GOVERNMENT CAMP, Ore. — An injured woman was successfully rescued in a 10-hour operation Saturday afternoon after she fell hundreds of feet while hiking on Mount Hood. The rescue involved the sheriff's offices from Clackamas and Hood River counties, as well as the volunteer groups Hood River Crag Rats and Portland Mountain Rescue.
The 36-year-old woman was descending the popular South Side route on the mountain Saturday morning when she slipped and fell "several hundred feet" near the Old Chute at about 11:30 a.m., according to a news release from the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office.
A team of Portland Mountain Rescue (PMR) personnel saw her fall and called police. They were able to reach her and provide initial medical care, and members of the Hood River Crag Rats arrived a short time later.
Erik Broms, a rescue leader with PMR, was with the Ready Team on the mountain Saturday.
"One of my teammates looked down the Mazama Chute and said, 'Hey, I just saw somebody go sliding by,'" he explained, "It was confirmed by another climber who was coming over the summit ridge, that he had seen the same thing. I radioed to some people, some other teammates that were down at the Hogsback to investigate what happened."
The Clackamas County Sheriff's Office set up a command center at Timberline Lodge, where more rescue teams assembled with additional equipment. It took seven hours to get all of the resources up to the injured woman, according to the news release, but the rescuers at the scene were able to keep her stable and warm during the wait.
"After I had gotten down there, we made a decision that transporting her off of the mountain with a litter would probably be the best thing," Broms said. "She did not require a medical helicopter evacuation, because her injuries were not serious enough to warrant a helicopter rescue."
The rescue teams used rope systems to move the woman on a stretcher to Hogsback snow ridge, and then she was carried down on another stretcher to the Timberline parking lot, then taken to a hospital. She arrived at Timberline at about 9:30 p.m., the sheriff's office said.
In a statement afterward, PMR stressed that Mount Hood is not a beginner mountain, especially in the winter when the snow can be very hard and icy, making the descent far more difficult than the ascent.
"Only those with expert mountaineering and ice climbing skills should attempt Mount Hood in winter, especially when there have been long dry spells with no precipitation," the group said. "Appropriate and thorough training is critical."
Broms echoed those same thoughts.
"Mount Hood is not a walk up. I do not recommend doing it in micro-spikes, and I highly recommend that you don’t make it your first climb," he said. "If you’re not an experienced climber and by experienced, I mean you’ve had a good training, you’ve climbed maybe some other mountains that are close to being as technical as Mount Hood. A lot of people do not think that Mount Hood is as technical, but it is, depending on the conditions."