A 57-year-old man was Tuesday. The man was identified as Robert J. Cormier, a Catholic priest from New Jersey.
Another climber witnessed the incident at about 8 a.m. on Tuesday and claimed to have seen Cormier, who was with a party of three people, standing on the summit before falling through a cornice to his death. He fell roughly 1,000 feet down the Eliot Glacier side of the mountain. Searchers found his body in a crevasse. “We’ve had this happen a few times,” said Sergeant Peter Hughes of the聽Hood River County Sheriff’s Office. “People have gone to take a look over to the north side of the mountain and actually fallen off the north side, which is a sheer face.”
Cormier’s group set out for the summit at about 1:45 a.m. from Timberline Lodge. According to Hughes, Cormier had been hiking well ahead of his companions, one of whom had a leg cramp.聽
The 11,294-foot Mount Hood is a popular destination for climbers, but it has taken its share of lives. Cormier is the 30th climber to die on Mount Hood since 1959. Last August, novice climber Sebastian Kinasiewicz . Just one month before, 59-year-old dead 8,400 feet up Mount Hood after he had been missing for a week. Adams was described as an experienced climber.