A search continued Saturday for a climber missing since Thursday on Mount Rainier The search, focused on the confluence of the Winthrop and Emmons glaciers, was scheduled to be by air involving an Army Reserve Chinook helicopter carrying three climbing rangers from Mount Rainier National Park, and a helicopter from Airlift Northwest. Searchers were pursing the possibility of an avalance or a fall into a crevasse as explanations for the disappearance of Kyle Bufis, 25. Air searchers were checking for signals from an avalanche beacon that Bufis was believed to be carrying. They also were looking into crevasses from the air. Bufis, who is from Utah, was part of a three-person climbing team when he went missing near Liberty Saddle at approximately 9 p.m. on June 11. The had finished climbing the challenging Liberty Ridge route on the north flank of Mount Rainier. The other two members of the climbing team, identified by officials as Derek Gavelis and Mathew Wiech, descended safely to Camp Schurman in the late-afternoon June 11. Liberty Ridge is a technically difficult route to the mountain's summit and has been the scene of major climbing accidents, including one two years ago that claimed six lives. Searching yesterday near the summit was hampered by wind reaching 70 miles per hour.
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