Missing climbers

Katie Rani Nolan was a multi-faceted diamond, Pastor Rick McKinley said.

Speaker after speaker at her memorial service Tuesday presented those facets:

The 29-year-old who died on Mount Hood was a product of The Palouse, daughter, sister, a radiant smiler, committed Christian, world traveler, humanitarian, adventurer, prolific letter writer, graduate student, tireless social worker and, in her private moments, battler of demons that attacked her self-image.

Hers was "a life filled with adventure and compassion for others," with more experiences packed into her time on the planet than others will realize in much longer lifespans, said Rita Hansen, the person credited with introducing Nolan to mountain climbing.

Several hundred people crowded into the Portland Foursquare Church in Southeast Portland for the service, the third in three days for three climbers who perished after leaving Dec. 11 from Timberline Lodge to summit Mount Hood.

A search for Nolan of Southeast Portland and Anthony Vietti , 25, of Longview, Wash., was suspended last Wednesday. The body of a third climber, Luke Gullberg, 26, of Des Moines, Wash., was found the morning of Dec. 12 on Reid Glacier on the mountain's south side.

Rescuers believe the bodies of Nolan and Vietti are possibly near the top of the steep head wall of the glacier.

Photographs displayed throughout the memorial for Nolan showed her as a child, the second born of five children who grew up in Walla Walla and became the woman attending Portland State University pursuing a master's degree in social work and helping others while living the quintessential Northwest life of outdoor adventure.

She was an athlete, in high school and later in life.

Her outdoor pursuits -- hiking, climbing, backpacking, running in the Portland Marathon, running in Hood to Coast, bicycling a century ride, participating in a triathlon -- "was her way of recharging her batteries," Hansen said.

They needed recharging in part because of the demands she faced with a graduate student's classload and her social work with Catholic Charities.

Margi Dechenne, her supervisor at Catholic Charities, recalled meeting Nolan for the first time during a job interview.

"What else do homeless women need," Dechenne asked the potential employee, "other than a place to live?"

Nolan smiled and, eyes gleaming, leaned toward her questioner and said, "Hope! We have to have hope for them!"

In her time working for the organization, Nolan helped find housing for 62 women in the Portland area who previously had none, Dechenne said.

Recently Nolan was working with another nonprofit organization based in Hillsboro, Transitions Global, trying to establish a shelter in Portland for people enslaved in worldwide sex trafficking, Dechenne said.

"She loved the person sitting next to her," Dechenne said, "and she loved the person all the way across the world."

At points in her life, however, she had trouble loving herself.

Nolan's Portland roommate, Emily Jameson,read a brief essay by Nolan that was included in a photography project called, "Skeletons in the Closet," examining eating disorders.

Nolan describes trying to escape her eating disorder in 2003 by traveling on a humanitarian mission to Katmandu, Nepal, but, "my eating disorder got on the plane and came with me."

She went on to write that she contemplated suicide, but overcame the illness, crediting "two and a half years of therapy, support groups, visits to the nutritionist and hospital" and receiving "God's love for me."

Hundreds of photographs on two screens showed Nolan in locations all over the world.

The final shot was a photograph dated Dec. 11 of Nolan on what is clearly a slope of Mount Hood. She's smiling in her climbing helmet with the blue sky visible over her right shoulder.

A Web site has been set up to remember Katie Nolan’s life: