Mark Hendrickson, manager of Mt. Hood Skibowl, was killed by the driver of a car while riding his bicycle down Timberline Highway. According to Oregon State Police, it happened Saturday morning just before 8:00 am and less than one-half mile from Timberline Lodge.
Here’s more from the OSP statement (trigger warning, details of a traffic crash):
“The preliminary investigation indicated a bicycle, operated by Mark Sorrenson Hendrickson (48) of Government Camp, was attempting to travel south from Timberline Lodge on SR-173. A white Hyundai Tucson, operated by Emilio Trampus [sic] (71) of Salem, was traveling north on SR-173 and failed to yield the right of way when he turned left at West Leg Rd, across the bicyclist’s lane. The bicyclist collided with the vehicle, was ejected from his bicycle, and became unresponsive in the roadway.”
The driver’s last name is Trampuz (not Trampus) and he and Hendrickson were both well-known to many people in the Mt. Hood community.
Here’s what Mt. Hood Skibowl posted about Hendrickson on Facebook:
“Mark joined our Skibowl family just shy of 4 years ago and made an immediate impact on our culture. His passion and zest for life was immeasurable, which also crossed over into his professional life as well. He exuded greatness and strived for excellence while at the same time gaining respect from everyone who he came in contact with. Mark not only made Mt. Hood Skibowl a better place to work and visit, he made all of us just better people!
The loss of Mark is significant and will be felt long into the future from anyone who knew him. He is survived by his wife Casey and two boys; Jess and Cash. Please join us in sending our deepest condolences to Mark’s immediate and extended family as he certainly touched all of us so positively.”
Trampuz is an “avid outdoorsman” according to one source and an active member of the Mt. High Snowsports Club. According to the club’s website, Trampuz was leading a bike ride on Saturday when the collision with Hendrickson occurred. (UPDATE: A source says Trampuz was not leading that ride but was doing something else on the mountain that day. Read more below). The group ride was from Timberline Lodge down to Trillium Lake via West Leg Rd.
The collision happened in the middle of a sweeping hairpin turn on Timberline Hwy where it connects with West Leg Rd.
This is such a tragic and senseless loss of life. Our hearts go out to everyone involved.
UPDATE, 8/8 at 3:00 pm: A source who was up on the mountain Saturday morning emailed BikePortland to tell us Trampuz was volunteering to mark ski routes at the time of the collision. The person who contacted me said this is what happened:
When Emilio turned left on the West Leg Road around 7:06 am on August 5, he did not see anything approaching him. On a gloomy morning (it subsequently rained), with a bike rider all in black and no headlight coming at high speed, Emilio should be realized not to be completely at fault. He made it almost across to the West Leg Road when he heard a bang and stopped. Mark had hit the passenger rear quarter panel of his car.
Thanks for reading.
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Heartbreaking. Although I do hope that Ski Bowl updates their post to change the word accident to crash. So hard to get people to change behaviors and drive carefully when there is a prevailing linguistic suggestion that nothing can be done.
It is super weird to see this post from Ski Bowl although not surprising to see them use “accident” to remove culpability from the driver. Their owner has a history of DUI and hit and run: https://bikeportland.org/2010/08/26/owner-of-mt-hood-ski-bowl-pleads-guilty-to-hit-and-run-duii-and-assault-38539
Also what appears to be the driver’s facebook shows that he was involved in a single car collision in March (he calls it an accident) in which he totaled another automobile by running into a median island at a high rate of speed. Might be past time for him to hang up the car keys.
Did the driver kill him on purpose? Doubt it.
Tired of the intentionally divisive, demonizing semantics. Many, if not most of us also sometimes drive cars. And no matter what mode we’re using, we all make errors.
Every time I see this pointless performative gotcha game I shake my head.
Do better, Portland.
Not on purpose, but out of negligence. If a driver looks at their phone while driving and kills someone, they didn’t kill someone on purpose, but they purposefully looked at their phone neglecting the duties of a driver, which contributed to the death. If a person continues to drive after they do not have the cognitive or physical capacity to drive safely due to age, they didn’t intend to kill someone, but they made choices that significantly increased the risk that they will kill someone.
