Transmitter, warm dog helped save climbers

PORTLAND – For three climbers stranded on Mount Hood, survival came down to a live transmitter and a warm dog.

Covering up with two sleeping bags, a tarp and a black dog named Velvet as winds howled around them at up to 70 mph, two women and a man beamed signals to rescuers who were able to fix their precise location.

“The dog probably saved their lives,” said Erik Brom, a member of the Portland Mountain Rescue team, who described the wind in the canyon where the climbers were holed up as “hellacious.”

After Velvet helped the climbers through the night on the 11,239-foot mountain, radio transmitters the size of sunglasses cases led Brom and other rescuers to the group.

The three were taken away in an ambulance late Monday, with Velvet leaping in behind them. The climbers were expected to be fine.

The transmitting devices, called Mountain Locator Units, are available for rental around the Mount Hood area. While lauding the dog, search leaders also credited the devices and the climbers’ use of them.

“The most important part of this rescue is that they did everything right,” said Lt. Nick Watt, of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department.

Brian Bate, operations supervisor of the REI outdoors store in downtown Portland, said mountaineers can rent the units for $5 a climb.

But the devices are set up only to transmit, not to receive, Bate said. And the signal is received only by the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department, at the base of Mount Hood, and then only when the department is looking for a climber, he said.

That makes filing a trip report with friends, relatives and authorities “really, really important,” he said.

Three climbers who became stranded on Mount Hood in December did not have such a locating device. One climber made a cell phone call to his family, but the phone went dead within days. The three climbers stranded this week had cell phones, as well as global-positioning devices that helped rescue teams home in on them.

“We’re soaking wet and freezing,” said one of two rescued women Monday as she walked from a tracked snow vehicle to the ambulance.

One of the women, whose name was not released, was taken to a Portland hospital and being treated for a head injury, said Jim Strovink, sheriff’s spokesman.

“She’s going to be fine,” he said.

Two others, Matty Bryant, 34, a teacher in the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, and Kate Hanlon, 34, a teacher in the suburb of Wilsonville, were taken to Timberline Lodge on the mountain to rejoin five other members of the climbing party that set out Saturday but ran into bad weather.