The search for Kelly James and his partners on Mt. Hood in the winter of 2006
turned into an anti-climber media feeding frenzy. James's body was found. His two partners remain missing.
--The widow of a climber who died on Mount Hood four years ago returned to Oregon to retrieve his climbing gear and thank rescuers for their efforts. Kelly James, of Dallas, Texas, died in a blizzard on Mount Hood in December 2006. His widow, Karen James, met with Hood River County Search and Rescue Personnel last Thursday. To read more, click here.
--To comply with mandated budget cuts, Washington State Parks proposes mothballing six parks, including Squak Mountain, Federation Forest, Fort Ward, Peshastin Pinnacles, Tolmie and Flaming Geyser. Peshastin Pinnacles is popular with Leavenworth climbers. The park is often a place of refuge just a little further east when it rains. To read more, click here.
--This year marks a banner year for visitation in Mount Rainier National Park. During the summer months, from June through August, there were 749,877 recreation visits to the park. This is 3.9 percent ahead of last year, when there were 722,008 recreation visits. The next busiest summer in the last 10 years was 2002, when 737,508 people came to the park. The lowest count was in 2007, when 648,718 people visited the park during the three summer months. August’s visitation total of 287,089 was the highest for that month since 2002, when 296,000 people visited the park. It was also 8.6 percent higher than in August 2009. To read more, click here.
--It appears that in early October a tent that was left set-up near Mount Baker's Cougar Divide was vandalized when the occupants left for the night. As the occupants were hunters, they have made the assumption that it was hikers who didn't like hunters that did it. To read a discussion about this incident, click here.
--For those of you who visited AAI's homebase in Bellingham late in the Summer or early in the Fall, you probably experienced some issues with construction. We are happy to report that they are almost done! In the preceding photo, you can see workers laying the concrete in our driveway with AAI's Director, Dunham Gooding overseeing the work.
Sierra:
Chantel above the Molar Pendulum on El Capitan's Mescalito on Monday
Photo by Tom Evans
--AAI guide Chantel Astorga has spent the better part of this last week soloing the Mescalito (VI, 5.8. A3) on Yosemite's El Capitan. We have been watching Chantel work her way up the route on the the absolutely fantastic blog, El Cap Report. There are numerous pictures of Chantel on the route here. It is expected that she will reach the top sometime today!
--At 11:30 on Monday morning, there was a massive rockfall event in Yosemite Valley. The rockfall took place on the upper east side of El Capitan, far away from Chantel, but close to teams on Bad to the Bone (VI, 5.9 A4), Bad Seed (VI, 5.9 A4+) and Surgeon General (VI, 5.9, A5). At this time it does not look like anyone was hit by falling rocks. To see photos of the rockfall, once again, Tom Evans at El Cap Report has the scoop and some photos of the rockfall. To see it, click here.
Desert Southwest:
--On October 8th, Glen Canyon Chief Ranger Brent McGinn and Glen Canyon Dangling Rope District Ranger Laurie Axelsen took off from the Bryce Canyon Airport in a privately-owned Cessna 172 for a pleasure flight over Mount Dutton, continuing on to Page, Arizona. Both were off duty at the time and had flown to Bryce Canyon so that McGinn could meet friends and scout out hunting locations. Early on the morning of October 9th, Glen Canyon’s dispatch center received a report that the plane was overdue. Shortly thereafter, a search was begun by Garfield and Kane Counties, the National Park Service and Classic Lifeguard, a local air medical evacuation service. Around 8 a.m., the crew of the latter spotted the plane in a rugged area known as Deep Creek on Mount Dutton in the Dixie National Forest. Both Axelsen and McGinn were killed in the crash. To read more, click here.
--The second film trailer has come out for the new Danny Boyle film staring James Franco about the Aron Ralston incident...and by incident, I mean the time that he got his arm caught behind a boulder in the Canyonlands and had to cut it off with a pocketknife. Check out the trailer below:
--Nevada voters appear to agree with actions taken during Legislature's special session to keep state parks open: Let visitors who use the 25 parks shoulder the financial burden for the parks operations.
A poll of 600 likely voters conducted by telephone from September 6th to September 16th found that nearly 69 percent favored raising user fees to keep Nevada's state parks open. To read more, click here.
Himalaya:
--Rescuers have recovered the body of one of the four climbers who went missing on the slopes of Mt Dhaulagiri on September 28 when a massive avalanche struck the 26,794-foot mountain. To read more, click here and here.
Notes from All Over:
--The Canadian RCMP say human remains found at the base of a mountain just outside Banff National Park are likely those of a climber who fell. Searchers found the body of a man in his 50s at the foot of Ha Ling Peak near Canmore, Alta. Investigators say they have tentatively identified the body. To read more, click here,
--Ten climbers died this year scaling the Colorado's tallest mountains, a possible record for tragedy in the increasingly popular pursuit of 14,000-foot peaks. Yet even though the number of Colorado peak-baggers reaches 500,000 every season, the number of fatalities per 1,000 hikers could actually be declining. To read more, click here.
--A deer hunter was injured Saturday when he was attacked by a female black bear and her three cubs as he sat in his tree stand, an incident that the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment described as one of the weirdest outdoor events in memory. According to the agency, Chad Fortune, was bow hunting just before dark Saturday on farmland in Bear Creek Township, Michigan, when the bears approached, climbed up his tree stand and attacked him. To read more, click here.
-- Desert dust blowing on to the high peaks of Colorado is affecting stream flows and even changing tundra vegetation -- and now it’s been traced as a cause of avalanches in the high country, researcher Chris Landry said Friday, addressing a packed house at the annual Colorado Snow and Avalanche Workshop. To read more, click here.
--Beto Pinto Toledo, Rolando Morales and Steven Fuente, Peruvian locals, recently completed a new line on the south face of Vallunaraju (19,251') in the Llaca Valley of the Cordillera Blanca. The standard route -- which AAI regularly guides -- climbs up the west face. To read more, click here.
-- Mick Fowler and Paul Ramsden recently completed the first ascent of the north face of Sulamar (17,651') in the Chinese Tien Shan range. The pair sent the route in four days, giving it a TD+ on the Alpine scale. To read more, click here.
