*** One Climber Dead, One Rescued on Mount Rainier *** From: Frank Neef Copyright © 1997 The Seattle Times Company Wednesday, July 30, 1997 Mount Rainier climber killed. - by Seattle Times staff and Associated Press Park Rangers tried frantically yesterday to rescue two climbers who fell into a crevasse at the 13,500-foot level of Emmons Glacier on Mount Rainier, but were able to save only one of them. The dead climber was identified as Don McIntyre, 51, of Reno, Nev. Two rescue teams, totalling nine Rangers, were taken to just below the 14,411-foot summit by an Army Chinook helicopter from Fort Lewis just as clouds began to blanket the peak late in the day. Four of the Rangers descended the icy slopes to the crevasse, reaching the men shortly after 8 p.m., while the others remained near the summit with a stockpile of specialized equipment. The injured climber, Joel Koury, 37, of Santa Monica, Calif., was able to walk and was being accompanied down the mountain by one of the rescue teams, said John Krambrink, a spokesman for Mount Rainier National Park. The other group of Rangers remained at the crevasse to try to recover McIntyre's body after daybreak today. The climbers were descending along the Emmons route to Camp Schurman and eventually the White River area on the northeast side of the peak after reaching the summit via the rigorous Liberty Ridge route, Krambrink said. Compared with the more popular route to and from the summit via Camp Muir, he said, "it's a much more challenging route, a much more demanding route" that usually is attempted earlier in the season. The climbers tumbled into the break about 2 p.m.. Members of another climbing party, who were about 1,000 feet away, witnessed the fall and went to their aid, Krambrink said. After finding one man unconscious and the other less severely injured, the witnesses rushed to Camp Schurman at the 9,500-foot level to alert Park Rangers. Krambrink said details about how the men fell into the crevasse were not immediately available. "We don't know if a snow bridge collapsed or what happened," he said. The men had been on the mountain for three or four days and had a National Park Service permit to climb. At the time of the accident, they were descending from the north side of the mountain. Emmons Glacier, the largest in the contiguous 48 states, is on the northeast side of Mount Rainier. It includes a corridor of trails used by many descending climbers, Krambrink said. The death was the first on the mountain this year. Four climbers died on the Emmons Glacier during an eight-day period in 1995, at about the same level where yesterday's accident occurred. Seventy people are known to have perished on Rainier since the late 1880s. Times staff reporter Dee Norton contributed to this report. ---------------------