Oh my goodness, I was watching CNN earlier when they broke in to cover a rescue attempt of 7 climbers who had fell into a deep crevice on Mt. Hood in Oregon. As the air force reserve helicopter was attempting to hover over the site, it lost lift and begin descending out of control. It hit on it's belly and then the main rotor blades broke and the chopper began to barrel roll down the snow covered mountain side. One crew member was tossed from a side door, then the helicopter rolled over them. It was a horrifying sight to see. Four people were aboard and the latest news I am hearing is that one of the crew is critically injured. Also, 3 of the 7 people originally stranded on the mountain have died. More helicopters are attempting to rescue them all. Truly a horrible situation up in those mountains.

Go to http://www.kgw.com for info concerning crash. I have been watching local coverage of the rescure all morning, they had the crash live on TV. Man that was a sad sight.

It was chilling to hear again: Black Hawk down, we gat a Black Hawk down.

This may sound cold blooded, but I am sick and tired of public servants such as this helicopter crew having to constantly put themselves in harms way to rescue idiots who 'want to do their own thing', but don't have a clue.  I am referring to these climbers, but there are idiots constantly having to be rescued from the surf, from cliffsides, from mountaintops, and so forth and so on.

Larry G.

I dont want to flame you, so please dont take this as a flame, Even though I do understand what you are saying, these climbers that were climbing [b] HAVE [/B] a clew as to what they were doing.

Mountain climbing is a fun,for the most part safe sport, it does have its obvious dangers, and crevases are almost impossible to spot unless one is open.

What happened in this incident is that there were two climbing teams going up the mountain, and individual from one climbing team lost there footing and began to slide down the mountain, thus crashed into another party and dragged others down the mountian. Thus causeing the crevase to open up and 10 people fell 800 feet down into the crevase.

So I understand your concerns, but these people were highly trained people, actually 6 of the people involved in the fall into the crevase were local [b] FIRE FIGHTER PERSONEL, AND PARAMEDIC PERSONEL [/b] that are highly trained mountain climbers.

PaveHawk Max Altitude..... 14000 Ft.

Scratch That..............  9000 Ft.

You guys sure it was AF? I was in a Black Hawk unit at Ft Lewis and us and the Chinook guys were always heading up there to pull people off. Shit I hope it was not one of ours.


Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

Never mind. I see it was Hood, not Ranier. I thought it was shit from this morning still. It would be an AF Reserve bird then. The people in Portland are kinda pissed the AF is moving that SAR unit out and putting in KC-10s.


Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

Up here in NH, you can expect to be billed by the state for any costs incurred as a result of rescuing your unprepared or poorly-trained ass from any wilderness situations you get into. One 60ish M.D. (probably from NYC or Boston) decided he'd go on a little hike on Mt Washington one fine September day. Since it was so nice, he decided to just wear shorts, liberal Jesus-sandals, and windbreaker. Well, when the weather turned to shit, he got out his cell phone and called for help. From what I understand, the bill was in the 5-figure range.

Saw it. Didn't look like fun. One crew member in serious condition. Seems to me,the pilot couldn't maintain a hover. How much heavier is the PaveHawk compared to a regular UH-60?

Man o' man.....

They should make mountain climbers post a bond before they climb a mountain. So that the cost of recovery is put on them and not the taxpayer. Those military that were killed or severely injured are screwed just so fools could get their jollies acting like they were chamois. Dont think the families of the killed air-rescue are going to get squat when they died. ALL FOR NOTHING!!! This greatly pi**es me off. Thrill seekers, actually finding out that climbing a mountain truly is dangerous. If they can go up on their own, let em' come down the same way or not at all. That is the true definition of Darwinian selection, stupid people usually end up getting what they deserve.

In MI, people are always being pulled off ice flows when ice fishing. WHY? Well I will tell you why. The back#sswards morons say that first ice and last ice is the best ice. So the most dangerous conditions are the best for fishing. IDIOTS!!!!!! Same as the ones above. Post a huge bond for a rescue fee or its too bad for you.

These morons should be forced to be accountable for the possible results of their actions. Post that bond, and if it used, they forfeit the money to pay for the rescue attempt.

Bah! This makes me sick that brave crewman may have died for the thrills of idiots.

God Bless the HH60 crew.


Dram out

Maybe someone with some experience can correct me, but if one person loses his/her footing and starts sliding, shouldn't the others immediately go into the self-arrest position with their ice axes?  I'm [i]assuming[/i] they were roped up, since they all got dragged into the crevasse.

Anoyone know where I can get a copy of the video of the helo going down. You cant save to hd, the one from the yahoo site.

