Rainier hiker 'sacrificed his life for his wife'

MOUNT RAINIER -- Battered by a blizzard on the slopes of this mountain, Eduard Burceag lay down in a snow trench, trying to use his body's warmth to protect his wife, Mariana, from the 70-mph winds.

Rangers alerted to an emergency at 10,000 feet found Burceag in the snow Tuesday morning. He had no pulse and would later be declared dead.

"He basically sacrificed his life for his wife," David Gottlieb, lead climbing ranger at Mount Rainier, said Wednesday. "Imagine you're laying in the snow. It drains you."

Burceag's 31-year-old wife and a family friend, Daniel Vlad, 35, of Bellevue survived the ordeal. An Army helicopter from Mount Rainier plucked them off the mountain Wednesday. And after a brief stay at Madigan Army Hospital and Harborview Medical Center, the two were released.

Burceag

Rangers hiked the body of Eduard Burceag, 31, down from Camp Muir late Wednesday afternoon about the same time as the National Park Service identified the three, who had intended to take a day hike on the mountain Monday.

Eduard Burceag was a software engineer, father of two sons and an experienced mountaineer. It was that experience he apparently called on amid the blizzard.

The hikers dug a trench in the snow, Gottlieb said.

Eduard Burceag lay on the ground. His wife was sandwiched between him and Vlad, Gottlieb said. Despite the pleas of his wife and Vlad, he refused to move.

Eduard Burceag and Vlad were engineers with Seattle-based Active Voice, a communications company. Both men are from Romania.

A worker at Active Voice declined comment Wednesday.

No one at the Burceag townhouse in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood would comment Wednesday.

A neighbor, though, recalled often seeing Eduard Burceag play with his sons and a remote-control car outside the townhouse.

"They're really nice people," the neighbor said. "We thought they were out of town."

Vlad has told rangers the group set out on the hike Monday because "they all have a passion for the mountain. They were prepared for the hike, but the weather turned on them," said Kevin Bacher, a spokesman for Mount Rainier National Park.

Vlad and Eduard Burceag reached the summit of Rainier two years ago.

Park rangers learned of the emergency at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday after Vlad's wife called 911 when the group didn't return as expected. By then, they were trapped by the blizzard.

The group made it to Anvil Rock but could go no farther. Rangers also could not reach them because of the dangerous conditions, Bacher said.

Then, at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday, Vlad made it through the blizzard to Camp Muir, at an elevation of 10,188 feet, and then was able to lead rangers back to his friends.

They found Mariana Burceag, who was suffering from frostbite, and her husband.

Rangers were able to get the party back to Camp Muir and a shelter there, but Eduard Burceag never regained consciousness.

Three doctors at Camp Muir with a guide service treated the survivors overnight in a climbing cabin and suggested that it was better to wait for a helicopter evacuation rather than expose the two to the weather.

Around 5 a.m. Wednesday, rescue coordinators determined that the weather was clearing in the Camp Muir area, Bacher said.

"The weather is a heck of a lot better up there than it is down here," he said, speaking from the park's administration office at Longmire, which is at 2,700 feet.

The helicopter arrived at Camp Muir at 6:03 a.m., and using a cable, hoisted the survivors aboard, Bacher said. They left the camp by 6:17 a.m.

"It went smoothly," Bacher said.

Officials at first contemplated carrying out the injured hikers, but decided on the helicopter to avoid further exposing them to the cold.

Burceag's death was the first on Mount Rainier since Devin Ossman died in March. Ossman's body was found a mile and half from the Kautz Creek trailhead.

Three years ago, two hikers died in a snowstorm on Mount Rainier in circumstances similar to Monday's events. In May 2005, Tim Stark, 57, of Lakewood and Greg Stark, 27, of Issaquah died while hiking to Camp Muir.