Mt Sacagawea and an accident

Another nice morning dawns, but I’m feeling really tired as we engage the steep slopes directly above camp through grass, rock bands, then loose talus. Mostly I remember yawning a lot and feeling our ascent was taking a long time for what should be an “easy day”.

Eventually we reach the saddle just north of Mt. Sacagawea and the North Ridge route beckons.

It looks like we can scramble from the saddle on the east side of the ridge and bypass the first tower and reach an obvious gully to start climbing. Jim and I head over there with a couple of the others trying their crampons across the snow to reach the same point. Once in the gully we rope up to cross some loose rocks and recent graupel and regain the rock on the other side. Jim gets the first pitch and goes about a half rope length. Dominic again leads on the other two ropes and follows Jim’s route.

I arrive at their belay and take the rack and study my options from here. Once Jim is ready to belay me I set off and find I need to make a few tough moves around some ice then find easier climbing until the rope drag becomes unbearable.

Jim and I continue to swap leads on our one rope, while Dominic leads on the two half ropes and belays Sarah and Teresa behind him. Occasionally we pull up short on our pitches since Jim and I are climbing on a longer rope and want to keep in good contact with the others.

Jim gets to lead a really fun, easy and exposed knife-edge section and two pitches later a nice portion of the ridge with a few fun moves.

Our 8th pitch deposits me on a summit, but it’s not the highest point. Jim comes up and we examine our options. Separating us is a steep down climb that we decide is better rappelled to the VW Beetle-sized chockstone. From there a mantle move leads to easier climbing and the true summit.

We have the others repeat our performance and find a summit register left by an Ecuadorian climbing club.

To get down we belay each other in reversing the mantle moves then upclimbing on the far side back to the lower summit. Dominic then starts to lead down some steep rock with icy patches just as the weather clouds up and begins to spit graupel. Worried about electricity in the area we all hustle to a notch, then find some easier climbing around to the east ridge of Sacagawea. Ropes get coiled and we start scrambling down the loose and large blocks of talus.

Teresa, Dominic and Sarah were ahead of us when I heard Sarah telling us to be careful – there were a lot of really loose blocks here. After downclimbing a little further I saw Dominic cradling Teresa’s left foot and realized she’d had an accident. A large block shifted when she barely touched it for support and knocked her down. Possibly her foot was trapped which resulted in a bad break. Thankfully, she was only bleeding from more minor wounds to her hand.

We made her comfortable and formulated a plan for her care. She’d recently purchased a SPOT device so we went ahead and activated it to call for help. Meanwhile we got her in additional layers, and rigged a split from a jacket, a couple ice axes, some webbing and tape.

Dominic had spent a couple years as an EMT, so he was the obvious choice to stay with Teresa. A night out seemed a forgone conclusion at this point, so the other 3 of us decided to descend back to camp and try to bring up a shelter, sleeping bags, extra clothing, food and a stove.

The descent off the ridge was a bit more complicated than we’d planned, with some steep snow to descend to reach the Fremont Glacier. At least a couple snow fields had softened up and we could descend on those to avoid some of the loose rock.

On the way back we formulated additional plans and decided that since we didn’t know for sure that the SPOT had successfully warned anyone of our need for help that I would try to run out (16.5 miles) back to the trailhead and drive until I could call 911. It was 6:30pm when I started out from camp down Titcomb Basin. Jim was about to start back up to the accident site and Sarah was asking other climbers around the basin if they had a satellite phone.

Several miles down the valley I got a radio call from Jim and Dominic that they heard a helicopter. I turned around to abort my mission and head back to camp. Jim took a breather on the steep climb to see if they’d have enough supplies that he didn’t need to continue his climb.

The radio communications were a little garbled, so we didn’t fully understand that the helicopter had only dropped two SAR volunteers and that they would need to spend all night moving Teresa to where a helicopter could pick her up. As it was, Jim and I didn’t recognize just how short on supplies and manpower they’d be up there so we both returned to camp and all 3 of us decided to head up first thing in the morning.

Sleep was necessary, but hard given the unknowns of what was going on above. I think we all felt Teresa was in good hands now and relieved that SAR was involved. Amazingly, the weather didn’t produce any big storms overnight (something that happened almost every other night of our trip), and at dawn Sarah, Jim and I started back up the mountain.

Once we reached the divide we regained radio contact w/ Dominic and got some of the details of the night he and the two SAR volunteers had spent moving Teresa down ~200 feet of loose rock, onto and across a glacier then up a steep and icy couloir. I headed back to the accident site to retrieve some of the gear we’d left then joined the others where we waited for the helicopter to return and take Teresa off the mountain.

After it finally landed we helped put Teresa in the back then watched it fly off.

Sarah accompanied Dominic back down the mountain while Jim and I waited with the remaining SAR volunteer for the helicopter’s final flight. That flight would take him off the mountain and return some ropes we’d used for insulation.

After the last flight Jim and I returned over the Fremont Glacier and back down to camp, catching Sarah and Dominic just a bit before reaching our tents. Dominic got some food in him and promptly passed out for a nap.

Clouds gave way to sun and woke us all up to emerge stumbling from the too-hot tents. Dinner followed as we discussed plans. Teresa had asked that we continue the trip, but agreed to call our horse packers and move up our exit day by 1. If we had to get her from the other side of the range that would give us an extra day. Meanwhile, her vacant tent started to become the “tool shed”.

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