Lost climbers: 'The best and the worst climbing experience we've ever had'
SNOQUALMIE PASS, Wash. - A frantic search for two missing climbers ended near Snoqualmie Pass when the men found their way down the mountain after a nervous night there.
The climbers said they didn't originally plan to scale the north face of Chair Peak at Alpental - but then decided to give it a shot.
Going up the 800-foot alpine ice climb went great. But problems popped up when they tried to come down.
"I think both of us had bad thoughts at times - but you just try to stay positive, and we were both warm. That helped," said one of the climbers, David Goodwin.
It also helped that Goodwin and his climbing partner, Bret Webb, had some food, water and good equipment for what was supposed to just a daytime adventure.
But they say nighttime fell much more quickly than they expected. And that's when they got nervous.
"We didn't want to be there," Webb said. "We planned to come out earlier. Our wives were going to be worried, and we didn't like that."
They had to spend the night on the mountain, but neither of them slept. Instead, they hiked around Lake Melakwa in the darkness, trudging through the snow, uncertain of which way was which.
"We thought about trying to hike down in the dark, but it's easy to get confused up there because you can go the other way and end up further from civilization," Goodwin said.
When daybreak came, the climbers were able to get off the mountain.
At the same time, a King County search-and-rescue team set out to look for the men after friends and family reported them missing.
The search was called off after the two were able to make contact with their families by cell phone.
Goodwin and Webb say they made a fair share of mistakes, including rapelling down the wrong side of Chair Peak.
"It was the best and the worst climbing experience we've ever had," says Webb. "An incredibly good climb - and the worst - because we had to spend a night up there."
They're now back home with their families in Everett, and plan to get caught up on lots of missed sleep.
And they're constantly thinking of the things they should've done differently - for the next time they tackle one of the peaks in the Cascades.
"We could have been more prepared, we should have known the route better, not relied on someone else, should have gotten more of our own information," Goodwin says.
Goodwin says he scraped his nose and banged his chin during the initial climb.
Other than that, both men are in good shape.
