Bodies Identified as Hikers Missing 21 Years

In 1980, late autumn snowstorms with hurricane-force winds claimed the lives of two Oregon men hiking on Mt. Adams in Yakima, Wash.

Twenty-one years later, drought gave the bodies back.

The remains of Gary Claeys, 28, of Wilsonville, and Matt Larson, 25, of Portland, were identified, Yakima County Coroner Maurice Rice said.

The bodies were discovered Saturday on the south face of the mountain at the head of the 9,000-foot Crescent Glacier, where a hiker with a dog found a rope and then chipped away enough ice to reveal a boot.

On Tuesday, Central Washington Mountain Rescue organized a team to retrieve the remains.

Larson and Claeys, who both worked as psychiatric aides at the now-closed Dammasch State Hospital in Oregon, disappeared Nov. 14, 1980, on the 12,276-foot mountain in the Cascade Range.