Rainier victims were experienced climbers

Associated Press

ASHFORD – The four friends whose trek to the summit of Mount Rainier ended in disaster and three deaths were expert climbers in search of challenges at the top of the region’s rugged mountain ranges, their friends say.

“I don’t think they were beyond their ability,” said Keith Pearen, president of the Mountaineering Club at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Three of the four climbers were OSU students and club members.

“It’s just that, sometimes, things like this happen,” Pearen said as friends gathered at a park to remember those who died – Keeta Owens, 21, of Lebanon, Ore., and two German climbers: Cornelius Beilharz, 26, of Stuttgart, and Grit Kleinschmidt, 26, of Dresden, who was here visiting.

Beilharz, a computer-engineering graduate student at OSU, and Kleinschmidt died of hypothermia, the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office said after autopsies Friday. Owens, an animal-sciences major originally from Alaska, died of blunt trauma to the head and neck.

“I just can’t imagine not seeing her again,” said Donna Yanik, who owns a ranch in Lebanon, Ore., where Owens lived and kept her animals, including a thoroughbred named Quinton. “She was part of our family.”

Yanik said she and Owens had talked about the climbing trip last week, and Owens had promised they would not attempt the climb if the weather was bad.

“She was a very conscientious person,” Yanik added. “I’m sure she wouldn’t try it if she wasn’t sure it was OK.”

But the weather took the climbers by surprise.

Just one of the party survived – the 29-year-old group leader, Andreas Kurth, who fell from their precarious emergency campsite before dawn Wednesday and then set out for help. Mount Rainier National Park spokeswoman Lee Taylor released Kurth’s name Friday, but his hometown in Germany was not provided.

Kurth managed to contact rescuers using a cell phone from another climbing party he met at St. Elmo’s Pass at the 7,800-foot level. But by the time rescuers reached the peak late Wednesday, all three of the others had died in high winds and whiteout conditions, park spokesman Maria Gillett said.

The climbers had set out Saturday, hoping to reach the summit on Monday. Deep snow slowed them down, and by the time they reached the summit on Tuesday by way of Liberty Ridge – a tough, challenging climb – the weather had turned deadly.

They huddled just below the 14,411-foot summit, struggling to build snow shelters when 60 mph winds snapped their tent poles and left them exposed. When Beilharz fell and a completed snow shelter collapsed, Kurth tried to put together a makeshift shelter for the two women, the park spokeswomen said.

When he went to see to their fallen friend, Kurth fell himself and damaged his climbing boot so he was unable to return to the women near the summit. Instead, he set out for help.

Kurth told rangers both women were still alive when he left at about 4 a.m. Wednesday to seek help, Gillett said, but sometime after that, it appears both women fell as well.

They fell 400 to 600 feet, Taylor said.

Owens landed near Beilharz, and her body was retrieved late Wednesday. Kleinschmidt landed in a nearby crevasse. Rangers were able to retrieve both her body and that of Beilharz on Thursday, Taylor said.

“Mount Rainier makes its own weather,” Gillett said Wednesday. “You can see sunny skies and five minutes later see clouds come in, and the weather can change very, very quickly.”

Thirteen climbers have died on Liberty Cap and Liberty Ridge since 1968, including three men who died while climbing together on May 13, 1988.

The last death on the route was on May 24, 1999, when David Persson, a Swedish citizen who lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, fell 1,000 feet while attempting to ski down Liberty Ridge.