November 14, 2004 in Outdoors

Mountains of fun

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Rich Landers photo

As with many Cascades volcanoes, a road leads climbers within a one-day shot at the summit of Mount Shasta.
(Full-size photo)

Sandwiches aren’t sold at the Lunch Counter on Mount Adams.

Passing through the Pearly Gates on Mount Hood doesn’t mean you’re dead.

Most climbers go past Quitter’s Point on Mount Jefferson.

The names are part of the mountain-climbing culture — once the realm of the eccentric — that’s creeping into the mainstream.

“Climbers worldwide are a slightly different breed than the average person walking down the street,” said Lloyd Athearn of The American Alpine Club in Golden, Colo. “The climbers of today would have been, by and large, the explorers in centuries past.”

Climbing rangers in the Cascade Range are winding up another season in which thousands of people attempted to view the world from thousands of feet above sea level.

In the Cascades, this mountaineering adventure has endured for 150 years.

“We have found through anecdotal research that communities with a high amount of public lands get more visitors who spend more money within the community,” said Dana Donley of the Colorado-based Outdoor Industry Association.

Since spring more than the entire population of Salem, Ore., has ventured from the end of the road and through wilderness areas to the top of the Cascades.

Along the way, accidents have caused broken bones and a few deaths on mountains such as Rainier and Hood. Rescuers have had to push their personal limits, and climbers have seen the world in a different way.

The Cascade Mountains are popular with climbers partly because they are so easy to reach. Alaska’s Mount McKinley virtually requires an airplane flight to a glacier base camp. Mount Hood is accessible by a paved road to a ski lodge just outside the wilderness.

“The Cascades are this string of independent volcanoes,” said Hans Castren, chief climbing ranger at Mount St. Helens. “These mountains are very accessible.”

Mount St. Helens is among the most popular of the Cascade peaks when it’s not off-limits due to volcanic activity.

Last year, 13,144 people bought climbing permits for Mount St. Helens, one of the easiest mountain climbs in the Cascade Range. People intent on the summit don’t need ropes and often don’t need crampons.

Currently, however, access to the mountain is closed until the threat of an eruption subsides.

But rangers emphasize preparation, common sense and competent climbing companions regardless of where a climber goes. Despite the worry about safety, experts note that mountaineering accidents are rare, even though search-and-rescue operations draw a lot of attention.

The American Alpine Club reports that between 1990 and 1999, there were almost 98,000 attempts to summit Mount Rainier — the tallest and most difficult major peak in the Cascades — and 13 people died.

No Rainier climbing fatalities were recorded in 2003, but more than a decade of relatively safe climbing had been erased with five deaths in 2002, one of the deadliest spring seasons in the Cascades.

“You will never be able to get rid of the risks of climbing,” Athearn said. “Accidents will happen just as people trip while crossing the street or going down stairs … but on mountains, when things go bad, they can sometimes go bad in a very dramatic way.”

Those risks have decreased partly because of improvements in gear and techniques and partly because the mountains themselves have changed in the past 150 years.

Glaciers have shrunk and the amount of snow that accumulates on the mountains is far less than in 1850 said Jeff Thomas, author of “Oregon High: A Climbing Guide to Nine Cascade Volcanoes.”

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