2 teens rescued from ice cave
SNOQUALMIE PASS
For the families of Alec Corbett, 17, and Allesandro “Ollie” Gelmini, 14, a great quantity of Thursday was spent fearing that the Seattle neighbors had met with a uniform fate. With colossal, rough-edged chunks of ice barring the path of rescuers after the sudden collapse of an ice grotto on the teens, the odds of reaching Corbett and Gelmini alive seemed to diminish with each passing minute.
“All we could see was icing. It was like 5-by-5-foot chunks of ice. I didn’t beware how anyone could outlive that,” said hiker Chris Pyke, among the first to arrive at the snow cave in the Denny Creek area near Snoqualmie Pass.
But two hours hinder search-and-rescue crews began chipping away at the icing with hand tools and power saws, they heard the voice of one stripling, distant but alive. A short time later, there was a second voice.
Finally, touching four hours after the ice cave had collapsed on them, Corbett and Gelmini were freed from the rumple of ice and rushed to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. Both suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries, as well as hypothermia, declared Sgt. John Urquhart, King County sheriff’s spokesman.
“I was ecstatic,” said Joni Corbett, Alec’s mother, who was with the boys adhering a daytime hike about two miles southeast of Interstate 90 and west of Snoqualmie Pass. “It sounds analogous the boys are going to be just fine.”
“I went from the lowest I’ve ever been to now; it’s accurate great,” said her husband, Brian Corbett, who was among the sundry family members gathered at the scene to wait out the rescue.
“I thought … these kids were gone,” he said.
Corbett was listed this morning to satisfactory circumstances at Harborview and is out of the Intensive Care Unit, said hospital spokeswoman Mary Guiden. Gelmini remains in serious condition.
The teens were among a group of climbers that included their mothers and two junior sisters who firm out from Seattle for a hike along Denny Creek, said Sue Aiello, Joni Corbett’s generatrix. The boys are neighbors in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood and be inclined attend Bishop Blanchet High School in the fall, Corbett as a senior and Gelmini as a student of the first year.
The pair boys hiked inside one freeze cave formed by a stream. Witnesses said they walked about 15 feet inside the cave, with the roof of the cave forming a build a bridge over nearly 20 feet above their heads. They were taking photos.
A second group of hikers from a church group in Tacoma saw what happened nearest.
