Disaster strikes in an instant

Sharon Cohen Associated Press

Editor's note: This is part 1 of "Courage on Friction Pitch," a three-part serial narrative about a lightning strike that left climbers hurt high in the Tetons and the rangers who rushed to their aid. (This Web version is an unabridged account from what was published in today's printed edition).

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- It started with a strange hum, a soft fluttering as if grasshoppers had suddenly gathered on the mountain. This wasn't a symphony of nature, but a prelude to disaster.

The sunny morning had given way to afternoon rain. The granite walls of the Grand, the highest peak of the majestic Tetons, had turned slick.

The climbers were disappointed as they looked toward the soaring, 13,770-foot summit -- so close now -- and realized they wouldn't quite make it.

The 13 climbers, mostly co-workers and family members, had planned this trip for a year. But now, with some first-timers in the group, they could take no chances.

They had to get down. Soon.

Rob Thomas had just scaled Friction Pitch, a sheer 100-foot wall that rises to within 800 feet of the mountaintop, and was scrambling up to another spot.

That's when he noticed the hum.

"Honey, did you hear that?" he asked his wife, Sherika, standing below.

His words were barely out when a jolt of electricity ripped through his body. It squeezed every muscle like a death grip.

Thomas spun around.

He began sliding down ragged rock on his back.

Five feet. Ten. Twelve.

"Rob!" his frantic wife screamed, reaching for him. "Don't you fall!"

The lightning took everyone by surprise.

Just moments earlier, Rob Thomas had been snapping photos of his family in their magnificent surroundings. They were far above the lush curtains of fir and pine trees with an eagle's-eye view of the snowcapped Tetons, glaciers and their home state, Idaho, to the west.

But with a storm moving in, it was time to go.

It was going to be a long descent. Rob radioed to the climbers below and told them the plan.

They were in four teams, spread across several hundred feet of mountain -- some ahead of Rob, some below, one about to start up the face of Friction Pitch.

The split-second flash from the clouds set in motion a harrowing day of grit and courage, a day that would test both the resilience of the climbers and the skills of a brotherhood of rangers who would drop from the skies in a desperate race against time.

Rod Liberal, the climber ascending Friction Pitch, was having a hard time finding holes to grip as he moved up the moist, smooth wall. Even when the rock is dry, climbers have to rely on the friction of their hands and feet.

He was about halfway up when the lightning struck.

It blew him off the rock and swung him about 30 feet around the wall.

Suddenly, he was dangling by his rope, almost 13,000 feet up.

His body was twisted in a ghastly upside-down V, his stomach toward the sky.

His head and shoulders hung backward. His left side grazed the rock.

When he opened his eyes, he saw his feet.

The jolt hit the three climbers below Friction Pitch like dynamite, hurling them into space.

In an instant, Reagan Lembke's body stiffened. Pain coursed through him, as if he were being electrocuted.

For a brief moment, he couldn't see or hear. Then, he knew he was falling. His backpack and helmet clanked and scraped against the jagged rocks. His arms and legs flailed.

He was going to die; he was sure of that. The next bounce would be his last. He thought of his wife and two infant children. What will they do without me? he wondered.

Then, THUD.

He was on his back, legs snarled in a nest of climbing gear.

The ropes attached to his harness had wrapped around a boulder twice, swooped down to his two climbing partners -- Jacob Bancroft, Justin Thomas, Rob's younger brother -- and then back up again. Amazingly, that had stopped their fall.

Lembke heard moaning below.

"Is Justin there?" he called. "Is Jake there?"

More moans.

"We need a cell phone!" he shouted. "We need helicopters!"

There was nothing but silence.

Above Friction Pitch, Sherika Thomas managed to stop her husband's slide.

She pressed her hands on Rob's chest and pushed him against the wall. One slip could have sent him tumbling off the narrow ledge, down hundreds of feet.

It took a second for it all to sink in -- lightning.

Would another jolt follow?

Though dazed, Rob pulled aluminum trekking poles off his back. He feared they could act like lightning rods. Through glazed eyes, he saw his wife's look of disbelief.

