When Martin Kozaczek watched his friend cartwheel down a steep, snowy chute and slam against the rocks, it occurred to him that the climber might already be dead.
Then he watched Patrick Wang of Hillsboro vanish over the edge of a sheer cliff.
Wang, a 27-year-old Intel software engineer and experienced mountaineer, died Sunday afternoon after slipping while descending the summit of California's Mount Whitney, at 14,494 feet the tallest peak in the continental United States.
Search and rescue climbers from Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks recovered Wang's body Monday morning. It was the second climbing fatality at the same location in a month.
Services are pending in State College, Penn., where Wang was raised. And his friends in Oregon plan a service for 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 21, at Orenco Presbyterian Church in Hillsboro. There, they'll memorialize a creative, technically savvy intellectual who loved adventure, the outdoors, photography and rock 'n' roll.
In less than three decades of life, Wang had traveled much of the world. He'd learned to climb with the Mazamas and summited more than two dozen peaks. He helped found and played lead guitar for the Portland-area rock band Spontaneous Woo.
"I can't believe all this ability and talent just disappeared," said Bruce Hope, a volunteer Mazamas instructor who taught Wang basic mountaineering in 2002 and watched his skill and desire soar.
Kozaczek and Wang, friends since junior high school in Pennsylvania, had talked for months about their trip. Kozaczek said Wednesday that Wang wanted to reach the highest and lowest points in the continental United States in one trip: Mount Whitney and Death Valley.
Kozaczek is athletic but had never climbed before. So he left the technical details to his friend, who, he said, "was a nut when it came to planning . . . the routes, avalanche reports, approach data. . . . He could have climbed this thing blind, I think."
He picked up Wang at Los Angeles International Airport last Wednesday. They spent the night at Kozaczek's place in Pasadena, Calif., going through their gear, packing and talking. The next morning, they drove about four hours north to Bishop, Calif., where Wang had to make one important stop: to see Mountain Light Gallery, featuring the work of the late Galen Rowell, a storied mountaineer and photographer, whom Wang idolized.
By nightfall Thursday, the two men had hiked to about 8,300 feet and set up camp.
On Friday, they planned to make it to Iceberg Lake, at 12,600 feet the preferred base camp for those climbing Whitney in the spring.
In summer, hundreds of hikers summit Whitney's craggy peak each day. But in spring, the climb is sometimes hairy and always technical, requiring such gear as crampons and ice axes. Some climbers rope together on the steep pitch approaching the summit.
Things took more time on Friday, it turned out. By the time Kozaczek and Wang got to Boy Scout Lake, well below Iceberg, the weather turned. At 3:30 p.m., winds howled and snow fell in a near whiteout. They decided to set up camp for the night, took shelter behind a rock, digging a partial snow cave and setting up their tent.
Their night was cold and wet -- miserable, Kozaczek said.
Saturday, the storm passed, but the two men decided to stay put, warm up and dry off their gear. To pass time, Wang insisted his novice-climber friend practice self-arrest, or stopping with the help of an ice axe. They talked about making the summit and agreed they wouldn't try it unless conditions were good.
"He was pretty adamant about safety," Kozaczek said. "We were almost rehearsing our 'Yeah, we didn't make it' speech."
When they rose at 4 a.m. Sunday after a good night's sleep, they ate a quick breakfast and began the ascent, headlamps lighting the way under a cloudless sky.
Shortly after noon, they made it to an area known as The Notch. They sipped water, ate a snack and rested before pushing up the brutal pitch to the summit. For 90 minutes, Kozaczek said, they were "basically crawling up the mountain on all fours. It's pretty damned steep."
At the top, they found nothing but warm sun and tremendous views in all directions.
"I don't really ever remember seeing Pat that happy," Kozaczek said. "He was just thrilled."
They spent 45 minutes on the summit reveling in their accomplishment, taking pictures and resting up for the descent.
Wang suggested the best way to head down would be to glissade, or use a controlled sliding technique in which the ice ax works as a break.
Kozaczek went first. Being new to climbing, he struggled. He tried sliding feet first, on his stomach. Then on his rear. Then walking slowly, digging in his heels.
He slipped, sliding fast down the snow. He rolled onto his stomach and planted his ice axe. He stopped but had fallen at least 30 feet. Nervous, Kozaczek changed his tune and slid just 5 feet at a time, slow and steady.
Below, a climber on the way up reprimanded Kozaczek. If he slipped, the climber said, Kozaczek could have taken the man out. Kozaczek moved to the side of the chute to let the climber pass.
Just as he did, he heard the man yell: "Oh no! Oh no!"
Kozaczek heard his friend next. Wang was cursing as he slipped on his rear down the chute. He was going too fast. Just then, he flipped and tumbled, passing Kozaczek and the other climber. When Wang slammed into some rocks, his cursing stopped.
His fall didn't.
Wang cartwheeled down the slope. A piece of his glasses struck the other climber. Kozaczek worried his friend would hit another field of rocks.
Then he was gone.
It was about 3:30 p.m. The entire fall, Kozaczek said, took maybe five seconds.
"The idea that he could fall off the mountain was just impossible," Kozaczek said. "He was just gone. He disappeared. That was the weirdest, strangest feeling in the world. I was in disbelief."
Wang tumbled an estimated 300 to 400 feet before plunging off a 1,000-foot cliff. His fall at that point was obstructed from sight.
Kozaczek and another climber peered over and wondered whether there was any way to reach his friend. But there wasn't.
By the time word reached rescuers, darkness approached. Efforts at recovery would have to wait until morning.
Later, Kozaczek told Bruce Hope, the Mazamas climbing instructor in Oregon, that his friend's death resulted from a simple combination of bad luck and poor judgment. "We've all had bad luck and used poor judgment," Hope said Wednesday. "But we didn't pay as big a consequence for it."
