
How a White Mountains trek turned into a survival test - ColinWright
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/style/2014/05/23/brutal-cold-bad-luck-and-bad-decisions-turn-white-mountains-trek-into-survival-test/e11bhDs1uY5HRw5GOZ7vyM/story.html
======
noir_lord
It's not usually one thing going wrong that gets you it's the next or the one
after that.

I nearly got hypothermia a few years ago.

I'd gotten into cycling and been the tough northerner (England not America)
that I am I went for a ride in the north Yorkshire hills on a sunny winters
day.

Got about 45 miles into the ride and I got a flat, no problem I have a spare
so I swapped them out and headed back and then the sky opened freezing
rain/sleet and the wind crept up, again not a problem as I was wearing wet
weather but then I got another flat (road bikes are a git at times) and I
didn't have a spare tube.

So now I'm 10 miles away from anywhere I know on a freezing cold winters day
wearing gear designed to keep you warm when you are moving and working hard
with a bike that is useless and wearing clipless cycling shoes (not designed
to be walked in) and because of the cold my phone battery (which was never
good) was dying and it's getting dark.

I used my bike tool to take the cleats of my shoes and set of back towards the
last village I'd been through, it took hours with temp's around 0C in a 20-30
mile an hour wind so the wind chill was horrible and since I'd planned on been
home before it got dark my lights where sat on my computer desk at home.

I got into the village about 8pm and the little old lady in the local pub took
one look at me and went and got towels, a hot drink and some of the nicest
chocolate I've ever tasted and an hour later I was ok but damn that was
unpleasant.

\---

Now when I ride alone in winter I always ride with my lights on the bike even
during the day, I use a medium sized backpack to carry: fully charged spare
phone battery, puncture repair kit and two tubes, 3-4 bars of kendal mint
cake, spare batteries for lights, thermal socks, small towel, pair of
windproof overtrousers (lightweight and waterproof) and a pair of hiking
trainers.

~~~
masklinn
Garbage bags can serve as rain cover or waterproof sleeping bag protection in
a pinch, although they're not very resistant to puncture packing a few can
save your bacon, especially with a few sticks/supports to build a one-time
shelter against wind and water.

~~~
retroafroman
Using trash bags meant for trash compactors is a big step up in puncture
resistance. They are typically 2-3times thicker than the typical trash bags
you find and not much bigger or heavier when packed.

------
ef4
This guy still apparently didn't learn his lesson.

"...he would set a point of no return and learn more about trail conditions.
“And probably take another trail.”"

BUZZ, wrong answer. Trail conditions change. People make mistakes. People
break their legs. Freak weather rolls in.

The right answer is to always be prepared to hunker down for a couple days.
And grow some situational awareness -- it's never ok to let anyone in the
group be wet and cold in the wilderness. By the time somebody's sock is frozen
to their boot all the alarm bells should be ringing in your head and you're
lighting a fire and setting up camp.

“But what I didn’t realize was the danger of hypothermia.”

That's unforgivable. What other danger rates mentioning? Even in summer people
die of hypothermia all the time. In bitter cold, in deep snow, and it never
crossed your mind?

~~~
camperman
Yep - poor leadership and preparation on display here. He should have led the
group at all times. He didn't seem to be fully aware of the weather
conditions. And everyone should have had a space blanket and some garbage
bags. At least two people should have had fire steel. And at least two people
should have a machete or small ax. It's these shortish hikes that are the most
dangerous because you think nothing can happen to you.

------
gumby
A great case of cascading failure and bad decision making. A few things stand
out.

\- They made several bad mistakes. The tag line of the article said, "and how
grit ultimately got the group out of a frozen labyrinth" but it was luck, not
grit. The bad decisions were downplayed in this write up.

\- They didn't have the right gear and weren't prepared (e.g. keep at least
some water and batteries close to your body). One energy bar?

\- They shouldn't have pushed on at night. Even for a day hike in the snow I
carry a shovel and a couple of foil blankets and know how to rig a shelter.
They would have done better to stick together (not to split up), know ahead of
time who makes the final decision, and to have waited the night out.

\- I don't remember the white mountains as well, but the places I backpack in
winter (e.g. minnesota, california, new mexico, colorado) I use a topo and a
compass and only use the GPS for back up.

\- the three times I've felt "wow, there's a good chance chance I won't
survive this" my overwhelming thought has been embarrassment at my own
stupidity. Two of the three times the initial failure was "set out too late."
And it was always multiple, cascading failures -- typically you should be able
to deal with one or two things going wrong -- same as with engineering.

------
contacternst
Having hiked in the White Mountains with a small group for 6 days, it sounds
like the leader of this group underestimated a mountain range containing Mt
Mansfield, where the coldest wind chill has ever been recorded.

Just because these mountains aren't any taller than 7000 feet doesn't mean it
isn't one of the most rugged in the world. The Jet Stream is particularly low
in this part of the world which is the reason of the extreme cold.

Sometimes, vanity can be deadly.