Then came a scream -- the loudest, longest one he had ever heard.

He knew the voice: It was his best friend, Clinton Summers. But where?

Rob crept past an outcropping, then moved along a ledge about 20 feet toward the anguished cries.

There was Clinton, with his wife, Erica.

Clinton, who had blacked out, was now sitting, unable to move his legs. Erica was leaning in to him, unresponsive. Clinton turned and grabbed his wife's face. There was no sign of life.

Rob Thomas smelled an acrid, burning odor. Dropping to his knees, he pulled off Erica's climbing helmet and saw it was melted and scorched inside.

Her lips were swollen, black and blue. Her neck and chest had burn marks. Her clothes looked like they had exploded from the inside out in some places, melted in others.

She had no pulse.

Clinton sensed his wife was already gone. But he leaned over and breathed twice into her mouth. There was no response.

Rob took over, pressing his hands on her chest five times to simulate a heartbeat.

Again, no response.

It was raining hard in the town of Moose, below the Grand. Park ranger Brandon Torres was on the phone in his office with a worried mother who had lost her son when he heard a warbling tone on his radio.

"431. Teton Dispatch," the dispatcher said. When Torres answered, she gave him the news:

Associated Press graphic

Lightning strikes the Grand

Requires Adobe Acrobat.

"There's a lightning strike in the Grand. There's CPR in progress and possibly six injuries."

Torres, rescue coordinator that day, asked the dispatcher to order a helicopter and page rangers in the Jenny Lake area who had the day off.

The Jenny Lake area is in the heart of the Tetons. Though a dozen rangers were working July 26, they were spread across a vast stretch of mountains with dozens of climbing routes and 220 miles of hiking trails.

Torres glanced out his window. Dark clouds.

He hustled into his Chevy Suburban for the seven-mile drive to the rescue cache, a cabin in Lupine Meadows. His car phone to his ear, he asked the dispatcher to connect him to the 911 call.

It was 3:46 p.m. when Bob Thomas, Rob and Justin's 51-year-old father, came on the line.

He was atop Friction Pitch, he explained. CPR was being administered to one climber. Another was hanging off the mountainside. Three more, who had been on lower ledges, had simply disappeared from sight.

Torres' mind was racing.

"How many people are up there?" he asked. "Do you see any more lightning? �� Is it safe to be where you're at?"

Bob Thomas said it was.

"Do you have someone who can go down and tie on to the person who's hanging?" Torres asked. He feared the lightning might have melted the dangling climber's rope.

No, Bob Thomas said. Their equipment might be damaged.

Torres had a sick feeling.

He had a rescue on his hands -- and a search, too, for three missing climbers.

Rod Liberal was just 50 feet below the top of Friction Pitch. The problem was no one could reach him.

As Rod's head began to clear, he gripped the rope with his right hand and tried to lift his twisted body. It was useless.

He thought he would die. But he had a wife and baby son. He had to hold on.

He managed to unhook his 30-pound backpack and let it drop. His legs were numb. He felt as if knives were digging into his lower back.

He could make out a voice above, where Rob and Clinton and Erica were. Someone on a cell phone. Help �� lightning strike �� CPR ��.

That's when Rod first realized what had happened.

"HELP!! Please help," he yelled. "I'm in pain. Please get me down!!!"

Rob Thomas couldn't understand the words, but he wanted Rod to know someone was aware of what had happened.

"Stay alive!" Rob shouted. "Remember your boy."

Rod wanted to close his eyes to make the pain go away, but feared he'd never open them again.

"Breathe. Come on, buddy," Rob called. "Help is on the way."

Rod kept breathing. But it was hard work. And so tiring.

On the ledge where Rob was standing, his father, Bob, a former CPR instructor, had joined him and had taken over efforts to revive Erica, though it now seemed futile.

Rob moved around the ledge to see if he could spot Justin and the other two missing climbers. He hollered into the emptiness.

"Are you alive?!"

There was no response. He saw an empty rope.