Children make the same claim all the time. For example, they broke the plate on accident, while not understanding that using the plate as a hammer was the cause of the plate breaking whether it was on purpose or not.
Absolving negligent drivers of killing people because they did not kill someone on purpose ignores all of the purposeful risky behaviors and factors that they expose everyone to. If you ignore this, it is not possible to make transportation safer.
Do you understand now? Is this too complicated?
Who is absolving the driver? Noting that the collision was unintentional does not mean we can’t understand what happened, assess blame, and take steps to prevent it from happening again.
Since you mentioned plates, many years ago, I saw a child break a plate with a stick. It was clear that while the events leading up to the breakage were intentional, the girl had no intent to break the plate, and she was horrified at the result. That the plate broke was clearly her fault, and the cause was apparent; the breakage was also fully unintentional. It was accidental.
In this case, the girl was punished then forgiven, but never absolved.
So too, in this far more tragic case, we can understand what happened and levy an appropriate punishment on the driver, while acknowledging that the terrible outcome was not intended (unless it turns out it was, in which the death would no longer be considered accidental).
Accident is a term that includes a broad spectrum of possibilities from zero fault to complete fault. Since traffic deaths have become normalized and many, many motorists drive without appropriate caution, “accident” is often understood in a headline or a paragraph like the one above to mean that the driver had no fault or there were not contributing circumstances from the built environment.
Circumstances like 10-15 miles above the speed limit, dirty windshield, or in this case failure to yield or possibly see Mark Hendrickson are seen by many as normal and unchangeable factors. On the other hand, because riding a bicycle or walking outside is unfamiliar to many people, the assumption is that the unusual behavior contributes all of the risk while the “normal” risky behavior contributes none.
The use of the term accident reinforces this fallacy and absolves drivers because the expectation is that if there is a reason or a contributing factor, it would be stated. People aren’t asking for much here. They just want language that states there was a collision. In this case, it seems clear that the driver failed to follow traffic laws and killed someone. The facts of this should be stated. A driver drove their car into a person on a bike who had the right of way and killed them. To omit this with a broad blanket term like accident, is to suggest that something else happened.
This is probably hard for people to hear because it sounds a bit different from what they’ve always heard. It sounds overly intentional, when actually it is just more precise and probably what we should have have been saying all along.
I follow your reasoning, and mostly agree with it, but without more information, the term “collision” does no more or less to absolve than “accident”.
I have no problem with this description (and note that the police statement included an even more specific description). I generally avoid using the word “accident” myself; what I object to is the policing of other people’s language.
Ski Bowl was using a somber tone. I’m not sure using the opportunity to explicitly assign blame would have been a good fit, but that is solely their call.
Yep, just think of the song, “Accidents Will Happen”. Accidents are inevitable. Crashes can be prevented through diligence. Car accidents are extremely rare. The vast majority of crashes result from carelessness.
Comment of the week!
If you kill someone with your car, you have killed them, not your car. Cars don’t have free will (yet). Why is this so controversial?
I drive a car, and ride a bike, and I don’t refer to collisions or crashes as “accidents”. The vast majority of so-called accidents are the result of negligence, not just bad luck.
You do better. Jeree.
Nonsense; drivers can be considered fully culpable for the accidents they cause.
“but I didn’t cause it; it was an accident!”
Just as convincing as “but I didn’t cause it; the crash just happened!”
I disagree. “It was an accident” tends to be swallowed hook. line, and sinker; while “it just happened” brings incredulity through its use of passive voice. It’s just a rephrasing of “mistakes were made”.
““It was an accident” tends to be swallowed hook. line, and sinker”
I don’t know who these people are who don’t understand that accidents have causes and responsible parties and who swallow any self-serving story hook line and sinker.
It is interesting that you yourself phrased your operative sentence in the passive voice to avoid identifying who these ultra-credulous people are.
And let’s recall that the offensive message that we are talking about was a somber expression of grief over the death of a beloved employee, which was not trying to convince anybody of anything. Do you really think that given the context anyone was misled?
Again, I don’t care what words you use; my only complaint is someone designating themselves the language sheriff in a case where the verbage is utterly inconsequential.
Words matter. Verbiage is seldom inconsequential. At least you do somewhat understand the trick of passive voice.
