Hope Fades For Missing Mountain Climbers
BY LIZ GOFF

The mother of a mountain climber missing during an ascent to the summit of Mount Hood spoke to a national audience recently, thanking rescuers who tried in vain to locate Jerry (Nikko) Cooke through life-threatening conditions on Oregon’s Mount Hood.

Maria Kim left her Flushing home shortly after she received word that her son, along with fellow climbers Brian Hall and Kelly James, ran into trouble during their climb to the top of the mountain, located in Northeast Oregon.

Cooke, James and Hall began their ascent on December 8 and found themselves stranded at the bitterly cold summit of the mountain when bad weather set in.

Officials at the Hood River County Sheriff’s office said it appears the three took shelter in a snow cave on the night of December 8, where they waited out a storm that dumped up to 10 feet of snow and produced winds up to 100 mph.

An injured, weakened Kelly James managed to reach his family on his cellphone on December 10, telling relatives that Cooke and Hall had been forced to leave him behind in the snow cave while they went to seek help. The family received one faint, subsequent “beep” from Kelly’s cell phone on December 12–the last contact between the climbers and the world below, a spokesperson for the sheriff said.

Rescue teams discovered Kelly’s body in the snow cave on December 17. An autopsy revealed that he had succumbed to severe hypothermia several days before his body was found.

City Councilmember John Liu told the Gazette that Maria Kim raised her son, nicknamed “Nikko”, on her own after she was abandoned by her husband 13 years ago.

Family friends said the mother and son had lived in a basement apartment in Bay Ridge, with Kim as their sole provider. Cooke worked his way through college, attending Stony Brook University. He obtained his law degree from New York University.

Kim and Cooke later purchased the Brooklyn home where Cooke lived with his wife, Michaela, family members said.

Kim moved to Flushing several years ago, settling near family members, Liu said.

Speaking at a press conference broadcast from Mount Hood on December 17, Maria Kim said, “Every day I think of my son in some snow cave, hungry and cold. It tears my heart apart. I am asking the mountain to release our sons. The mountain has no right to keep our sons. It must let them go.”

Kim then spoke to her son in Korean, praying for him to come down from the mountain, so [I] can hold him.”

Hope for the safe rescue of Cooke and Hall began to fade on December 18, when rescuers searching for the men found two ice axes on a ridge, and two ropes anchored in a snow cave just above an area referred to as “the gullies”, said a spokesperson for the Hood River County Sheriff’s Department.

“No climber would have left their axes,” said the sheriff’s spokesperson, Pete Hughes. “It appears they made a desperate decision to try and descend from the mountain. They may have fallen from a steep slope at the summit to the gullies below, where their bodies could now be covered in snow up to ten feet deep. They attempted a very dangerous descent on an extremely treacherous part of the mountain.”

Faced with increasingly perilous conditions on the mountain, authorities last week called off their search for the two men.

Hughes said family members “made the ultimate decision” to call off the search after they traveled by helicopter to the site near the summit of Mount Hood, where they watched as rescuers braved treacherous, icy conditions.

“The families realized the risk rescuers were taking and decided it would be best to call off the search at this time,” Hughes said. “That doesn’t mean we won’t go back up there when the weather clears, to find them and bring them back down.”

Friends and neighbors in Flushing said they would continue to pray for Cooke’s safe return. “Our hearts and our prayers also go out to for Maria Kim,” said one neighbor. “She is facing what no mother should ever have to face.”