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Talk:Mount Hood climbing accidents/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Assessment notes

This is on the low end of the B scale. To get closer to GA, some larger paragraphs with more info on the older incidents to lessen the domination of the 12/2006 climbers. Then break that section into smaller subs, maybe by some sort of date range. Also an addition about the costs involved to search/resuce would increase the breadth, along with the attempts to require the MLU. I'm going to move part of the lead to the Hazards section to expand that area. Aboutmovies 05:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

(relocated 3 discussions from talk:Mount Hood)


Oregon tragedies

OK, I wonder if anyone knows whether these three mountain climbers left children in their wake. I realize only one of the guys has been found dead so far, but it would be a miracle if the other two survived... and if they left small children, they should be slapped for putting their thrill-seeking machismo ahead of their families' welfare. What a contrast with the heroic, albeit ill-fated, attempt of Mr. Kim recently, who put his family's welfare ahead of his ego and sought help for them. Either way, the kids end up fatherless. But the Kim family will probably be left thinking of their father as a hero, and any kids of these three latest maybe-victims could be forgiven if they think of their respective fathers as selfish jerks. I wonder how many commentators (other than O'Reilly, who has already spoken) will have something to say along these lines. It's a sensitive subject, and I'm hesitant to cite something like that in the article (yet), but it needs to be said, somewhere, sometime. Wahkeenah 01:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't think anyone except these mens' families are in a position to comment on whether or not the men were "heroic". Why would such a judgment be relevant to the section, anyway?
  • Also, have the other two men really been confirmed dead? Last I read, they had only been suspected of falling off the mountain.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.124.40.19 (talk • contribs) 02:21, December 19, 2006
Just a reminder that this page is for talking about improving the Mount Hood article. Any personal opinions on the motivations of the climbers or the consequences of their climb is getting off topic. I'm sure there are plenty of forums for discussing these issues, but this is not it. Additions to the article regarding the same are likely going to violate WP:NPOV unless done very very carefully. I think the Wikicommunity has done a great job with this developing story. Let's keep it that way. If absolutely necessary, splitting off an article from Mount Hood about the December 2006 Mount Hood Climbing Accident may be helpful, and might have room for a section on the debate in the media, if there is one. Katr67 02:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry. I take these stories personally somehow. I recall when John Denver died in his experimental plane, leaving a young teen daughter behind. I have a good friend who had a pilot's license, and stopped flying when his kids were born, because he thought that being a father was more important than massaging his own ego. I assure you, I won't add anything to the article on this talking point without consultation. Wahkeenah 02:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


"Clear weather on the weekend of December 16 allowed almost 100 search and rescue personnel to scour the mountain. On Sunday, December 17, searchers found a snow cave and climbing equipment, approximately 300 feet from the summit.[38] Inside the snow cave, the rescuers found a rope, two ice axes and an insulating sleeping pad. At approximately 3:29 PM PST, the body of Kelly James was found in another snow cave near the first one."

I don't want to edit this, but as a member of the local search and rescue, there was not a second snow cave, this was a misunderstanding. It was more like a self cut out in the snow/ice where they temporarily set some items. Also, it is probably important to note that the rope was cut. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.189.117.32 (talk • contribs) 2007-02-25T00:12:06 (UTC)

Do you have a published source which supports this? It would be iffy to change without a reliable source which confirms. —EncMstr 14:11, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
On cable news broadcasts back then, there were reports that four hundred mph winds were blowing around the summit at the time of the accident. Four hundred miles per hour sounds like editorial exaggeration. Was this Fox News that said that, or the Northwest News Channel? Does anybody have a link to actual weather records for the days in question? I remember it was a storm that brewed up, and it was a pretty fierce one. I was near Portland and the lights blinked and went out on us. The winds were reported as approaching the mountain from the west. The snow cave was only 50 feet down from the summit. If there were really 400 mph winds blowing around the summit, and the climbers tried to get out of their snow caves, go around the summit, and descend on the east side, the bodies of the missing could have been blown quite a ways to the east. 216.99.219.253 (talk) 04:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I never heard that, but do recall learning of 140 mph (or maybe knot) winds. Wind speeds do not naturally exceed 231 mph on Earth. See Mount Washington (New Hampshire), Wind#Scales, and Tropical cyclone#Hurricane or typhoon. —EncMstr (talk) 06:51, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
Wind speeds in the upper atmosphere - higher than 10,000 feet - might well be much greater than 231 mph. Surely on the surface they are much slower. What makes this sort of thing more plausible is the high altitude. I know I was astonished when they claimed that wind speeds at the 10,000 feet level were going so fast. It just seemed so unrealistic, I couldn't help but think the news channel had misplaced a zero or other. If the winds were blowing really fierce, and they were coming in from the west, it shouldn't be that unlikely to find the bodies due east of the mountain. 216.99.198.226 (talk) 02:17, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Oregon Episcopal School tragedy