A crying shame. West Leg Road is a beautiful, bike friendly route to Timberline Lodge. But as you get to the top you have to get into the car traffic on the “Timberline Hwy” for that final push to the lodge. As this happened at 8 am, you can just see how Mark was hoping to get his ride in early, avoid the tourist traffic and get down to Govt Camp with a full day ahead of him. The Timberline Hwy is not bicycle friendly, that is clear. With the Timberline Mountain Bike Park up and running during the summer and more and more cyclists up there, perhaps it is time to turn West Leg Road into a service only access road? RIP Mark, condolences to his family.
I got the impression it was at the bottom of Timberline Road (MP 1 was mentioned in another media release), where West Leg road connects. I could be wrong
Driver was headed northbound, took a left at the hairpin to pull into the pulloff for West Leg. He SHOULD have followed the hwy through to Timberline and then pulled off to his right to be safe. But he didn’t. Mark was coming downhill, and had the right of way. I pulled up after and saw the very fresh scene, it was awful. RIP.
According to Timberline personnel I talked to today it was on Timberline Rd., at the junction of West Leg Rd. near the top (near the top of Molly’s lift)
Note that this is only a hairpin going up, coming down as Mark was it’s a straight shot from the lodge to Leg Rd (middle of hairpin) where Emilio would have had a clear view of them approaching.
I am not up at timberline real often, it doesn’t appear that there is any destination on west leg road, any idea why someone would even be turning onto it rather than just parking in the main lot?
I’m sure absolutely nothing significant will happen to the driver who should be imprisoned for manslaughter charges in the least. I really don’t care how old he is.
I’m angry and saddened by this tragedy too, but does imprisoning the driver really make sense? What is the purpose of imprisonment here? He’s an elderly guy. He should have his license revoked, yes. He shouldn’t be driving anymore (not because he’s elderly necessarily, I don’t know if that was a factor, but because of what happened).
On the other hand, unless some smoking gun explanation for how this happened arises, it just feels like this is the result of letting humans, who are all human, drive a vehicle around where a momentary lapse in judgement or attention can kill people. I just don’t think anybody can be trusted to drive without this being the result. Like, if we as a society allow people to do a thing where some amount of the time, a reasonable person can be expected to make a mistake that kills someone, it doesn’t make any sense to me to punish them for it. Society says it’s OK to drive and that’s why the punishment is usually low.
That said, of course, maybe there are particular egregious details here and we can place some revenge-blame on the driver.
You’re just like the NRA after a mass shooting: “nothing can be done; thoughts and prayers!”
The “smoking gun” you chose to ignore is that the driver failed to yield and killed somebody. Yes, I believe he should spend time in prison, both as a punishment to him and as a message to other bad drivers.
Cars are only as deadly as we choose to make them.
No I’m not, not at all. Specifically I asked about prison and if that’s really the appropriate solution here or if it’s just enacting revenge.
“Failed to yield” is meaningless, it might as well just say “crashed his vehicle into a cyclist”. Failing to yield literally describes the necessary conditions for a driver to kill someone.
It’s ironic that you would say this, a correct fact, on top of your pointless revenge fantasy of imprisoning the driver. The fact is, anyone could have done this. Many people do. And imprisoning individuals for something that is essentially a roll of the dice event that could have happened to anyone doesn’t address the problems.
If anybody for any traffic infraction no matter how egregious or minor, was immediately sent to prison for life, fewer people would choose to drive. Maybe even nobody would drive. That would be fantastic. But nobody’s pushing for that really. It isn’t going to happen. So if instead we harshly punish people for errors in perception or judgement that any driver could make, we’re basically just deciding to randomly punish people. It’s inherently unfair, because the risk of doing something wrong is one every driver takes. Humans as a species are all bad at maintaining concentration on mostly mundane tasks like driving and have cognitive biases like inattentional blindness. If we’re all taking the risk, we all need to take responsibility. In this case, that means making safer infrastructure, safer vehicles, driving less, lowering speed limits (and enforcing them), and on and on. That’s not thoughts and prayers, that’s actual solutions that will do something, not childish revenge porn.
Again, I’ll make the caveat like I did in my other comment, there may be facts about this particular crash that make me feel the driver was particularly negligent. Say, using a phone or impaired vision. That would be a different story.
