Guides rescue stranded adventurers

A pair of backcountry adventurers got a little more adventure than they bargained for when they became stranded last week on an icy face on the Tam McArthur Rim.

The pair - a female skier and a male snowboarder - were members of an eight-person party that had enjoyed an unguided multi-day backcountry skiing excursion based at a hut operated by Three Sisters Backcountry.

"Other than us taking them up by snowmobile, they were doing all their skiing on their own," explained Three Sisters Backcountry partner and guide Gabe Chladek.

The party was to wrap up their trip at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, February 9.

"We showed up at 4 p.m. and there was nobody at the huts," Chladek said. "But then a couple members of the group came skiing out of the woods and told us that two of their party were stranded on one of the faces of the Tam Rim."

One of the stranded had used a cell phone to call Deschutes County Search and Rescue.

Based on a digital photo taken by one of the skiers, Chladek and his partner Shane Fox knew exactly where the stranded adventurers were located.

"It's actually a piece of terrain that we ski a lot," Chladek said. "So Shane and I went up to get them."

While the slope is skiable, weather conditions had made the slope icier than usual, and the terrain's layout led the skiers, both in their 30s, to believe that there was greater danger than there actually was.

"Basically, they had tried to ride a slope that was above their ability," Chladek said.

The female skier was able to kick in footholds and start climbing back up the slope, but the snowboarder was well-and-truly stuck.

"He got nervous that he was going to be unable to stop on the ice and go over a cliff, which was not the case," Chladek said.

But, given his uncertainty, Chladek said, "he made the right decision to stop."

Unfortunately, he took his board off - and it slipped away and slid down the slope. In soft snowboarding boots and with nothing that had an edge to it, the snowboarder could not kick footholds into the slope. He couldn't get down, and he couldn't climb up. Stranded next to a tree, he made the call to activate SAR.

When Chladek and Fox arrived, Fox aided the skier in making her way to the top of the slope. Chladek rappelled down to the stranded snowboarder and tied him in to the tree for security. Then the pair traversed the slope on a rope belay, with Gabe kicking in toeholds. They made it to the improvised stair the skier had kicked in.

At that point, SAR personnel had arrived on the scene and they dropped a rope to assist the climb out.

Chladek skied down to retrieve the errant snowboard. The snowboarder, none the worse for the adventure, hiked down to the hut and the party headed down into Sisters for dinner and the trip back home to Portland.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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