The late-morning sun was beaming down on the snow-covered summit of Oregon’s Mount Hood on Tuesday. The ice was slick and feathery at 10,300 feet when Braton Jurasevich spotted the trail of blood.
Jurasevich traced the crimson stains down the slope and noticed a fellow climber lying motionless down the mountain from him. He dialed 911.
“Location of your emergency?” a female dispatcher’s voice asked, according to 911 calls released to the Associated Press.
“Mount Hood,” Jurasevich responded, his voice sounding breathless.
“Are you calling about the climber who fell?” she asked.
“I’m the only one with eyes on the individual right now and I’m still 200 feet above the climber. He is not moving,” Jurasevich said. “I’m working my way down on a bad spot. I came across blood. There’s a big blood trail.”
The motionless man, identified by law enforcement as 35-year-old Miha Sumi, had been descending from the summit that morning with three other climbers when he slipped on the ice at about 10:30 a.m., tumbling about 1,000 feet down the slope to his death.
Mount Hood, a dormant volcano, is the most visited snow-covered peak in the nation, drawing more than 10,000 climbers a year, according to the U.S. Forest Service. But its peaks are also notoriously dangerous. More than 130 climbers have died trying to climb the mountain.
Just last year, there were four deaths, according to an Oregonian database. These included two 19-year-old women who fell while hiking in August, a climber who tumbled 600 feet in May and a skier who hit a tree in March. In 1986, a group of nine schoolchildren and teachers from an Oregon school froze to death during what was supposed to be a one-day spring hike.
The peaks become particularly dangerous during warm weather, when ice and rocks become loose and fall. Climbers are sometimes warned to start their hikes as early as 2 a.m. to avoid the sun, and the risk of rockfall.
Sumi, an avid climber originally from Slovenia, had reached the mountain’s summit several times before, Kimberly Anderson, one of the other climbers in Sumi’s group, told KGW. And when they began their ascent early Tuesday, “it was perfect,” she said.
But as the sun came out, and the temperatures rose, the climbing conditions took a turn for the worse, she said. The bright rays loosened the mountain’s rocks and created thick layers of ice.
“And then that’s when you see ice and everything coming down,” Anderson said. The ice was as slippery as a “bowling alley,” she said. Climbers struggled to secure their footing.
With the ice conditions that day, volunteer rescue climber Steve Rollins told reporters, “any kind of fall on the upper mountain was going to result in a pretty bad fall.” The conditions were so challenging that some climbers, like Wyatt Peck, decided to turn around before reaching the summit. Peck told reporters the ice “was so hard and steep that even experienced climbers were having a tough time.”
“If you were to slip and fall you couldn’t dig your ax in and stop yourself,” Peck said.
It was about 10:30 a.m. when Sumi went cartwheeling down the mountain.
After calling 911, the other three climbers in his group hunkered down at 10,500 feet, waiting for a rescue team. They were climbers of mid-level experience, with standard gear and equipment. But seeing what had happened to their friend, and confronting the “treacherous” weather, they decided to stay put, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office.
As other climbers passed by the trail of blood, they stopped to try to help Sumi. One of them was Jurasevich.
“What do I do?” he asked the 911 dispatcher. “Do I go try to help him? I might get hit by a rock.”
“Can you take a message for my mom for me?” he also said, his voice seeming panicked. “Tell her I love her.”
As the dispatcher warned him to be careful, Jurasevich made his way downward. He could see that Sumi was bleeding from of his head. “Hey bud, hang tight, OK?” he said. He noticed Sumi begin to move.
“Oh my God, a rock just went right by him,” he also said, according to the Associated Press. “The sun’s out and it’s bad. The whole hill is falling apart.”
For about two hours, Jurasevich would remain on the phone with the dispatcher as he and numerous other climbers tried to save Sumi. Even as rocks cascaded down the slope around them, the climbers took turns administering CPR.
As a string of 911 calls poured in, law enforcement and volunteer groups launched a search-and-rescue operation. But authorities struggled to maintain communication with the stranded hikers, sheriff’s authorities said. Ice continued to fall down the mountain, preventing the climbers from descending to safety.
The lack of communication led to confusion among rescuers about the number of people trapped on the mountain. At one point, authorities told reporters they could be looking for up to 15 climbers. The total number of stranded climbers was seven, including Sumi, his three team members, and the climbers who stopped to help him.
At 1 p.m., an Oregon Army National Guard Blackhawk reached the slope, airlifting Sumi and transporting him to a medical center. But by the time Sumi arrived at the hospital, he was declared dead, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office.
Volunteer rescue teams laid out ropes and helped escort the other climbers. But one of the climbers, Anderson, became unable to move. Rescue volunteers said she was too distraught, exhausted and traumatized to climb down unassisted.
Using a sled and a 600-foot rope, rescuers helped ease Anderson down the slope and transported her to a lodge. Only one climber suffered minor injuries.
It would take eight hours for all of the stranded climbers to descend the mountain.
Rollins, a volunteer with Portland Mountain Rescue, told reporters: “Psychologically, it’s really hard to see somebody take such a bad fall … and it really brings home how dangerous the upper mountain can be.”
“Don’t underestimate Mount Hood,” another rescue volunteer, Erik Broms, told KGW. “People do, and bad things happen.”