I think the 1986 Oregon Episcopal School tragedy needs its own article. It was apparently a massive media story at the time and is one of the worst mountaineering tragedies in US history. If anyone is interested in creating it, I found several links that should be of use:

211.28.57.101 15:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Incident history

Unless there is some sort of concensus reached it looks like this section (Incident history) is going to be flipping back and forth. Is there any particular justification for either version that we can use as a basis for slecting one over the other? --Burntnickel 23:39, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Eh? Flipping back and forth between what and what? —EncMstr 23:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at the article history. Everytime I see this sort of editing and then replacing the edited content with the original content it gets pretty messy. I'm just trying to head it off this time. --Burntnickel 00:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Burntnickel, can you describe it a bit, so we don't have to dig through old edits, and so we can get a sense of what you think is the way to go? I know I've seen some reversion wars, but don't have a good sense of what they're about. I support the notion of drawing them out here on the talk page, though. -Pete 01:34, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean either. Since I subscribe to Jim Wales' notion (roughly translated) that "no info is preferred to false info", I recently reverted a good faith edit that changed a short but referenced section on the most recent incident with a longer but unreferenced one. Recently that info was added back and included a citation. I didn't check the citation to make sure it backs up all the facts stated, but it looks good to me, so I don't plan to do anything to it. Is this the kind of thing you're talking about? Other than that, the incident history has remained fairly stable since the unfortunate incident in December, which, due to the media frenzy, drew a lot of well-meaning but misguided edits. So if you could be clearer about what the problem is...? Katr67 04:07, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Those were the edits that I was refering to. Its just that I've seen similar things happen elsewhere (usually without references however) that kept getting reverted as the changes were made by anonymous (IP) editors and the changes ofeten were reverted. I wasn't objecting to the changes themselves, but was trying to premptively avoid the "edit warring" I've seen in other articles. If people are OK with the edits as they are now I'm fine with that. --Burntnickel 09:44, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Too long?

The incidents history seems a bit long; is all of this noteworthy? It seems like a lot of these incidents should be removed, as they don't really seem to say all that much or give useful information, and a lot of them don't seem very significant at all. Titanium Dragon 00:38, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

During the December 2006 hoopla, there were a lot of ideas and opinions about how accident prone Mount Hood was without any comprehensive body of facts to help understand the context. I included every climbing accident I could find online, and was the major contributor. I'd support moving the bulk of it into something like Mount Hood climbing accidents. Granted, a few aren't "significant", but an encyclopedic article seems like it should balance the sensational with the mundane for topics which many readers don't understand. —EncMstr 00:56, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Splitting into a separate article is a good idea, I think. hike395 12:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Climbing accidents

Is each mountain going to have a separate article about climbing accidents? Where's the one for Mt. Rainier? 71.112.25.123 (talk) 05:29, 14 December 2009 (UTC)ATBS

Feel free to research it. Just speculation, but it might be that there have been so many accidents on Hood because people think of it as an "easy" climb - which it presumably is, under the right conditions, and there's the rub. Rainier might be considered more daunting. In any case, the Hood accidents are pretty well documented. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
According to the Mount Rainier article, 8,000-13,000 attempt a climb each year, a mountain that's considered very difficult. That's comparable to the Hood numbers. It also says an average of 3 climbers per year are lost on Rainier, which means the list would definitely be too long there. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:53, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure the logic makes sense here. 71.112.25.123 (talk) 02:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)ATBS
Mount Hood has this as an accidents spin-off article because careful research produced enough information that the Mount Hood article grew until it was improperly weighted with incidents. This article was split off September 2007 to fix that problem.
In-depth research was inspired by the media frenzy of December 2006 which precipitated all kinds of talk about legislating restrictions and rules for mountain climbers, including the proposal they should be billed for rescue costs. Many were also under the incorrect impression that, for example, a hundred search and rescue personnel looking for lost climbers cost taxpayers a lot of money. (They do not—S&R are volunteer organizations.) —EncMstr (talk) 02:55, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, it's good to know the history. But what is the justification for having an article for this particular mountain and not the dozen or several dozen other mountains in the world whose introduction would be very similar? Check out the introduction and read it with a mind toward explaining what is different about Mt. Hood from the other mountains of the world, or the other Cascade volcanos, where it should have its own article and the others should not. I still don't get it. There ought to be some good answer in terms of standard wikipedia criteria to the question of why there's an article about Mt. Hood climbing accidents and not, say, Mt. Rainier climbing accidents. I just mention Mt. Rainier as an example here - there are many other mountains that could be chosen. The fact that Mt. Rainier has more accidents does not seem like a good argument for Mt. Hood having an article about accidents. 71.112.25.123 (talk) 14:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)ATBS
It's chance. Wikipedia is a work in progress, written by volunteers. Read WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Just because this article exists has no bearing on the existence or non-existence of other articles. And Oregon happens to have a very active editing community, so Oregon-related articles tend to get more attention than articles in other areas. Katr67 (talk) 16:44, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
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