A Hood River (Ore.) County sheriff’s spokesman says a recovery team has successfully retrieved the body of a New Jersey man who fell to his death on Oregon’s Mount Hood.
Sgt. Pete Hughes says recovering the body of Robert Cormier, 57, a Catholic priest from Jersey City, took the 18-person team about 17 hours Wednesday. Climbers had to pull the body from a crevasse it had slipped into, a task complicated by near-vertical terrain and falling rocks.
A dangerous traverse to safe ground took several more hours and was complicated by wind.
A private helicopter eventually moved the body.
Cormier reached the summit of the 11,240-foot peak east of Portland on May 13. Then he was seen falling through a ledge of ice and tumbling about 1,000 feet.
The recovery was delayed until temperatures fell, reducing the risk of an avalanche
