Families cling to rescue hopes 
Break in weather could be last chance to find men08:45 AM CST on Saturday, December 16, 2006
MOUNT HOOD, Ore. – Karen James surrenders to the drumbeat of rain outside her motel room at night, to the darkness and cold. Mentally, she travels two miles high in the sky, up a forbidding mountain, into a snow cave where her husband suffers.
And she speaks to him.
"Hold on, baby. We're coming to get you."
Hope, Mrs. James believes, is on the other side of pain.
Three men have been trapped on Mount Hood for seven days. Mrs. James' husband, Kelly, is almost certainly injured, lying in a dugout of snow near the mountain's 11,239-foot summit. The two other climbers – Brian Hall, a 37-year-old former semi-pro soccer player who, like Mr. James, is from Dallas, and Jerry "Nikko" Cooke, a 36-year-old lawyer from Brooklyn – are missing.
A massive snowstorm packing howling winds grounded search teams on Friday, and rescuers say that Saturday may be their best – and last – chance to find the men alive.
After three days of high-altitude blizzards and hurricane-force winds, the sky above Mount Hood is expected to clear.
If it does, military mountaineers and local climbers are poised to fan out across slopes carved by glaciers and ancient lava flows. Heat-seeking unmanned aircraft, or drones, and Black Hawk helicopters will skim the surface looking for signs of life. The FBI and a private business will try to "ping" and pinpoint cellular signals.
The search for the three began Sunday soon after Mr. James called his son's cellphone.
"By the tone of his voice, I could tell something was really wrong," said 25-year-old Jason James. "I went into 911 mode."
He learned his dad was dug into a cave on the northern face of Mount Hood near the summit. Half an orange remained in his food supply, he was lying on his backpack to stay off the snow, and he was weak, cold and wet.
"He just said he was exhausted, and that's why he was stuck there," Jason James said.
The 48-year-old landscape architect offered "delirious" answers when asked about his climbing partners.
"He said Brian was in town looking for help and Nikko was on an airplane," Jason James said.
The veteran climber told his son he was not injured, but family members believe he was trying to shield them from the gravity of his situation.
While her son was interviewing his dad, Karen James spoke to Hood River County Sheriff Joe Wampler on another line. She tried to keep her voice upbeat when she got on the phone with her husband.
"Hey, honey."
"Hey, baby," he responded.
"I just decorated the Christmas tree, you have to come see it."
"I will."
"Well, stay warm, we're going to come get you."
On the other line, Sheriff Wampler urged Mrs. James to get off the line and tell her husband to turn off his phone to conserve the battery.
Moments later, the sheriff asked the family to call back so rescuers could triangulate his cellular signal.
But it was too late. Mr. James had shut off the handset's power.
"Being a climber's wife," Mrs. James said this week, tears in her voice, "you always dread those conversations."
Men who climb mountains say the experience is euphoric.
That's one reason the three missing men met here Dec. 7, at the base of a slumbering volcano, with ice axes and snow shoes and an ambition to stand sweating in the thin air, heads in the clouds.
No one knows what went wrong, but the possibilities are ominous – avalanche, blizzard, lost footing on a near-vertical chimney of ice with a 2,000-foot fall on each side.
Mrs. James said she tries to connect with her husband at night from her motel room in Hood River, at the base of the mountain.
"I feel so horrible," she said. "I'm here in a warm bed, and I know he isn't. He's up there."
Mr. James turned his cellphone off and on twice earlier this week, lifting his family's hopes that he will be rescued. There have been no signals since early Tuesday.
Stranded climbers have lived a week or more in snow caves if they had adequate food and supplies. But Mr. James and his two companions planned a fast and light two-day trip up Mount Hood, according to notes they left behind. In e-mails detailing their packing lists, Mr. Cooke planned to carry a half sleeping bag – an insulated surface to sleep on – but it is unclear what gear the others took.
Mr. James and Mr. Hall had been in trouble before.
On their first climb together, they got caught in a white-out blizzard for five days atop Alaska's Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America. After the storm broke, they scaled the mountain's 20,320-foot summit.
Mr. James has been climbing mountains for 25 years.
Even after he's rescued, Ms. James said, she will not ask him to stop.
"I married a man so full of passion and love of life," she said. "How do you take that away from someone? How do you take away what makes them tick?"
But some members of the Hood River search-and rescue-group, the Cragrats, called last week's expedition up Mount Hood foolish and reckless.
"It really is risky," said Devon Wells, an assistant fire chief and Cragrat, who first scaled Mount Hood at 8 years old, the youngest person on record. "It seems like if they would have looked into any resources ... I doubt it would say, 'Climb Mount Hood in the middle of a snowstorm in December.' "
Among thrill-seeking athletes, elite mountain climbers have the greatest need for the psychological high of risk and reward, says Marvin Zuckerman, author of Sensation Seeking and Risky Behavior, which was published last month.
The original Apollo astronauts, race-car drivers and hang gliders all share the trait, according to Dr. Zuckerman, a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware.
"If they're not excited in work or their everyday lives," he said, "they feel more bored than the average person would."
Relatives object to suggestions that the three climbers sought glory in scaling mountains.
"It's really not about the glory of accomplishment for these men," said Angela Hall, Brian Hall's sister. "It's the journey to get there."
The climbers wanted to ascend an ice-face on the northern slope, the most treacherous route possible on Mount Hood. In February, Mr. James and Mr. Hall spent a week in Colorado training for the adventure, and they had been planning the trip ever since.
Mrs. James said the men were meticulous, almost fanatical about climbing.
Once, they brought home a video about tying knots and camped in front of the television with rope.
"They sat there and practiced loop over and loop under for two hours," she said, laughing.
The three families spend most days together now, reminiscing, planning the news conference for when the men are rescued.
A video store in Hood River donated a PlayStation 2, several games and a few movies to occupy 12-year-old Jack James' time.
Thursday night, Mrs. James said her youngest son turned away from television news, started running around her motel room and tried to jump over the couch. Moments later, she heard him wrestling with his 23-year-old brother, Ford James.
"We fight for those times of normalcy," Mrs. James said. "I just project ahead to the day Kelly comes home. Sure he'll be cold, and we'll go to the hospital, but then we'll get them all home and they can tell their little tale, and then we'll get ready for Christmas."
E-mail sfarwell@dallasnews.com