DARRINGTON – Stuck on a steep pitch trying to rappel down Whitehorse Mountain in the dark, Joe Cannata could not see the end of his climbing rope.
So he stopped and reached for his cell phone to call for help.
Search and rescue teams from Darrington, Everett, Marysville and Seattle were dispatched at 10:22 p.m. Wednesday, and 21/2 hours later found Cannata and helped him the rest of the way down the 4,750-foot ridge.
But the night was not over. His brother, Rick Cannata, was missing somewhere among the massive cedars and firs below Lone Tree Pass. Calls to him on his hand-held radio were not answered.
The brothers had miscalculated their turnaround time while climbing the mountain as slushy snow from the warm weather slowed them down more than they had expected. They stopped short of the summit, but darkness fell as they descended.
While walking down the mountain, the two brothers from Everett each believed the other was close by. By the time they realized they had strayed from the trail, it became apparent they had lost something even more important – each other.
Rick Cannata, 43, had been walking in front of his brother. Joe Cannata, 38, thought they were within shouting distance.
“When we split, the one radio contact we had, I asked him, ‘Are you at the truck?’” Joe Cannata said.
His brother replied that he was lost.
“My response was, ‘I’m lost, too. I’ll keep heading down,’” Joe Cannata said.
All night, rescuers searched for Rick Cannata. They brought in a helicopter and a thermal-imaging camera from the Arlington Fire Department.
Sgt. Danny Wikstrom of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office said not being able to contact Rick Cannata on his radio worried him the most.
“The biggest concern was that he had taken a fall out there,” Wikstrom said.
The worry increased as the sun came up and the hours passed.
“Why can’t they find him?” Joe Cannata remembers thinking.
Rick Cannata didn’t know it at the time, but he had wandered west of the trail into a large, steep gully separated from his brother by a ridge. Finally, hampered by the dense forest, he found a place to sleep until daylight.
“I waited it out underneath a big, rotten log,” Rick Cannata said. “It was a long night. It was the only flat spot I could find.”
His clothes were wet, but his polypropylene layers kept him relatively warm. Each brother said they spent the night worrying about how wet and cold the other might be.
At 8:40 a.m., Rick Cannata finally emerged from the forest onto a road, where he soon encountered his rescuers.
“It was a great feeling, a huge relief,” Wikstrom said.
About 90 minutes later, the two brothers were reunited.
Other than miscalculating their turnaround time and losing track of each other, the two climbers did pretty well, Wikstrom said. They were well equipped, and both stopped when they got into tough spots.
“They weren’t out of control,” he said.
Joe Cannata praised the rescuers’ attention to detail. But he said the experience was sobering.
“You make one mistake, and there’s a lot of worry,” he said.
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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