Oregon Episcopal School: Nine Dead on Mount Hood

On the morning of May twelfth, nineteen eighty-six, fifteen students and three teachers from the Oregon Episcopal School in Portland set out for the summit of Mount Hood. The school ran an outdoor education program that had made summit attempts before. The weather forecast was not ideal, but it was deemed acceptable. The party began climbing in darkness, as summit climbers do, hoping to reach the top and descend before conditions changed.

They did not descend in time. A whiteout caught the group near the summit. Temperatures dropped. Wind increased. The students were dressed for a spring climb, not for the conditions that closed around them. The teachers made the decision to dig in and wait. A snow cave was excavated. Six students and one teacher sheltered inside it and survived.

Seven students and two adults did not.

The youngest victims were thirteen years old. Some of the parents did not learn their children were missing until the following day. The search lasted more than forty-eight hours in deteriorating weather. Bodies were recovered over several days.

The tragedy prompted national debate about school outdoor education programs, parental consent, weather assessment protocols, and whether children should be led to the summit of a glacier-covered stratovolcano at all. Mount Hood has claimed more than one hundred thirty lives in its climbing history, more recorded fatalities than any other peak in the contiguous forty-eight states. The mountain's technical difficulty is routinely underestimated; its summit elevation of eleven thousand two hundred fifty feet is enough for altitude to impair judgment, and its weather can change in under an hour.

No legislation directly resulted from the Oregon Episcopal School deaths. The national debate it sparked continued for years. The mountain continues to be climbed. A good year sees ten thousand summit attempts.