient and make a plan. Due to the nature of the injury and the fact that we still had about 600 vertical feet of steep snow slopes to descend, we realized fairly quickly that we would need outside assistance to evacuate the patient. Cell phone service was spotty but we were able to call 911 at 12:17 p.m. and inform them that our patient was stable but 30 MAZAMAS
would need a rescue to get them out of the mountains. At that point, it became a waiting game—and waiting, and waiting. We used the shovel to make a flat platform and lay the patient onto an insulated pad. Eventually, the wind kicked up a bit and clouds rolled up from the valley below. We all put on extra clothing and covered the patient with the bivy sack and their emergency blanket. With a frustrating sense of irony, we watched a parade of people in gym shoes and cotton t-shirts— without ice axes, helmets, or even trekking poles—ascend the mountain and then “glissade” back down. Some of them seemed out of control—sliding head first, getting air time, etc.—I was sure we were going to end up with additional patients. Since we were fairly close to the trailhead we considered splitting up and taking the majority of the team back to the cars. We set 7 p.m. as a deadline to make this decision. Ultimately, because the weather was nice, we kept the team together to have additional people to help with the evacuation.
Just after 6 p.m. Olympic Mountain Rescue (OMR) made it to our location. Their preference was to evacuate the patient via helicopter but due to another incident on The Brothers elsewhere in the Olympics it was not available. This meant using ropes and anchors to lower the patient in a litter down the steep snow slopes then carrying them out along the trail. The location of the accident was less than 1 mile and 1,000 vertical feet from the Upper Trailhead yet it took just shy of 11 hours from the time we called 911 until the patient was in the care of the ambulance crew. The evacuation itself took 4–5 hours. We started our descent around 7 p.m. and made it back to the Upper Trailhead and waiting ambulance in the dark around 11:30 p.m. By the time we made it back to our cars at the Lower Trailhead, it was well after midnight. The injured climber required surgery and faces a lengthy healing process, but expects to make a full recovery. For me, the key takeaway from this experience was that even on "easy" routes with good weather, steep snow