Silently, he pleaded with God many times.

Again and again, he shouted. Then, half bent over, he yelled with every bit of lung power he had.

Finally, an answer came. It was Reagan, about 200 feet below. Something about a broken rope.

Then another worrisome silence.

After five long minutes, Rob heard his brother's voice through the radio.

"I think both of my legs are broken," Justin Thomas said. "I think I broke my arm. I'm bleeding pretty good."

Mid-afternoon, when the lightning struck, is when summer thunderstorms are most common in the Tetons. Park rangers generally advise climbers to be off the summit by noon or 1 p.m.

The group in trouble now had started out around 8 a.m., later than those who use professional guides. But the climbers were moving at a quick pace until they were delayed about three hours in getting to Friction Pitch because so many others were ahead of them.

The climbers had taken one of the most popular routes on the Grand, along the Upper Exum Ridge, an alpine climb considered moderately difficult.

There were veterans and novices in the group. Rob Thomas had summited the Grand four times, including last year with Clinton and Justin.

They had so much fun, they told friends and family. Soon, plans were made for this trip. Rob's father, brother, wife and father-in- law would all come along. Many in the group were in their 20s and 30s and worked in computer technology at an Idaho health products company.

Most thrived on being outdoors: They liked to ski, play hockey, snowboard, mountainbike -- and climb.

On this afternoon, their fate would depend on another group of climbers who had honed their skills for decades in these mountains as well as the Alps and Himalayas, even on Everest.

They had scaled the Grand scores of times and knew every tricky pass, every twist in the routes. One had even co-authored a Teton guide regarded as a bible for climbers.

No one was better trained to deal with this kind of catastrophe.

Brandon Torres reached the cabin in Lupine Meadows, where the arriving rangers were already checking their gear.

Hustling inside, he briefed them. On an erasable board, Torres wrote the names of climbers Bob Thomas had provided, along with sketchy details of their injuries.

There were so many people hurt, Torres ordered a second helicopter to ferry them down the canyon to ambulances.

Two rangers got ready to examine the scene from a helicopter and make aerial photos so the others would see where everyone was located.

Help was on the way -- and Torres punched in Bob Thomas' cell phone number to update him.

But there was no answer. He tried again. No answer. Other rangers kept dialing, 30, 40 times.

No one could get through.

At 4:31 p.m. in the meadows, Laurence Perry's helicopter took off with the two scouting rangers: Leo Larson, with his digital camera, and Dan Burgette, Jenny Lake's chief ranger.

As they soared toward Friction Pitch, they saw Rod.

It looked hopeless.

The way Rod was hanging, Burgette feared there'd be no blood flowing to the climber's legs. He worried the harness was cutting into Rod's diaphragm, making it hard to breathe. And Rod's tongue could have rolled back, blocking his airway.

Nearly an hour had passed since the 911 call.

Burgette figured Rod was dead. But as the chopper moved in close, with the camera focused on the dangling climber, they noticed something.

The fingers on Rod's right hand moved.

At the helicopter controls, Perry shouted:

"That guy's alive!"

The photos were delivered to the rescue cache and quickly displayed on a computer screen. Torres studied them, pausing at images of Rod.

"That guy's going to die," he said to himself.

He scanned the other views, thinking strategy. He had two accident scenes, hundreds of feet apart. He needed two rescues.

"We've got to get people up there," he thought. "If the weather doesn't cooperate -- oh, boy."

He looked at his watch. It was approaching 5 o'clock, or 17:00 in the military time the rangers use. Helicopters generally can't fly more than a half-hour after sundown. It's called pumpkin hour. He checked the precise moment of sunset, added 30 minutes, then scrawled that number on the board:

21:23. That was the cutoff.

The Teton rangers had to get up above Friction Pitch, tend to the injured in one area, rescue a dangling climber -- if he was still alive -- and reach three others who were bloody and dazed, huddling 200 feet below on narrow ledges.

It was an enormous task.

And they had just 4 1/2 hours to do it.

To be continued.

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