Search for lost climbers fruitless

Sun., Sept. 9, 2007

Tim Fought Associated Press

PORTLAND – Searchers came up empty Saturday as they tried to discover what happened to two mountaineers missing since December.

A coordinator said they may never be found.

Search and rescue teams had hoped to find the remains of Brian Hall, 37, of Dallas, and Jerry “Nikko” Cooke, 36, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who vanished in a storm after making it to the summit of Mount Hood.

“We searched all the prominent places,” said Capt. Chris Bernard of the Air Force Reserve’s 304th Rescue Squadron, one of the outfits that sent 57 climbers up the mountain.

“There were no significant finds,” he said.

The rescue teams planned to be on the mountain again today, “but tomorrow will be mostly training and not a search,” said Russell Gubele of Mountain Wave Emergency Communications.

Search and rescue teams in Oregon annually conduct a training exercise. One day of this year’s was given over to a search for Hall and Cooke.

The summer sun has melted snow and ice, making for unstable conditions and falling rock on the 11,239-foot mountain.

But that also gave searchers their best opportunity to peer into crevasses as much as 30 feet deep, holding jumbled layers of snow, ice and rock. Within a month, climbers expect, snow will begin blanketing the mountain again.

“The best shot was today,” said Gubele. “If they did fall and ended up down there, they may never be found.”

He said the teams discovered a few pieces of equipment, such as a coat and a sleeping bag, but none of it appeared to belong to the missing climbers.

Bernard said all the searchers were making their descents by midafternoon.

They didn’t even find clues to reinforce or debunk the theories about what happened to the two, he said.

Among the ideas is that Hall and Cooke were buried by an avalanche or that they were blown or fell from a ledge.

The two went to the summit of Mount Hood in early December along with Kelly James, 48, also of Dallas.

The three spent the night in a snow cave near the top as bad weather closed in. The next day, Hall and Cooke apparently went for help for James, who later made a cell phone call to his family.

James died of hypothermia while rescue teams below were stymied by storms. His body was airlifted off the mountain later.

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