* Update: Rescue officials reported just before 10 a.m. today that the 2nd stranded climber was picked up by helicopter. *

MARBLEMOUNT — It began Sunday with a yell and a falling shoe.

Now five days later, one climber is finally safe at home and another is stranded in a small cave on a rock face in the North Cascades, waiting to be rescued. A helicopter plucked the first wounded climber off the side of Mount Terror on Sunday evening after a 60-foot fall. But the weather has kept the helicopter from going back.

Two others from their group hiked out on their own Monday and anxiously waited at a rescue station in Marblemount on Wednesday, hoping the fog would clear enough that their friend could be brought to safety.

If the helicopter can’t fly today, rescue workers may launch a ground rescue with expert climbers.

The wounded climber, who himself has been a volunteer with Skagit Mountain Rescue for more than seven years, spent the past several days in a hospital. His focus has been not only on his recovery but on the rescue of the friend he says saved his life.

The fall

On Sunday morning, four outdoor enthusiasts from various parts of the Northwest were climbing a rock face of Mount Terror — the highest peak in the Southern Pickets Range about five miles north of Newhalem — when a rock broke loose, and climber Steve Trent fell.

Trent said the group planned the trip around the weather forecast. Clear skies greeted them at the outset. The weather was mild, and the sun was shining. It was perfect climbing weather, Trent, a 43-year-old U.S. Navy Prowler pilot from Oak Harbor said Wednesday from a wheelchair in a St. Joseph’s Hospital room in Bellingham.

“We were supposed to be done with the climb that night,” he said.

The last thing he remembers was a good climb.

“The rock was good; the weather was good; the partners were good. Everything was going the way it should,” he said.

He doesn’t remember hanging limp at the end of the safety rope after a chunk of rock broke loose beneath his foot.

“He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” fellow climber Steff Abegg wrote on a climbing Web site. “Every climber’s nightmare.”

Blood ran down the rock. Trent moaned.

The two other climbers, Donn Venema of Vancouver and Jason Schilling of Corvallis, Ore., caught up.

They positioned Trent on a small ledge. His left femur was obviously broken. The climbers made a makeshift splint and wrapped his bleeding head, Abegg wrote.

Then Venema and Abegg climbed ahead to the summit to find cell phone service. Schilling stayed behind with Trent.

That’s the next thing Trent remembers.

“Being there with Jason, really hurting and saying what the heck is going on?” he said. “I need to get off this mountain. I’m in bad shape.”

But it would be hours. Trent fell around 10:30 a.m. It was almost 9 p.m. when a helicopter reached him.

A North Cascades National Park ranger, Kevork Arackellian, hung from a 100-foot rope as he clipped Trent to him to be whisked away to help, just in the nick of time.

Arackellian said if they hadn’t rescued Trent that night, “his chances of survival were pretty slim.”

The ranger also passed a backpack to Schilling. It held water, energy bars, a sleeping bag and a radio, just in case the helicopter couldn’t return that night.

Stranded

Today, Schilling is still waiting, after a fourth night on the ledge.

He found a small cave for protection from rain and even snow, which fell on the mountain Tuesday.

Schilling makes two radio calls a day.

“He’s actually doing quite well considering the ordeal he’s gone through,” said Kelly Bush, the district park ranger search and rescue coordinator. “His feet are cold. But he sounds like he’s in reasonably good spirits. He thinks he can survive for days if it comes to that.”

Looking back, Arackellian wishes he could have thrown a book or some magazines in the backpack.

The ranger has been stranded before too, and says the worst part for Schilling will be the mental strain.

But Schilling’s climbing partner Venema said his friend will pull through.

“He’s the last guy in the world to panic up there,” Venema said.

‘Broken bones mend’

As rangers and friends sat helpless in Marblemount on Wednesday evening, and Schilling curled up in a sleeping bag to spend yet another night on Mount Terror, Trent’s parents took him home for his long recovery.

“I’m just sore all over because going down the hill, you hit everything on the way down,” he said as he waited to be released from the hospital.

Trent’s father, John, showed off X-rays of his son’s steel implants, while his mother, Donna, stood in the corner of the room and smiled.

His femur is anchored together with a steel rod. Two screws hold his right heel in place.

Trent’s not sure how many stitches and staples hold his various wounds together, including staples sealing his scalp under his thick, brown hair. A large scrape covers much of his right shoulder, and his left cheekbone bears a scuff.

“It looks like I’ve been in a big fight with a mountain and lost,” he said. But he’s thankful that his head or spine wasn’t injured.

“Broken bones mend,” he said.

As a rescue volunteer usually on the other side of ordeals like this, his most serious injury until now was a broken finger.

But he says the fall won’t sway him from more adventures once he heals.

“It scares me, but not enough to not get back on the rock again.”

While Trent is on the mend, his thoughts return to his climbing partner.

“Jason saved my life. I feel really indebted to him,” Trent said. “I’m sorry he’s still up there, but I have every confidence he will be rescued.”

• Tahlia Ganser can be reached at 360-416-2148 or at .
• Staff writer Kate Martin contributed to this report.

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