The wind, with gusts up to 80 mph, screamed with the force of a freight train, as a driving, blinding whirlwind of sleet and snow forced Tom Lyons to the ground, threatening to throw him right off the mountain.
Lyons, 56, had signed up for a five-day hike, but suddenly he was pitted against the most unpredictable and relentless opponent of them all ? Mother Nature.
And she was winning.
This was a fight to the death, a fight that Lyons had to win.
As an emergency-room doctor, he had seen, and beaten, death before. But at this moment ? on Mount Rainier in Washington state ? he held his own fragile life in his hands.
Six hours in, he couldn?t see his own hand in front of his face, and the camp was nowhere in site.
Up ahead, his 18-year-old son, Collin, sang to himself, not as a distraction but for survival. “Put one foot in front of the other,” he sang, knowing his only other option was surrendering to the bitter storm and freezing to death.
The father and son never expected such a deadly blizzard in June.
They survived, but not everyone would.
Howling wind, bitter cold
The summer-vacation trip to Mount Rainier was four years in the making, beginning at a family reunion in Seattle, where the father and son were awed by the 14,410-foot mountain that stands majestically just 54 miles southeast of the city.
When Collin graduated from Glenelg High School earlier this month, he and his dad decided to take on the mountain and signed up with Rainier Mountaineering International for a guided hike.
Eager for the challenge, a group of 10 greenhorn hikers set out June 9 for a five-day hike to the top and back. There was nothing in the air that forecast disaster.
But when the hikers reached Paradise, a campsite 5,000 feet up the mountain, the guides issued a warning.
“They told us there was a storm coming in, and there was some pressure to get an early start that morning to beat the storm to Camp Muir,” said Lyons, who is the medical director of the Bowie Health Center.
Rain set in early, soaking their clothes and dampening their spirits. Then, chunks of hail followed, pummeling the hikers and fueling their uneasiness. It didn?t take long for snow and sleet to break through and blanket the mountain.
“We thought, ?Let?s get the hell out of this,? ” Lyons said. “We were too far up to go back, so we had to keep moving forward.”
Before long, the biting wind was blowing them off their feet, and whiteout conditions took hold. The group made it to where the camp should have been. But the wall of snow was so thick it hid the campsite that was only 100 yards away, forcing the disoriented group to radio for help.
Park rangers stationed at Camp Muir pushed through knee-deep snow with almost zero visibility to guide the group to safety, Lyons said. The exhausted hikers thawed their near-frozen bodies in the camp shelters, then collapsed into their sleeping bags.
Worst yet to come
At 3 a.m., a banging on their doors awoke them. The rangers needed help.
They were searching for three other hikers who had been reported missing. Mariana and Eduard Burceag, natives of Romania who were living in Seattle, and their close friend, Daniel Vlad, were on a day hike, but they never returned to their car at the bottom of the mountain. By all accounts, they were experienced mountaineers and had dressed appropriately for a spring hike.
As soon as weather would allow, a rescue team would begin its search in hopes they had survived the brutal winds, subzero temperatures and driving snow.
Doctors likely would be needed, and Lyons, still reeling from exhaustion, volunteered. Others would be needed to help in the search. Collin quickly stepped up.
But until morning, all they could do was rest, which was awelcome relief.
About 5:30 a.m., park ranger Joe Franklin began the search by scouring the snow-blanketed mountain with binoculars.
It wasn?t long before he spotted what appeared to be a large boulder on top of the snow, except there seemed to be movement.
It was the lost hikers, who were huddled one on top of the other for warmth. Unaware that they had been spotted, one of the hikers, Vlad, stood and began stumbling in the direction of the camp, looking for help.
“Once we saw them, we just started running,” Collin said.
Vlad, 35, was suffering from hypothermia and frostbite and directed the rescuers to where his friends were.
Mariana Burceag, 31, was in shock and not coherent. Rescuers wrapped her in a sleeping bag and placed her on a sled laced with knotted ropes.
“I grabbed a knot and began pulling,” Collin said. “I just did what anyone in that situation would do.”
The hikers pulled Mariana back to camp and quickly filled their water bottles with hot water to coddle the nearly frozen woman. Lyons treated frostbite on her feet, and she slowly slipped out of shock.
She asked about her husband, Eduard, 31, who had been on the bottom of their huddled stack, with the greatest exposure to snow. Rescuers found him unconscious and without a pulse and placed him in a small camp shed, where Lyons and a physician from San Francisco examined him.
“We determined that he was not alive and not a candidate for resuscitation,” Lyons said. “It was very emotional for everybody.”
Lyons then had to tell Mariana that her husband was dead.
“She was clearly in shock because she was convinced that he was alive when she left him, and how could he be gone now,” Lyons said.
“I give out bad news to people frequently in my [profession], but it was still quite moving for me. She accepted it, but it was just so hard for her to understand why she was still there and he wasn?t.”
Rescuers were saddened to learn that the Burceags and Vlad had actually reached Camp Muir to wish another friend luck on his attempt to climb the mountain. But he was in Lyons? group of guided hikers who had not yet made it to the camp. They then decided to race the storm down the mountain.
“Tragically, that ended up being a critical mistake that cost [Eduard] his life,” said Lyons, who added that the three were only about 200 yards from the camp when the blizzard struck, but then became too disoriented.
?Unsettled business?
Kevin Hammonds, 28, who helped in the rescue, said the storm was the worst he had ever seen during his years of mountain climbing.
“The fact that any of them made it is noteworthy,” he said.
Cristian Burceag, Eduard?s younger brother, said he was not surprised that Eduard died protecting his wife.
“He was a hero for us,” Cristian said. “He knew very well that his [two young sons] needed their mother, and that was the main thing in his life.”
Two days later, weather conditions permitted a military helicopter to airlift Mariana and Vlad down the mountain. Eduard?s body was brought down on a sled that afternoon.
Lyons and his group were told they could not continue because of avalanche conditions, and the hikers made their descent the following morning.
“At the end of the day, everyone just wanted to come down the mountain,” Lyons said. “As a father, I couldn?t be more proud of my son. He thinks he just did what he was supposed to do.”
“No, my dad?s the hero, not me,” Collin said.
Although the tragedy is something that will live with them forever, the father and son are returning to Mount Rainier in August.
“We feel like we have some unsettled business,” Collin said. “We went there with a purpose to summit, and we couldn?t. So we?re going to get another knock at it.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
