Heppner gazette-times., August 02, 2023, Page 8, Image 8

EIGHT - Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon Wednesday, August 2, 2023
Edmundson recounts his time as a mountaineer
-Continued from PAGE ONE
The Crag Rats with packets of shredded rubber resting on Mazama Rock just below the
summit of Mt. Hood. John Edmundson is in the upper middle of the photo, wearing a cotton
brimmed hat and grinning at the camera. The Crag Rats were burning rubber as publicity
for the opera, “Bridge of the Gods”—a publicity stunt that didn’t work out as expected due
to cloud cover and high winds. -Contributed photo
dome putting out steam
and the rock walls of the
crater continuously sending
rocks falling down into the
crater,” he says.
That first summer of
mountain climbs when he
was 10 years old also in-
cluded ascents of the other
two “Guardian Peaks” of
the Columbia, Mt. Adams
and Mt. Hood.
Since members of the
Crag Rats had to be at least
18, it was several years be-
fore Edmundson aged into
membership. That didn’t
keep him from climbing as
often as he could—a perk
of being the son of one of
the members.
In its early years, The
Crag Rats was a men-only
club, with women allowed
to go on climbs as guests. It
was Edmundson’s mother
who made history as the
first female club member.
The club was eventually
required to admit women to
keep its tax-exempt status.
A long-time member who
had climbed several times
with Edmundson’s mother
suggested she would be a
fitting first woman member.
“She was admitted to
membership four years af-
ter she passed away,” says
Edmundson. “She was ap-
proved unanimously.”
During his climbing
career, Edmundson climbed
13 Pacific Northwest moun-
tains in a total of 64 climbs.
Each excursion included
glaciated peaks or peaks
requiring rock-climbing
skills. Among those were
Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens,
Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, Mt.
Jefferson, Broken Top, all
three Sisters, Three Fin-
gered Jack, Mt. Washing-
ton, Mt. Thielsen and Little
Tahoma.
Eight of those peaks
are on a list of mountains a
Crag Rat must climb to be
designated a life member.
With multiple climbs up
each of them—14 up Mt.
Hood alone—Edmundson
is still considered a life
member of the organiza-
tion.
He has also climbed
outside of the Northwest,
including a climb up Mt.
Popocatépetl, an active
volcano in Mexico.
Edmundson says it is
important to have at least
three people in a party so
that if one gets injured, one
can stay with that individual
and one can go for help.
He’s also the first to admit
that he has broken his own
rule all too often, such as
with solo cross country ski
treks up Black Mountain
and Opal Butte.
With so many treks
up steep and ice-covered
mountains, it would seem
impossible not to come
back with a few stories—
and Edmundson does have
a story or two to share.
While he was still a
teen attending Hood River
High School, the Hood Riv-
er Music Association had
a performance of an opera
called, “The Bridge of the
Gods,” featuring notable
male vocalist Enzio Pinza.
The opera told the story of
Wy’east (Mt. Hood) and
Pahto (Mt. Adams), who
were powerful braves both
in love with a maiden (Mt.
St. Helens).
As part of the promo-
tion for the opera, the Crag
Rats agreed to pack 25
pounds of shredded rubber
to the summit of Mt. Hood,
set it on fire and make
smoke to simulate the erup-
tion of Wy’east as it threw
rocks at Pahto.
However, their “erup-
tion” was anticlimactic. A
light cloud cover over the
mountain kept anyone be-
low from seeing the smoke,
and the wind was blowing
so strongly that it blew the
smoke right down the side
of the mountain anyway.
His first climb of Mt.
Jefferson was after his
sophomore year in high
school, in a Crag Rat climb
that approached the moun-
tain from the southwest
flank above Pamelia Lake.
It was June, when the top
of the mountain was still
covered with winter ice.
They hiked to about the
7,000-foot level, laid out
sleeping bags and caught a
few hours of sleep before
heading on towards the
summit, arriving at the
Red Saddle in the early
morning.
“I was on a rope in
the lead with two veteran
Crag Rats. We negotiated
a tricky ice and rock pitch
leading up to a point just
below the 10-foot vertical
wall of ice that sheathed
the summit pinnacle,” says
Edmundson.
A group of Obsidi-
ans—a mountain-climbing
club from Eugene—had
beat them to the summit
that morning, ascending
the Milk Creek Glacier on
the mountain’s west side.
The Obsidians threw down
a rope and Edmundson’s
two partners were pulled up
to put the rope around him.
“If it would have
slipped off my shoulder, I
would have been done for,”
he says.
Some of his other
climbs on Mt. Jefferson
might have been less terri-
fying personally, but they
were far from cheerful.
Twice, he helped recover
the bodies of dead climbers
from the mountain.
He was still a teenager
himself when the Crag Rats
were called upon to retrieve
the body of a teenager from
Stayton, OR. Some brothers
had decided to climb the
mountain without train-
ing or equipment, and the
younger brother had fallen
and died in the rugged Milk
Creek Glacier area.
“The authorities had
given up on retrieving the
body, but the Crag Rats
undertook the difficult task
of bringing the boy’s body
down the mountains and to
his family,” says Edmund-
son, who was along to help
with brush clearing. “When
the boy’s body arrived at
the trail from Pamelia Lake
around the lower slope of
the mountain, his mother
was there and placed a fir
bough in the litter. It was a
very touching and emotion-
al moment.”
The second was when
Edmundson was living in
Salem. The Salem Area
Rescue Group (SARG), of
which he was a member,
was called when a group
of Obsidians climbing the
Jefferson Park Glacier came
upon the body of a young
summer coworker at the
U.S. Forest Service, Dale
Holland Jr. After moving
to Heppner, Edmundson
and his son also climbed
the South Sister and Broken
Top.
Edmundson also recalls
other Heppner citizens who
were involved in moun-
taineering with the Port-
land Mazamas—Oregon’s
largest and most famous
mountain-climbing club—
Bob Abrams, Bob Jepsen
and Tom Hughes.
“They led some Ma-
zama large group climbs,”
he says.
Two final stories from
Mt. Hood come from Ed-
mundson’s junior year in
high school. He was at
Cloud Cap Inn in the spring
when a couple of experi-
enced Crag Rats asked him
if he wanted to climb the
mountain the next day.
“I had my climbing
gear with me and, sure, was
always wanting to climb the
mountain, especially with
two of the most experienced
and respected members,”
he says.
They started the climb
in the middle of the night
so that the snow would be
firm from the night-time
cold. First it seemed to him
that they were heading up
Cooper Spur and the usual
northeast route up the chim-
ney to the summit.
Then they dropped
down on Eliot Glacier and
he thought they would go up
the Sunshine Route, which
reaches the summit by
way of the snow dome and
they were planning to do,”
Edmundson says. “Some
years later, they related
to me that one said to the
other, ‘Don’t you think we
ought to tell him what we’re
planning to do?’ The other
replied, ‘No, ---- him.’”
Later that same year, a
Crag Rat party of a dozen
climbers decided to climb
the Sunshine Route up Mt.
Hood.
They arrived at the
bergschrund and the lead-
er, who was renowned for
seeking and using “short
cuts,” Edmundson says,
decided to go straight up
over the berg rather than
traversing over to the right
hand and making an easy
crossing.
“I was roped in third
on the first rope when our
leader started up his short
cut. His cousin was second.
Part way up, the leader
took a big whack with his
ice axe, causing chunks of
ice to come falling down,”
recalls Edmundson. “When
the bedlam stopped, I lay
there with less than a foot
of climbing rope going
from me to under a chunk
of ice bigger than two grand
pianos and so heavy that we
couldn’t pull the rope out.
We had to cut it.”
They regrouped, tra-
versed out to the right end
of the berg and proceeded
on up to the summit of
the mountain. On the as-
cent, Edmundson’s cotton
brimmed hat blew off. He
feared he had lost his favor-
ite hat. On the descent down
the snow dome, however,
The north face of Mt. Hood, including the Eliot headwall ascent. -Photo by John Scurlock
to the top.
“Unfortunately, my
only experience with rope
climbing was watching Tar-
zan movies where Tarzan
climbed up the rope hand-
over-hand,” says Edmund-
son. “I didn’t have Tarzan
arm muscles and could not
climb the rope. I had not
been trained that you just
lean back with your feet on
the ice wall and the people
above can pull you up to
them. So, they just lugged
me up, dead weight, like a
sack of potatoes!”
When he finally got on
top, he asked, “How do you
get down from here?”
The Obsidians replied,
“You rappel.”
He didn’t know how
to do that, either, so they
wrapped a 200-foot rappel
rope around his torso and
showed him how to slowly
lower himself down from
the pinnacle. It was only
in later years that he real-
ized the Obsidians had not
shown him the right way
climber who had obviously
tried to climb the unclimb-
able north side and fallen to
his death.
The young man was
from the East Coast, worked
through the summer on an
orchard in the Hood River
Valley.
“He had taken a bus up
the Santiam Highway on his
way back home and got off
northwest of Mt. Jefferson
to make one last climb be-
fore returning to his home,
but with terrible results,”
says Edmundson.
When the Edmundson
family moved from Salem
to Ione so he could take the
position of principal for
the Ione schools, the travel
distance to make climbs
meant the majority of his
mountain climbing days
were over.
However, he did climb
the south side of Mt. Hood
once with son, Jeff, and
his friend, Greg Sweeney.
Another climb was with
daughter, Kristi, and her
crossing the bergschrund (a
crevasse at the junction of
a glacier or snowfield with
a steep upper slope) where
the tops of Eliot and Coe
Glaciers separate from the
mountain.
Wrong again. They
kept heading up the Eliot
Glacier, straight for the top.
“We had climbed the
Eliot headwall!” says Ed-
mundson, adding that they
were reputedly only the
third party to make the dif-
ficult climb.
“I was pretty naïve, and
they never told me what
the rope leader leaned over,
picked up his hat and hand-
ed it to him.
“All in all, it was a
good day,” says Edmund-
son. “I climbed Mt. Hood,
I did not get crushed by a
big block of ice and I got
my hat back.”
“But again,” he adds,
“the mountains don’t care
if you live or die. So, get
the right equipment, get the
right training and proceed
with caution.
“The mountains will
always be there, and you
can return for another trip
on another day.”
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