Two Rescued After Mount Hood Fall

Two climbers were rescued Saturday by a National Guard helicopter crew after they were injured in a 500-foot fall near the top of Mount Hood.

Aaron Dunlop, 31, of Newberg, Ore., and Jeremy Hawkins, 32, of Tigard, Ore., were in fair condition at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital in Portland, officials said.

A third climber in the party, Brad Wood, about 30, of Tigard, walked off the 11,240-foot mountain, the highest peak in Oregon and a popular destination for Pacific Northwest climbers.

Wood said the team's anchor came loose.

"I was in the lead so I was the highest up and I just I got a hard tug on the rope at my waist," Wood told CBS affiliate KOIN-TV. "It was attached to my waist and it pulled me off balance. I tried to self-arrest but couldn't."

Erik Broms of Portland Mountain Rescue was the leader of a three-man "ready team" who were at a staging area called the Hogsback, preparing to climb the final leg to the summit when he saw the trio fall and slide down the ice.

"We just heard falling," Broms said. "My partner and I just started running to that location and we virtually got there same time they did."

Both Hawkins and Dunlop were drifting in and out of consciousness as rescuers arrived. But both appeared to be alert as they awaited the helicopter, Broms said.

"There were three people that were basically all entwined in their climbing rope. Two of the people were bleeding quite profusely. It was a mess at first," Broms said on CBS News' The Early Show.

"We kind of all ended up in a pile at the bottom of the glacier there," said Wood. Broms estimated it as about 500 feet from the summit.

It was the first sunny day in Oregon after a long stretch of cloudy and rainy June weather, and ice coated the snow, Broms said.

"It was a day when you should have been a little more cautious," he said. "They were doing everything right, but sometimes somebody slips. It's an accident, it's not anybody's fault."

It was too icy for the trio to brake or halt their slide with their climbing equipment, Broms said.

The injured climbers were among three parties headed for the summit Saturday morning. The lead party fell backward, hitting a second party, and the mass of climbers then fell into a third party, according to Detective Jim Strovink, spokesman for the Clackamas County sheriff's office, the lead agency in Mount Hood rescues.

The accident occurred near the area where an Air Force Reserve helicopter crashed in May 2002 during another mountain rescue operation. The crew survived the crash, which was captured live on television. The helicopter had been sent to rescue the survivors of a fall that sent nine climbers tumbling into a crevasse, killing three of them.

Portland Mountain Rescue sends up "ready teams" every weekend during peak climbing season.

There were about 40 people on the mountain at the time, Broms said, a smaller number than usual for the time of year. Nearby climbers included a U.S. Forest Service wilderness ranger.

A UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter from the Oregon Army National Guard's 1042nd Medical Company with a crew of five, including a medic, handled the rescue on Saturday, said Kay Fristad, National Guard spokeswoman.

She said the Guard rescue team has been busy as the summer climbing season arrives.

"We're on the mountain more than off," Fristad said. "This is the time when the mountain is changing. The snow is softening, and crevasses are forming. It's not a good time for climbers."

Dunlap had a broken jaw and cuts from the ice across his entire body, reports KOIN's Alana Adams. Hawkins had a broken ankle, nose and fractured vertebrae.

The slope "was extremely sharp, and so they suffered from pretty good cuts and bruises on the way down," Broms told Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm.