PORTLAND, Ore. — The recent deaths of three climbers on Mount Hood is the second time in three years that a search-and-rescue operation on the 11,239-foot mountain has failed to turn up climbers who went up the mountain without signaling devices and got into deadly trouble.
So politicians, rescue crews, mountaineers and others are debating once again whether to require such climbers to carry locator beacons.
“When are you going to stop the carnage on Mount Hood?” said Jim Bernard, a commissioner in Clackamas County on the south side of the mountain.
A bill to require Mount Hood climbers to carry beacons on winter expeditions failed in the Oregon Legislature in 2007. Bernard hopes the Legislature will revisit the question, or the state’s congressional delegation will take an interest.
