Mount Hood Disaster

Search and rescue workers using dogs search an area on Mount Hood on May 16, 1986, several hours before eight stranded climbers were found at about the same elevation, but below rocks at right.

(Riley Caton/The Associated Press)

I know a man who died twice.

Yes, impossible. But I'm not talking about something medical. This is about the soul. And if you follow me here, you'll see where I'm going.

The first death was back on May 16, 1986.

The second was on Aug. 29, 2014.

In 1986, he was sitting next to me in a car in a Mount Hood parking lot. I was a young reporter in the middle of a story that would turn out to be one of the most dramatic in the state's history.

He was there for a much different reason, and we'd gotten to know each other over the course of four terribly tense days in the middle of a storm. On that afternoon, we were in my car, sitting nearly leg-to-leg as I listened to a police radio. When the awful news broke, I turned and saw the life seep right out of the man.

The second time he died was just a few weeks ago. He was bedridden in a South Dakota hospice.

I learned about this death – one I guess you'd call the "real" one -- when I was thumbing through The Oregonian while at my desk in the newsroom. I saw a small obituary with his name in bold type. I set the paper down, swiveled in my chair to look east, out the window at Mount Hood, where this story really starts.

The Richard Leyden Haeder Sr. obituary

On May 12, 1986, I was working the police beat. A report came over the police radio that officials had received a report of hikers missing on Mount Hood. It being a slow day, I drove up to the mountain, to Timberline Lodge, to see what was going on.

Turned out that 13 people -- three adults and 10 students from Oregon Episcopal School, an elite private school in Southwest Portland -- had failed to return from a one-day spring hike to the top of Mount Hood.

I hung out in the lodge, and soon OES parents started to arrive. The weather was brutal. It was impossible to see the slopes from the lodge. All of us there knew something bad was going to happen.

The horror unfolded slowly.

On the second day, two from the hiking party showed up at the lodge. They had broken away from the group in a gamble to get help. I remember seeing them emerge from the whiteout, telling searchers that the remaining 11 were trapped on the mountain in a snow cave.

On the third day, the blizzard still raging, searchers found three people dead on the slope. One wore no parka, another no gloves. Two had peeled off their boots. Hypothermia had driven them mad. They thought they were hot.

That night, parents prayed out loud, and I got to know – if that's what it can be called – many of them.

On the fourth day, I spent time with Richard Haeder Sr. He was a man of deep faith, and we talked about God and prayer as he waited for word on his son, Richard Haeder Jr., 16, in a cave, somewhere on that mountain.

Nightmare on Mount Hood

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

We were in the car when word suddenly came out of the police radio that a searcher using a metal probe had found the cave. The climbers inside were so cold that intravenous lines could not pierce their frozen skin.

Richard Haeder – tears in his eyes and his voice quivering – shook my hand, opened the car door and told me he had to go find his wife.

Two of the climbers in the cave survived.

Richard Haeder Jr. did not. In the end, nine of the 13 died.

Months later I ran into the father in a Northwest Portland parking lot. I was carrying my young daughter in my arms. I felt awkward as I cradled a living reminder of what he had lost. I made small talk and tried to ease away.

But he clutched my shoulder.

To this day I remember vividly where I was standing and what he told me.

''Cherish her."

Unlike the other OES parents, Haeder and his wife, Judy, sued and won a wrongful death suit. They told me at the time that it wasn't about the money, but to make sure the school was held accountable for the ill-fated climb.

They moved from Portland to Rapid City, S.D., near his parents and brothers. He practiced law. The last time I talked to him, he told me when he and his wife and their two daughters were flying out of Portland for the last time, the pilot announced he had a treat for the passengers. He instructed them to look out their windows for a breathtaking view of Mount Hood.

Haeder told his family to look the other way.

After reading his obituary, I called a Rapid City funeral home and got Judy Haeder's telephone number.

Late Wednesday, I called her.

"Yes," she said after listening to my question, "I think, in a way, he did die back then. It hit him in so many ways. I don't know how to describe it completely, but I could tell a difference in him."

Grief, loss, anger and fear make a potent stew.

"My husband and I each went inside ourselves," Judy Haeder told me. "We didn't talk to each other sometimes about what had happened. You know, right after Richie died we got thousands of cards and letters from people, many who had lost a child. Some told us that people get divorced when a child died and to not let it happen to us. We didn't."

Judy and I talked for a while. I caught up on their lives in Rapid City. Her husband did pro bono legal work for those in the community who had no voice, and he served on the board of the local hospital. They raised two girls, she said, who became fine women.

"But we changed," Judy said. "We were sad for so long, so introspective. We thought that maybe God had let us down. It took a while before we started going to church again."

Four years ago, her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

"It was terrible," she said. "Worse than I could ever imagine. We always talked about Richie, always had pictures of him on our mantel. But in the last days, my husband did not talk about Richie. But only because he could no longer speak."

He was 75 when he died.

His wife said she had to go.

"But thank you for calling," she said. "Thank you for remembering."

I heard a dial tone.

From my newsroom desk, I looked once more at Mount Hood.

Their boy would have been 44.

May his father – finally – rest in peace.

--Tom Hallman Jr.