An adventure on Mount Katahdin that turned into a tragedy

loading...

(Editor’s Note: Outdoors columnist Michael Lanza was rock climbing with four friends on Maine’s Mount Katahdin of Saturday, Sept. 2, when his close friend, Rick Baron, 30, of Norwood, Mass., was killed in a rockslide. Following is Lanza’s account of the events of that tragic day.)

The late-morning sun finally reached over a high ridge on Mount Katahdin to warm five of us perched on a cliff on Katahdin’s north side. An icy wind howling across the mountainside, numbing our fingers and prompting us into parkas, was suddenly tamed.

Huddled together on a sloping ledge below me, three members of our rock-climbing party cheered. The climbing had been easy and enjoyable so far. Now, thankfully, we would be warm, too.

Moments later, the cheers and laughter would turn into shouts and screams of alarm, and an old friend would be dying on that remote cliff.

Five of us had driven up to Baxter State Park the day before: Bill Mistretta of Nashua, N.H.; Rick Baron and his girlfriend Diane Mailloux, both of Norwood, Mass.; and my girlfriend Penny Beach and I, residents of Lebanon, N.H.

We planned to spend Saturday rock climbing on Maine’s highest mountain and Sunday hiking Katahdin with friends joining us at Roaring Brook campground Saturday evening.

We rose at dawn Saturday for the four-mile hike to the cliff, carrying ropes, climbing gear, food and water, and warm clothing. At the Chimney Pond ranger station, we checked in with Ranger Greg Hamer, who inspected our gear, a standard practice in Baxter.

Greg warned us about loose rock on our intended route and recommended a different one – advice we followed, in part because two or three other climbing parties were fanning out on the mountain, and we wanted to avoid any crowding.

In a chilling wind, we hiked toward the cliff, passing a large moose and her calf grazing by the trail. We snapped photos, and that thrill of seeing wildlife up close filled us with excitement.

At the base of the cliff, we roped together in two parties: Penny and I together; Bill with Rick and Diane. Bill and I climbed 150 feet up a rock face pitched at about 75 degrees, anchored ourselves, and the three others followed. We encountered loose rock, but nothing unusual – nothing that suggested trouble.

A vast ampitheater of steep rock encircled us, rising higher than we could see overhead, sweeping away below to a dense forest and the deep blue spot that is Chimney Pond.

Nearly a mile high, Katahdin is a sprawling gray boulder pile. From a distance it resembles a bear crouched on a flat plain. The first time I stood on its summit, I stared, awestruck, 2,000 feet down into the bowl clawed out of Katahdin’s north side by ancient glaciers.

I’ve returned many times since, always bringing friends who have never seen Baxter Park. Rick and Diane were seeing Baxter and Katahdin for the first time.

Bill and I led up another 150 feet and searched for solid rock to again anchor ourselves. Minutes crept by. Much was loose here. Still, the situation raised no red flags. Everyone was calm. It was nearly noon, and we were warm.

I finally found a secure spot, but called to Bill – 30 feet to my left – that there was not much space, and he might have better luck where he was. From below, Diane yelled, “Bill, try going straight up into that stuff above you.”

A tremendous crack and rumbling of rocks drowned out the wind – a noise one ranger would report hearing nearly a mile away at Chimney Pond. I looked left, and a block of stone, about three feet and several inches thick, slid past Bill and crashed downward, dislodging more rocks in its path.

As Bill and I yelled warnings, the growing rockslide plummeted toward Rick, Diane and Penny. For a few seconds of horror, I thought I was about to see them all killed.

Rick motioned the two women to move left to the scant protection offered by an alcove in the cliff. Diane and Penny pressed into the wall, while Rick moved to shield them with his body. The slide passed right over both women.

One rock, probably weighing several pounds, struck Rick over his left eye. The impact flipped him over backward and ripped off his helmet. Only his rope stopped him from tumbling down the cliff.

Diane and Penny looked up, unhurt. I called to Rick, but got no response. Diane turned, screaming, “Rick, are you all right? Oh my God!”

Penny, a student at Dartmouth Medical School, untied from her rope – a risky act – and crawled to where Rick lay upside-down and face dhow he was, trying to recall my training in wilderness first aid. “Mike, you better get down here,” she hollered to me. “His head is bleeding badly.”

Everything that followed seemed unreal. Diane screamed Rick’s name over and over. I looked at Bill, who was literally shaking as he clung to the wall, but quickly composed himself.

Penny had been belaying my rope, to catch me if I fell, so I was no longer safe. Bill and I told a distraught Diane to belay us simultaneously as we downclimbed, one cautious move after another, for 150 feet. All the while, Penny and I shouted back and forth about Rick’s condition and what to do.

As Diane lowered Bill to the ground to run for help, I moved to Rick’s side and saw in my friend’s limp form the gravity of our situation. Blood pouring from a horribly deep wound above his eye had stained Penny’s clothing and the thin soil on the slope around him.

We struggled to force life back into him – blowing our own air into his mouth, pumping his chest – but it seemed to leak back out faster. His chest heaved sporadically, and each time we heard the fluid in his tortured lungs. His pulse beat faintly, slowly fading, until we could no longer find it.

Penny and I looked at each other, disbelieving. We continued working on him, until finally grasping the futility of it. I pulled a T-shirt from Rick’s pack and covered his head, and we sat with a sobbing Diane to wait in silence.

Within an hour, Bill returned with Ranger Stewart Guay, carrying a gurney. I lowered down Diane and Penny, and they hiked out to the ranger station. Bill would eventually follow. Stewart climbed up, and we began an evacuation that lasted until early evening.

After lowering the gurney containing Rick’s body, Stewart and I rappelled down the cliff. By then, Ranger Greg Hamer had gathered about a dozen volunteers – hikers and climbers in the area who had heard about the accident – to help in the evacuation.

I hiked down through the somber group of volunteers, feeling a flood of compassion from them. Their proximity to Rick’s death reminded them of their own tenuous mortality.

I continued on to Chimney Pond to wait for the helicopter to fly me out. By then, word of the accident was circulating among hikers there, and their breathless conversations were too much to bear. So I began hiking, alone, the three miles back to the campground, waves of grief convulsing my whole body.

It had been several hours since the rockslide had killed my friend of more than 20 years, someone with whom I’d done a lot of climbing from New England to Wyoming’s Grand Teton.

Rick Baron was the 18th person to die mountain climbing in Baxter Park.

Though it may seem hollow consolation, those of us who were close to Rick have reminded ourselves repeatedly since Sept. 2 that he really loved what he did. There is no logic or reason to someone as smart and safe as Rick dying, but he understood the risks and pursued adventure in spite of them.

While hiking out, I heard the helicopter circle around the mountain, heading toward Chimney Pond. Then, a short while later, I heard it return.

I stopped to watch as the helicopter passed overhead, carrying my good friend Rick Baron off his last climb.

The author respectfully asks that concerned readers send donations to the Rick F. Baron National Park Fund, c/o I.C. Credit Union, 400 Mechanic St., Leominster, Mass. 01453. The author is donating his income from this article to that fund.