Surrey man rescues hiker from Mt Baker's crevasse

WanchaiBoz · 发表于 2008-9-17 09:43:25

Surrey man rescues hiker from crevasse
Ice climber hailed as hero for climbing in and pulling out older man

Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

MOUNT BAKER I A 70-year-old Chilliwack man owes his life to a Surrey ice climber who came to the rescue Monday morning after the older man had fallen into a crevasse while hiking alone on Mount Baker.

"This guy is what you call a hero," witness Owen Jones said of the rescuer's daring actions on the icy slopes of the Coleman Glacier.

"He went into that crevasse and pulled the guy out. He saved his life."

According to Jones, the rescue took place at about 5 a.m. Monday. That's when Jones and his wife, Judy, who were camping just below the glacier, were awakened by the sound of an avalanche high on the slopes.

While scanning the mountainside for signs of the slide, they spotted two climbers on a ridge above the Hogsback trail trying to manoeuvre what appeared to be a large pack down the slope.

It was only when they saw the pack moving they realized it was a person.

It was Kurt Drocholl, a mountaineer from Chilliwack whose solo hike up the glacier ended abruptly when he fell eight metres into a crevasse and couldn't get back out.

Exhausted and increasingly hypothermic, Drocholl's only hope was that his calls for help would be answered before he froze to death.

Miraculously, they were.

Also on the mountain that morning were Dallas Stobbe, an experienced ice climber from Surrey, and his climbing partner, Joanne Walker.

On hearing Drocholl's cries, the pair immediately abandoned their plans to head for the summit. Instead, Stobbe climbed down into the crevasse and, using ropes and an ice axe, managed to pull the 81-kg (180-pound) Drocholl back out.

For the next hour or more, Stobbe and Walker painstakingly lowered an injured Drocholl more than 300 metres before reaching the Jones's campsite below the snow line.

"He [Drocholl] was in no condition to move," Jones said. "He wasn't capable of telling us how long he'd been down [the crevasse]. He was still in shock and hypothermic," he said.

At the camp, Drocholl was given warm clothes and preliminary first aid, while the Joneses went farther down the mountain to make cellphone contact with search-and-rescue services.

An exhausted Drocholl was later airlifted off the mountain via helicopter.

Tanya Kitterman of the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday that Drocholl was "okay" despite his ordeal, and had been released from hospital.

Stobbe and Walker were still on the mountain Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

Kitterman said Drocholl's rescue marks the second in the last month involving a Canadian, and highlights the need for climbers to register with the rangers' office.

Registration is voluntary and provides rangers with information about who is on the mountain, and when each party is expected to return.

Drocholl was not registered.

"He [was] lucky because other climbers up there happened to be looking out for him," Kitterman said.

Jones agreed.

Without the quick thinking and heroic actions of Stobbe and Walker, "this guy would have died," he said.

dahansen@vancouversun.com

&copy; The Vancouver Sun 2008

ALEXYIM · 发表于 2008-9-17 10:02:31

Wow, really lucky.

jerrybj · 发表于 2008-9-17 10:30:03

Tiger,

It happened exactly at where we were last Sat, Coleman Glacier, the place we had watermelon. There is NO danger for us since we did not hike up any more

On the way we went down, around 4:00pm, I met and talked with a young couple with skies. Who told me they were from Vancouver and planned to hike Mt Baker on Mon, not on Sun. It could be them, the heroes.

爬手 · 发表于 2008-9-17 11:05:17

Solute to Stobbe and Walker for their selflessness and courage

WanchaiBoz · 发表于 2008-9-18 14:49:04

Moonlit mountain climb ends in daring rescue

Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Never before had an ice axe seemed so important as when Kurt Drocholl of Chilliwack found himself without one deep inside an icy crevasse on Mount Baker's unforgiving Coleman Glacier.

The axe that could have saved him was somewhere in the eerie emptiness below. It had been strapped to a backpack that Drocholl had been forced to cut away after a hard landing on a fragile chunk of snow wedged some six metres (20 feet) below the glacier's moonlit surface.

Moments earlier, the 72-year-old experienced mountaineer had been on his way down the mountain after an aborted solo attempt at reaching the summit early Monday.

His right ankle had been giving him problems so he decided to turn around before he got into trouble.

"All of a sudden my ankle gave out and I slipped on the hard snow," he said.

As he fell, he couldn't slow himself down because his axe was strapped to his backpack and unreachable.

"I wore off my nails trying to claw at the snow trying to slow my way down, but there was nothing I could do," he said. "I figured, that was it."

Somewhere just below, Surrey ice climber Dallas Stobbe and his girlfriend Joanne Webster had only just begun their climb to the summit.

They'd slept in late, until almost 5 a.m., making them the last of the climbers camped below the glacier to begin their ascent. Most, including Drocholl, had been on the mountain since midnight.

The pair was heavily equipped with ice-climbing gear as they made for the mountain's steep north face.

They hadn't got very far when Stobbe heard what sounded like a voice in the wind.

"It was up the mountain a little bit, but you couldn't see anything," he said.

Inside the crevasse, Drocholl was doing what he could to survive.

As an experienced mountaineer, however, he knew he would freeze to death if he didn't get help soon.

His toque, his headlamp and emergency whistle had all been lost in the fall, and his right arm, hip and leg had grown numb and useless from injury and cold.

"It was a like a freezer," he said of the sub-zero temperature.

All he could do was shout out for help and hope the lights he'd seen bobbing below him on the mountain in the moments before he slid down into the darkness of the crevasse meant someone would hear him.

Minutes later, which to Drocholl felt like a lifetime, he looked up to see the worried faces of a man and woman peering down.

"Don't worry," the woman said. "If anyone can help you, Dallas can."

Two days later, Stobbe was reluctant to call himself a hero.

"I think anyone would have done the same thing," he said of his actions that day.

Using his ice-climbing gear, he climbed down into the crevasse and, using a makeshift pulley system, lifted Drocholl back up to the surface.

It took another two hours for Stobbe and Webster to get Drocholl back down the glacier to the safety and warmth of their tent, where they waited until a medical helicopter arrived to fly the injured man to hospital.

"It was quite an ordeal," Stobbe said of the rescue, which involved slowly lowering Drocholl - who was hypothermic and shaking badly - over the ice using ropes and ice screws to secure him, and zig-zagging back and forth to avoid more crevasses.

Back in Chilliwack on Wednesday, Drocholl said he was still sore, but otherwise doing fine.

"No broken bones," he said.

He is already planning another trip up the mountain, though this time, he will have his ice axe handy. "I just have to be better prepared," he said.

As for Stobbe and Webster, they stayed on the mountain another night, and reached the peak on Tuesday.

"It was fantastic. It was Joanne's first real summit and it was a beautiful day out," Stobbe said.

Rescuing Drocholl the day before was just icing on the cake.

"I was really glad I was there to help him," he said. "We just happened to be a the right spot at the right time."

dahansen@vancouversun.com

&copy; Vancouver Sun

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