Careful. You’re starting to sound like me.
Haha. I’m sure we agree on lots of things but only talk about what we don’t agree on.
In this case I just don’t agree with the “lock him up!” crowd. It reeks of pointless vindictiveness and has no actual utility. It also allows people to bury their heads in the sand and lie to themselves that they could never make the same mistake when they get behind the wheel (as most here probably do), and that justice is impartial and fair. Bleh.
Not ironic at all. Call it “revenge” or “just desserts”, but I think people who kill people should suffer meaningful consequences. You say anyone could have done this, but most of us–myself included–choose to behave such that we don’t kill other people. Treating it as an inevitability absolves negligent drivers of blame, which is disgusting.
That’s a straw man argument if I ever saw one. Nobody suggested a life sentence for this or any other traffic infraction.
Without some qualifiers on that statement, I don’t, so we’re going to just have to agree to disagree there. I don’t think revenge or just desserts have any place in our legal system. That’s bible shit and it has no place in the year 2023.
Nope. That’s an illusion and a fairy tale. If you move around in the world, you could hurt someone else. If you drive (and hey, maybe you don’t), you absolutely could make a mistake and kill someone. If you take the bus and the bus driver hits someone, you share some responsibility there too. With a world full of millions of drivers, even if everybody tries their best to not kill other people, it is absolutely an inevitability that people will get killed by drivers.
This is why driving is so bad. Other than climate change and various personal benefits, this is like, the main point of alternatives to driving. There is no way around the inherent dangers it imposes on everyone. In a society where we all agree it is acceptable to get behind a wheel and drive, it makes no sense to punish people for the inevitable outcomes that entails.
No it isn’t. What are your criteria for thinking this guy should go to jail? You didn’t have any, just PUNISH HIM. You just picked an arbitrary punishment and went with it.
The strawman is acting like I don’t think anyone should be punished for things they do on the road. If he was drunk, if he was driving without a license, if he was looking at his phone, etc etc, that shows a dangerous disregard for other human life. Of course something needs to be done about that. But run of the mill inattentive blindness (something everyone suffers from) is really hard to blame individuals for. It’s just making the driver a scapegoat.
That’s some straight up bull. That something “could” happen does not make it inevitable, and obviously, given that many people drive all their lives without killing anybody, we each expose the public to varying degrees of risk. How do you even figure that bus passengers share a bus driver’s culpability?
Also, I think you’re too lenient on “run of the mill inattentive blindness”. When operating a deadly machine, one better make sure they do everything they can to prevent that happening to them, and if they can’t, they simply should not drive, and if they choose to drive, they choose to heighten risk to the general public.
If you think you go your whole life without hitting someone simply because you’re a careful driver, you’re not giving driving the respect it deserves. You’re not facing reality.
Inattentive blindness isn’t something you can opt out of. Everyone has this bias and it’s not even something that can be trained away (with intensive training – something most drivers don’t do anyway). It’s also not the only thing that can cause you to crash. Even if you “do everything you can”, you will make mistakes eventually. Perhaps you won’t live long enough for the dice rolls to come up against you, maybe all the mistakes will happen when nobody is around, but it’s a dice roll nonetheless. The fact that something “could” happen does, in fact, mean it is inevitable in the long run. People just don’t pay attention to probabilities that have a longer timeline than a human life.
Again, these are all reasons we should be driving less, why we should be making infrastructure that inherently protects users so that momentary errors don’t result in crashes. And so that crashes are less destructive.
Nowhere did I suggest careful driving is the only factor in someone driving all their life without killing somebody. How you interpreted my statement that way is beyond me. I was pointing out that more careful drivers have a lower chance of causing or suffering unintended crashes than do their less attentive and less cautious peers.
Probability constantly changes as factors come into existence, shift, and/or cease existing, so to believe that any event dependent on many changing factors (including sentient beings and their machinery and systems) is inevitable is to deny the open-ended nature of probability.
Driving is a cognitively difficult task. Mistakes are inevitable.