Is it just me or did anyone else whant to slap the "News Anouncer" commenting AS the helo went down. There is a time to do your job and then there is a time to get your hands dirty and help.

As far as risk my life to save ignorant people. [b]I LOVE IT[/b]. Its a Rescue thing....you wouldnt understand.

R35

The HH-60 is slightly heavier because of air refuling probe system , extra rescue gear and avionics. If anything weight wise the fuel load would have the most impact on high altitude performance. Pretty graphic footage, you could see the 2 crewmn thrown out and rolled over. Amazing there still alive !

I look at that friggen mountain every day on the way home from work, or when I look out the back yard. Weird when stuff hits close to home.

Had a couple of friends laugh at me cause I'm going to buy some of those Rad pills, never can be to sure nowadays, people still don't have a clue I tell ya.  

For those of you making fun of the people that are costing us millions to rescue, thousands of people make that same hike every year without problem, SHIT HAPPENS!!

I guess with your logic, we should all just sit at home on our computers, mainly AR15.COM, just so we don't spend taxpayer money saving Americans, all the while knowing that the money will end up in our enemies hands in some way due to our Fucked Up system. RIGHT! [:O]

... One can clearly see the failure mode here. At that altitude, hover performance drops off dramatically. Notice that when the pilot neared the 40 degree or so incline the portside of the aircraft lifted suddenly. That's because ground effect was magnified at that altitude. The pilot was very heavy into his collective and once his left hand disk came into ground effect hover the craft became very unstable and yawed radically to the starboard side.
Once he started the oscillation there is minimally chance of recovery.

... Sad indeed. I have many rotor wing pilot friends and I feel for them in tough missions like these,

This is all too true.

The 101st Division had to leave behind its Blackhawks in Afghaninstan. More than three quarters of its airlift capability. Everything had to be flown by Chinooks. That is why a MH-47 got shot down, doing a job that was supposed to be work for a MH-60.  

Its begining to look like Operation Anaconda suffered greatly from this. It didn't really cause any casualties on our side, but the limitations this posed on our ability to manuver. Once they discovered they couldn't hang with us in a fight and decided to run for the border, all our troops could do was try to chase after them on foot. We just didn't have the lift to get in front of them and as a result all too many enemy troops- and all the individuals of real importance- got away.

I also think there was a bit too much concern about what might happen if they lost a loaded CH-47. They were lifting by the platoon, so if one went down hard that would be about 40 men including the crew.  Considering the media went ape shit over the seven men killed on day 3, I don't think they wanted to see what they would do if a entire rifle platoon was wiped out...

But it was all they could do to fly in and keep supplied just two rifle battalions without artillery.
FYI, The 101st is supposed to be able to lift one whole brigade-three rifle battalions and a artillery battalion,-with its own assets. The 10th Mountian, a Light division, is supposed to be able to air assault one battalion and a battery with its own assets.

Sikorsky has a very interesting interpretation of "service cealing". I would have thought that it ment "maximum altitude in service" and since its service is a battlefield taxi that should be the maximum altitude that it could lift 3 crew and 11 fully armed infantry and a full tank of gas.  Apparently they think its how high you can get it to go with two pilots, half a tank of gas and the help of a few thermals... which is what people used to call "absolute cealing".

Possibly an overtorque...


Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

I tell you what my hats off to all the crew members and the two pilots that went down in the crash today.

Right before the helicopter went bazerk, they had a person in a basket getting ready to lift them up into the helicopter and 2 other people assisting on the ground with the lift of the basket.

The crew member at the door noticed something was wrong,cut the rope immediately, then the pilot moved the helicopter away from all the rescueers so no one would get hurt in the crash. From interviews seen on TV it would appear that the crew and the pilots new that they were going to go down. Man I say that was some fast thinking, and good training.

It is a miracle from God that none of the crew on the helicopter were killed, especially the two guys that were thrown from the helicopter, and even more so the one guy that looks like the helicopter rolled over.

Man what a day. I snowboard on that mountain quite often, and I do some backcountry snowboarding also. Things can turn foul real fast if you are not careful.

I know this I would not want to be the 2 climbers that lost there footing and slipped that caused this whole mess. From the news reports it would appear that there was a team of two climbers that were up on the 65 degree pitch part of the mountain just before you summit and they lost there footing, slipped and slid down the mountain, then they hit another team of 3 people, then they hit another team of 4 people. All 9 ended up in the crevase, with 3  dead. It was said all this happened in about 10 seconds of time.

Some scary stuff.
Know my wife is haveing second thoughts about me sumitting Mt. Hood next year.