FAN FAVORITE: Trapped on Mt. Hood | Considered Lost | 2

Against The Odds

Wondery

Cassie De Pecol, History, Society & Culture, Dolby, Mike Corey, Dolby Atmos, Atmos

4.7 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With night falling, the student climbers and their adult chaperones must take refuge in a cramped, frigid, and hastily dug snow cave. Their leader, Father Tom Goman, begins to succumb to hypothermia. Meanwhile, search and rescue teams prepare to deploy. But as the storm that first trapped the climbers on Mount Hood rages on, the dire nature of their predicament becomes increasingly apparent.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Against the Odds early and ad-free right now.
0:05.6	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:09.5	Join Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app to listen to Against the Odds early and ad-free.
0:16.4	The Wondry.
0:30.1	Music Ralph Summers grips his shovel and scrapes away at the ice above his head.
0:33.6	It's the evening of May 12, 1986.
0:41.7	Summers has been on his knees for about 90 minutes now, carving out a cave in the snow high up on Mount Hood.
0:47.0	Summers quickens his pace as he listens to the blizzard raging outside.
0:55.5	If he constructs the cave properly, it will serve as shelter for 13 stranded climbers, including himself.
0:59.1	The muscles on his face are numb with cold.
1:01.1	His forearms ache.
1:04.1	But still, he keeps hacking away.
1:08.1	He pauses for a moment to review his progress. The icy, white cave interior is roughly six feet long, eight feet wide, and four feet tall from floor to ceiling, smaller than a four-person tent.
1:19.5	He'd like to make it bigger, but there's not enough time.
1:23.3	He has to get the other climbers out of the storm and into the cave as soon as possible.
1:29.2	Some of them are already showing signs of hypothermia.
1:33.0	The cave is small, but it should be big enough if everyone squeezes close together.
1:38.8	Summers puts his flashlight between his teeth and crawls out of the cave into the blizzard.
1:51.0	As he rises to his feet, he's nearly knocked over by a gust of frigid wind. He shines his flashlight at the 12 people who have been waiting for him,
1:56.0	huddled together under a snow-covered tarp.
1:59.0	The cave is ready.
2:01.6	One at a time, students get in first.
	...

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