Mount Hood Searchers Ride Out The Storm

Rescue teams searching for three climbers missing on Mount Hood were riding out a massive storm in a remote mountain lodge overnight, hoping for a break in the weather Friday that would let them reach a snow cave near the summit that is the last known location for at least one of the three men.

Volunteers have braved blistering winds and blinding snowstorms to no avail since the trio was reported missing on Sunday from what was to be a two-day climb of the rugged north face of the 11,239-foot peak.

Hood River County sheriff's Deputy Chris Guertin, who is coordinating the search, said that under optimum conditions a rescue team might be able to reach the snow cave within four to six hours from the Cloud Cap Inn at the 6,000-foot level.

A cell phone signal from Kelly James, 48, an experienced climber from Dallas, Texas, that faded by Tuesday was the last sign of the men.

A spark of hope was triggered by a report that the phone had briefly come back to life late Tuesday night, reports CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen.

(CBS)

But in yet another setback, authorities corrected their report Thursday night, reports Bowen. A cell phone worker misread the phone log; the signal was actually received on Tuesday morning — almost 24 hours earlier.

For more than two days the phone has not responded to engineers' signals, sent every five minutes.

But the "ping" recorded Tuesday suggested that James may have turned his cell phone off for a time to conserve battery power, a possibility that brought hope to family members.

"Our hopes our high and we have phenomenal people out there looking for them and these guys are so strong and so smart and so resourceful that that's where our hopes are, and where our prayers are, with them," Kelly James' wife Karen said Friday on CBS News' The Early Show.

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Photos: Search For Oregon Climbers

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"I know he's thinking of me and staying strong and he wants to come back down to me. Because he doesn't want me sitting here worrying about him. He's waiting for the weather to clear up and he's going to come down when he's ready," Jerry Cooke's wife Michaela told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

Thursday brought winds of 80 mph and more snow, and forecasters said conditions likely would worsen, making the summit area inaccessible until perhaps the weekend.

"If we're seeing winds 50 to 75 miles an hour at sea level, when you start to look at about a mile-and-a-half to two miles in elevation, I would have to guess that the winds are near 100 miles an hour for sure, and with blowing snow, it's just total whiteout conditions, total blizzard conditions," says CBS News meteorologist George Cullen.

Two search teams were out on the slopes Thursday. One team made it to a shelter on Cooper Spur at about the 7,500 feet level, according to sheriff's Sgt. Gerry Tiffany.

He said the weather outlook for the search on Friday was "very poor" with extreme avalanche danger. Winds of 100 to 140 mph were expected on the mountain, along with up to 18 inches of snow, followed by a sharp temperature drop, Tiffany said.

But he said the rescue operation expected fresh resources on Friday.

James' brother Frank, of Orlando, Fla., said that when Kelly James made the cell phone call from the snow cave, he did not actually say he was injured.

But Frank James said his brother and Hall had been climbing together for eight years and didn't climb without each other, and that Hall would not have left Kelly James without "a very, very, very good reason."

It's not the first time James and Hall have been stuck, once spending five days on Mount Rainier in Washington.

"In fact, that was his first climbing trip with Brian," remembers Karen James. "For four of those days, I didn't hear from him. That's where I learned to put my trust in his and Brian's skills and how smart they are. They knew they couldn't make it through the whiteout and blizzard so they hunkered down and it was fine."

Guertin said rescue crews are committed to continuing the search at least through Saturday. "Time and weather are the issues now," he said.

Frank James said that after Saturday family members would urge that the search be continued if it could be done safely.

Cell technicians say a "ping" located by triangulation from the Sunday call pinpointed the location to within about a quarter of a mile. But rescuers have not been able to get there.

Technicians — including two from the FBI — arrived with technology they said could define the location better if other signals from the phone could be detected.

Searchers denied access to the summit area by weather have been searching lower canyons in case Hall and Cooke made it down that far.