(sorry mods to double comment, I thought of another thing)
I think your approach could have an interesting utilitarian value though, in a hypothetical. If as a society, we decide we don’t want people driving, but for some reason we have some garbage government that can’t just legislate it, we could make penalties for things like this higher and higher. We could treat the very act of getting behind the wheel as reckless, and then by definition if you hit someone, that was actually legal manslaughter. It’s an interesting idea that would never happen though.
Thing is, we don’t treat the act of driving as inherently reckless (at least legally), so no, not every instance where a crash happens should result in punishment for the driver.
Here are a couple links to help out his wife and the two little boys in that photo
https://gofund.me/de8aec99
https://takethemameal.com/PJET0506
For those of you who want to support the family, there is a gofundme here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/mark-hendricksons-last-ride
At this point, riding a bicycle in Portland reduces your life expectancy. You might as well drive a car, enjoy your favorite tobacco product, adult beverage and junk food.
Absolutely no reason for West Leg to be open to motorized traffic. 🙁
This is heart wrenching. Experienced cyclist with a massive zest for life and family.
*** Moderator: deleted last sentence ***
Once again, the OSP statement has a message that puts the bicyclist into a bad light. Why “was attempting to travel” rather than “was traveling?” Doesn’t the word choice suggest that the bicyclist didn’t belong there, that it was inappropriate, or maybe even illegal?
Then, to cap it off, the statement says “the bicyclist collided with the vehicle…” Ok, maybe the bicyclist hit the side of the car, so maybe it’s technically correct, but if both were moving, why not say the bicycle and car collided? The impression left by the OSP statement is that all the bicyclist needed to do to avoid the collision was just stop or steer out of the way. The OSP’s approach seems to be about protecting motorists from feeling bad about killing a cyclist or pedestrian.
Yes I didn’t get that either. Plus it said driver failed to yield which to me would be the car collided with the bicyclist which it would have said if to vehicles
West Leg Road needs to be extended (or a paved bike/walk/run path constructed) so that it goes directly to Timberline Lodge rather than dumping into the highway at the top, and on the lower end should connect to the Government Camp Loop Road rather than the highway. It’s not like this is some natural area that can’t be disturbed; it’s the base of a ski resort that already has a massive parking lot and lodge. Such a reroute would completely prevent this and other similar crashes from occurring.
My condolences to the family of Mr. Hendrickson; so terrible. And to anyone calling for prison for the driver, our justice system should be preventative and not punitive. Absolutely disgusting that some authoritarians here seem to want vengeance instead of actually preventing crashes from occurring in the first place.
“According to the club’s website, Trampuz was leading a bike ride on Saturday when the collision with Hendrickson occurred.”
He was leading a bike ride in a Hyundai Tuscson when he killed a cyclist? That sounds like a strange way to lead a bike ride.
JF,
Often cars are required to lead/organize a bike ride. In this case, given when the collision happened and the timing posting about the ride Trampuz was organizing, he might have been shuttling cars to riders or driving in some sort of supportive capacity.
I know this to be true, but I find the level of automotive inputs to a large ride to be one of the most discouraging things about them.
It is unfortunate that the organizers went against the stated policy on the groups website encouraging folks to use the mt hood express which is a great transit based shuttle for this ride and costs only 2 dollars.
Horrible. I was driving up to Timothy that same morning and took notice of the road closure. I also saw quite a bit of bicycle traffic on Highway 26, which was pretty terrifying. I’ve biked up to Timberline a handful of times over the years, and the descent back to 26 is amazing and scary at the same time. A few years back, I almost watched my friend skid out of control into a truck on a blind corner on a gravel ride. If it weren’t for the quick reaction of the truck he would not be here today. From then on I stopped descending fast on the road and gravel. I’ll happily pin it on the mountain bike, but when it comes to the road I keep things under control. Keep your head on a swivel folks. I watched a women in the SW hills yesterday run a stop sign and almost hit the road cyclist in front of me.
The update is offensive, it was an hour after sunrise, this oh he didn’t have a headlight so lets blame the dead victim who can’t speak is not a good look by the driver regardless of who he is having make the argument. The driver hit a very reflective yellow signed median with his car at highway speed only a few months ago. I urge the driver to take responsibility for what he has done and turn in his driver’s license, it is clear from his recent repeated involvement in serious collisions that he is no longer capable of safely operating a motor vehicle.