LEBANON -- A news flash interrupted Oprah: a 29-year-old Midwest man was killed in an avalanche on Washington's Mount Rainier. Several others were injured.
Holly Lofton immediately thought of her husband, Tim.
The 29-year-old Lebanon man was climbing his way to Mount Rainier's summit June 11 when warmer temperatures loosened snow and ice. On one side of the 14,410-foot mountain, a group battled the avalanche of snow. On the other, Tim Lofton and the 11 members of his expedition were reeling from chunks of ice that had hurled down the mountain, breaking one person's leg in three spots.
Mr. Lofton sustained only a couple of scrapes.
"She was pretty freaked," Mr. Lofton said Friday of his wife. "The stress of not knowing what had happened must have been 10 times worse than actually being involved in it."
The first call he made once the group climbed back to base camp -- known as Paradise -- was home.
A week later, safe in the comfort of his Springboro office, Mr. Lofton, a broker for the investment company Edward Jones, said he's ready to climb again. The experience only whetted his desire to scale other mountains, such as Mount McKinley.
"When you get above the clouds, you see the lavenders and pinks and purples on a white cloud bed with two or three mountains poking through," he said. "It's just awesome."
His desire to take on Mount Rainier sprang from more than a year's worth of climbing, mostly at an indoor facility, Urban Krag, in Dayton, Ohio. The climbing was an extension of Mr. Lofton's physical fitness regimen, which includes three to fours a day of biking, swimming or running. This year, he expects to participate in 15 triathalons.
With mountaineering, the only difference is that "instead of swimming, bicycling and running, you're going uphill with a pack on your back," Mr. Lofton said.
That pack weighed about 80 pounds June 8, the first day of Mr. Lofton's first expedition. Despite temperatures around 45 degrees, Mr. Lofton -- 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds -- started off the trip in shorts and a T-shirt. The physical exertion of climbing uphill for six or seven hours kept him warm.
When the group awoke June 11, about 1:30 a.m., it seemed a perfect day to climb to Mount Rainier's summit, Mr. Lofton said. The moon was full, the air crisp and the cloud cover low. They began their ascent. But at 2:40 a.m., the ice started falling.
It began with pieces the size of pebbles. By the time they hit Mr. Lofton's helmet, they felt like blows from a hammer. The speed at which they were traveling made even the smallest piece dangerous, he said. The chunks became larger, with the biggest pieces as tall as three feet.
Ice the size of a softball broke the leg of fellow expeditioner Doug Wagoner, Mr. Lofton said.
With the avalanche a few hours later on the other side of Mount Rainier keeping rescuers busy, Mr. Lofton's crew was responsible for carrying Mr. Wagoner on a stretcher down the mountain.
Short of seeing the summit, Mr. Lofton said, putting into reality all the rescue and climbing training he had received "was probably the greatest experience you could have."
