Guye Peak Rescue
Early this morning, we wrapped up what ended up being a nearly 30 hour mission that started Friday night as our third mission of that day.
We were called out Friday night for a hiker that had gotten lost in the fog and mistakenly went onto the ledges on the face of Guye Peak.
We sent in a team Friday night via the South Rib that searched for a route to the hiker until about 2am but were unable to ascend to him given the wet conditions and fog/darkness obscuring the route.
Teams went back into the field around 4:45 am Saturday as first light came. We sent two teams to the summit to try accessing him from above and another two teams back up south rib since navigation would be easier in the light. It snowed Friday night on the upper mountain though, making for more challenging conditions on the rock.
Teams made voice contact with the subject in the late morning and lowered a rescuer about 650 feet to his location. The rescuer was able to get him anchored and do a basic medical assessment. We then began the LONG process of hauling them both back up to the south summit with our small summit team of 5 (hauling someone 650 feet with a 9:1 mechanical advantage system actually involves pulling a rope nearly 6000 feet).
After getting them back to the top, we worked on getting the subject warmed further and started the descent back down. It was then 2000 feet of scrambling, rappelling, and hiking back to base.
All teams were out of the field around 3am Sunday morning.
Several teams came together on Saturday to make this rescue happen. A big thanks to Olympic Mountain Rescue for climbing to the summit and helping with the rescue, Everett Mountain Rescue for carrying rescue gear to the summit and then setting up the descent route, King County Explorer Search and Rescue for also helping setup the descent route and bringing extra food and Gatorade into the field, King County 4×4 Search and Rescue for the rides to and from base (always amazing to hop into a warm car after coming down from a long day in the rain), and The Soup Ladies for the great food. We also wanted to thank the neighbors that live around Alpental: when we started showing up, they started making food for the rescuers and continued throughout the weekend.
