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The Brothers climbing accident

JCSO notified JSAR around 1 PM Sunday, May 23, of an injured climbing party on the Brothers. An InReach emergency beacon and follow-up phone call from another climbing party in the area stated that two people had fallen. One unresponsive patient had fallen further into an opening in the snow and over a rock face with running melt water. The reporting party abandoned their climb to stay with the fallen climbers, helping to warm the one they could reach.

A SAR helicopter crew from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island was requested and found a way through cloud layers to drop two of their personnel at the scene. They found that one patient needed to be flown and that additional rescue gear and personnel would be needed to extract the other patient.

The Navy crew landed briefly in Brinnon to pick up three from JSAR along with ropes and rigging equipment. Remaining JSAR members and additional personnel from Olympic Mountain Rescue assembled to prepare to hike the Lena Lake Trail and climb the route from below to help with the extraction.

After multiple attempts, the helicopter was able to reach the site to drop the JSAR personnel and hoist one injured climber to be flown to Harborview Medical Center. Personnel remaining on scene extracted the second fallen climber, who was determined to be deceased. Returning to the scene, careful work to get through the cloud layers was required for two more flights to hoist the second climbing party, JSAR personnel, the Navy medic and the climber.