Sheriff calls off Mount Hood search

HOOD RIVER, Ore. – Rescue leaders abandoned hope Wednesday of finding two missing climbers alive on Mount Hood. Reluctantly, they will turn their energies to recovering the men’s bodies.

“We’ve done everything we can at this point,” said Sheriff Joe Wampler.

The dangerous search lasted nine days. It began as a hunt for three climbers. One was found dead in a snow cave near the summit, and the two others may have fallen to their deaths, been buried in snow or died of hypothermia.

The rescue search concluded because of concerns about the safety of searchers, worsening weather and the decreasing chances the climbers could have survived.

Wampler said the family decided the rescue search should end, although not all family members agreed.

“I’m with them,” Wampler said. “It’s just something we have to do for our sake and for the people who are doing this on our behalf.”

The families did not comment.

“This time of year Mount Hood is a dangerous place to be,” Wampler said at a news conference.

He said that given breaks in the weather, planes would be sent to look for signs of Brian Hall and Jerry “Nikko” Cooke. The search will continue as weather and personnel allows.

Often when climbers go missing so late in the season, though, their bodies are not recovered until the spring.

The men set out Dec. 8 for what was supposed to be a two-day climb to the peak and back down.

On Dec. 10, climber Kelly James used his cell phone to call his family and report the party was in trouble and that his two companions had gone downhill for help.

James, a 48-year-old Dallas landscape architect, was found dead in a snow cave on Sunday.

An autopsy Wednesday showed that James died of hypothermia, perhaps not long after he called his relatives, said Dr. Larry Lewman of the state medical examiner’s office. He had been dead several days when he was found Sunday. And although officials said he suffered an injury, there is no evidence by X-ray of a disabling injury.

Volunteers continued scouring the mountain for signs of Hall, a 37-year-old personal trainer from Dallas, and Cooke, a 36-year-old lawyer from New York City.

They held out hope that they had dug out a snow cave or sought other protection.

But climbing gear found on the peak suggested the two may have fallen to their deaths or been buried by an avalanche.

The search was delayed numerous times because of the weather and the threat to the safety of the searchers, many of them volunteer mountaineers from local search and rescue teams.

The final attempt to find the men alive was Wampler’s one-hour flight in a county plane to the 11,239-foot peak Wednesday morning, during a short break in icy, cloudy conditions as a storm moved in.

“I don’t think I can justify putting any more people in the field with the hope of finding them (the climbers) alive,” Wampler said.

Rescuers say it is one of the largest searches in memory on Oregon’s tallest mountain.

But the search had already been scaled back dramatically on Tuesday. And the immediate prospects for a recovery search are limited by weather.

Many volunteers have already packed up and returned to their regular lives, and helicopters used in the search had returned to their bases.