Grabber Helps Retrieve Bodies From Mountains

During the past six years, David Weil has invented mechanical “grabbers” that allow helicopters to snatch up trees, boulders, building materials, even huge chunks of cranberry bogs.

Now, he can add a gruesome payload to his list - bodies.

Rescue workers in Alaska’s Denali National Park recently used a specialized grabber made by Weil’s Eugene, Ore., company, Heli-Tech Inc., to retrieve a dead climber from Mount McKinley.

Last year, park officials commissioned Weil to build the lobster claw-shaped contraption, called the Body Snatcher. Rescue workers need the device to reach climbers who plunge to their death in areas unsafe for ground-based retrieval operations.

Each year, park rangers allow about 1,300 experienced climbers to ascend Mount McKinley, whose 20,320-foot peak ranks as the highest in North America. Because of the treacherous terrain, an average of six climbers die in accidents during the spring climbing season each year.

The Body Snatcher is similar to the helicopter grabbers Weil makes for logging, farming and other industrial applications, except that high-altitude mountain operations required special adaptations.

The device is made out of lightweight aluminum instead of steel. Also, it uses electric levers to activate its claws, instead of the gas-powered engines that operate Weil’s other grabbers.

The Body Snatcher can lift up to 350 pounds. And it can be suspended 150 feet or more below a high-altitude recovery helicopter, Weil says.

“Because of the altitude and low temperatures, we were really concerned about performance,” Weil says. “It was a real challenge to design.”

Denali park officials used the device for the first time four weeks ago, after a climber lost his footing while resting without safety ropes on an icy ledge 16,000 feet up Mount McKinley.

The climber died plunging 3,000 feet down an avalanche area and landing in a pile of debris, says Dave Kreutzer, the helicopter manager for the park 130 miles north of Anchorage.

Rangers didn’t want to send in one of their four rescue crews, fearing they’d lose a rescuer in the unstable terrain. So, they attached the Body Snatcher to a 100-foot-long cable below their rescue helicopter.

Then, the pilot maneuvered the chopper into position, lowered the Body Snatcher and grasped the frozen body in the gadget’s orange claws.

The Body Snatcher doesn’t solve every dangerous recovery operation, however.

Recently, Denali rescue workers couldn’t use the device to retrieve two climbers who’d died in an accident on Mount Hunter.

One body was hooked to the mountain with climbing gear, and park officials didn’t know if the helicopter and Body Snatcher are powerful enough to pull the body free. The other climber was buried in an avalanche and inaccessible from the air.

Still, rescue workers say several other national parks may want to buy their own Body Snatchers for operations in equally dangerous terrain. Likely hot spots: Mount Rainier in Washington and Colorado summits in the Rockies.