Woman Uses Screwdriver to Help Save 2 on Glacier

An inexperienced backpacker with two broken ribs picked her way down an icy slope with a screwdriver to get survival gear for her fiance and another companion after the three of them fell on a glacier while tied together, it was reported Wednesday.

After returning to Richard Bennett and John Hart with tents and other equipment, Joan Pitney worked her way back down the mountain to summon rescuers.

Richard Bennett, 42, a Walnut Creek painting contractor who is to be married to Pitney in June, was in Mercy Medical Center here with a broken hip. John Hart, 38, of Fairfax, had a fractured leg and pelvis. Both were listed in fair condition Wednesday.

Pitney, 38, of Piedmont, was treated for her injuries and released.

The ordeal began Sunday afternoon when the three fell 250 feet while climbing at the 11,000-foot level along Hotlum-Bolam Glacier on Mt. Shasta’s north side. Despite her cracked ribs and using a screwdriver in place of her lost ice ax, Pitney descended slowly to their camp at the 8,000-foot level.

While she started back up toward them with the tents and sleeping bags, Bennett used a snow shovel as a splint for Hart’s leg. Then he got Hart into a bivouac sack and lowered him about 500 feet down the glacier until night fell. The two men then huddled in a crevice.

About 8 p.m., Bennett said, they saw a flashlight. Pitney was on her painful way toward them. Because it was dark, the two men shouted to her to stay where she was. She camped 150 feet below them for the night.

“I’m not religious,” Bennett said, “but I invoked all the deities I could think of while lying out there. It was the longest night of my life. Mercifully, there was no wind.”

Flagged Down a Trucker

At daybreak, Pitney left the tents and other equipment with the two men and started another agonizing trek down the mountain. It wasn’t until nearly mid-Monday afternoon that she reached a logging road and flagged down a truck driver, who took her to a telephone.

A helicopter carried rescuers and medical supplies to Bennett and Hart. By that time, another night was approaching. Two of the rescue workers remained on the mountain with the injured men, who were carried to safety Tuesday morning.

Bennett said of his fiancee: “She was the least experienced of this bunch, but she did an amazing job; really kept her wits about her.”

He wasn’t certain whether their plan to scale the Grand Tetons on their honeymoon was still on. “I don’t know if Joan is going to be up for that now,” he said.