A Cheney High School graduate died last week while climbing the 10,047-foot Middle Sister mountain in Oregon’s Three Sisters Wilderness west of Bend.
According to news releases from the Lane County Sheriff’s Office in Eugene, a 15-person search team found the body of 39-year-old Benjamin Newkirk approximately 800 – 900 feet below where he fell as he was descending the peak Nov. 12 with a climbing partner.
Newkirk and his partner were at approximately 9,500 feet on the southeast ridge of Middle Sister and returning to their 7,000-foot-high base camp at Camp Lake when around 10 p.m., he fell off the ridge to the west and out of sight of his partner.
Lane County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Carrie Carver said weather conditions on the mountain were “awful” at the time. An intense weather system that hit Eugene earlier in the day had crept onto the range, bringing high winds, freezing rain, hail and snow and created whiteout conditions.
“We weren’t able to access where we thought he had fallen,” Carver said. “We had an aircraft up there and we couldn’t even see the mountain. We couldn’t get teams in there.”
Hazardous weather conditions continued and prevented searches after 2 p.m. Thursday until Sunday. Search and rescue aircraft from the Army National Guard located Newkirk Sunday morning.
A search team that included volunteers from Eugene Mountain Rescue and Corvallis Mountain Rescue performed a recovery using ropes and other equipment to transport Newkirk’s body six-tenths of a mile to a location where he could be transported to Eugene. Carver said Newkirk’s climbing partner was safe and provided information helping rescue personnel locate Newkirk, but gave no information as to why the pair were on the mountain so late and in bad conditions.
“We don’t know if they reached the summit,” Carver said.
According to the Bend Bulletin, Newkirk had worked for five years as a server at Bend’s Zydeco Kitchen & Cocktails. The restaurant was closed Sunday evening in his honor after a staff remembrance and life celebration earlier that afternoon.
Restaurant owner Cheri Helt told Bulletin reporter Claire Withycombe that Newkirk was “a compassionate and caring man who went out of his way to make others feel special.” Newkirk’s compassion was even more evident in his love for climbing, Helt said, once lending a coat to a fellow climber and sometimes turning back when he felt others were experiencing difficulty with the terrain.
In an email to the Cheney Free Press, classmate Eva Geranton (Lawton) said Newkirk was a member of the CHS class of 1994. Other media sources noted that his parents, who Carver said were at the command post during the search and rescue, live in Spokane and that a memorial may still take place in the area.
John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.
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