~~~
mbubb
Wow sounds like a nice trek. Those are famously steep, aren't they?

~~~
contacternst
Not so much steep as Rugged, dangerous, and extremely unpredictable.

------
revelation
Apparently not one of these veterans thought to bring a PLB
([http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=plb](http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-
keywords=plb)).

~~~
davycro
I was going to post the same thing. My family uses the SPOT messenger.
Whenever one of my brothers embarks on a dangerous trip, he takes it with him.
Recently my brother kayaked through the Grand Canyon alone in the winter.
Every day he would "check in" and we could see where he was camped and how
much progress he made down the river that day.

~~~
stef25
I used a SPOT tracker when motorbiking through Africa, the company provides a
Google map page that updates every 2 min. Family back home loved watching that
page.

Afaik the emergency button (not the one to your family but to support
services) would only work in the US, couldn't imagine a helicopter picking me
up in Mauritania.

------
mparr4
As a backcountry skier in New England, I can attest that it is surprisingly
easy to get yourself into high-consequence situations.

The mountains are smaller and the states are more densely populated, but that
doesn't mean that the wilderness can be taken lightly, particularly in winter.
Especially for a sport that places value in isolation ("first tracks" are
highly sought and many locals have their own secret powder stashes) you'll
often find yourself in situations where an injury or gear failure can mean
serious mortal peril. Even if you're lucky enough to have cell service,
batteries don't hold their charge in extreme cold, more often than not, you're
on your own.

These hobbies are, in fact, dangerous and the consequences are real. They are
also incredibly fun. You've just got to know what you're getting yourself
into.

------
DanielBMarkham
So the mistakes here were getting off into the deep snow on a trail and
continuing forward hoping the trail would get better. Add in a 15-mile hike
over somewhat unfamiliar ground, and you've got a party slogging it out
through the dark desperately trying to make it out of the woods.

The good news is that they always knew where they were -- they had GPS. Also
they were always within 15 miles or so of some kind of civilization. So I'm
with the professor: there was no danger of not getting out, as long as nobody
just sat down and stopped moving.

If it hadn't been for the GPS, I might have gone the shelter route, but that's
a huge time sink. You're better off just doing what they did: kept slugging
away at it.

Note: I'm not trying to downplay the dangers of hypothermia; that stuff can
kill you. But I would think that any overnight hiking trip in the snowy
mountains would face this, so to me it doesn't look like a new problem that
emerged as part of the rest of the adventure.

~~~
japhyr
> Also they were always within 15 miles or so of some kind of civilization. So
> I'm with the professor: there was no danger of not getting out, as long as
> nobody just sat down and stopped moving.

I think you are underestimating how difficult it can be to travel in terrain
with a deep snowpack, downed trees, and no clear trail markers. It sounds like
their gps batteries were on their last bars, so gps was not a given for their
entire trek out.

Deep snow can make a 100-yard stretch take an hour. They said that every
downed tree took the group 10 minutes. That sounds like an exagerration while
reading comfortably in front of a computer, but having been there myself
that's a realistic statement.

I took a summer trek on a less-traveled spur trail in the White Mountains one
summer. There were downed trees every 20-50 feet for a couple miles. I was
working at a camp the whole summer, so I was on trails every day and in quite
good shape for traveling quickly. Even so, that was a long day! 15 miles in
harsh winter conditions can easily mean a very real danger of not getting out.

I also spent several hours crossing a small, open basin in the Colorado
Rockies one spring. The snow was waist-deep, with a crust that wouldn't quite
support my weight, and heavy snow underneath. Every step was a significant
effort. That stretch would have taken 10 minutes in the summer, and 3 minutes
on skis with better snow. Traveling in the mountains in winter is entirely
different than it is in the summer.

~~~
mbubb
To your point - I recently read an account of the infamous Andean airplane
crash (cannibalism, etc)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster)

Three men struck out to find help for the group after they realized that they
were not going to be rescued. They hiked for 3 days to get to the top of the
closest peak. From that vantage they realized it was a much longer trip and
they did not have supplies enough for 3 men. They sent one guy back. It took
him roughly an hour (on a makeshift sled) to backtrack what it took them 3
days to climb.

"On the third day of the trek, Parrado reached the top of the mountain before
the other two. Stretched before him as far as the eye could see were more
mountains. In fact, he had just climbed one of the mountains (as high as 4,650
metres (15,260 ft)) which forms the border between Argentina and Chile,
meaning that they were still tens of kilometres from the green valleys of
Chile. After spying a small "Y" in the distance, he gauged that a way out of
the mountains must lie beyond, and refused to give up hope. Knowing that the
hike would take more energy than they had originally planned for, Parrado and
Canessa sent Vizintín back to the crash site, as they were rapidly running out
of rations. Since the return was entirely downhill, it only took him one hour
to get back to the fuselage using a makeshift sled."

------
qwerta
When cell phone signal is low, do not try to ring, send text message! It has
much lower network overhead and has better chances to be delivered!

Sometimes you can even send/receive text messages from an airplane.

~~~
eli
While we're giving cell phone tips: in an emergency, you should dial 911 even
if you don't think your phone has service. It will try to connect to
competitors cell towers that would normally be ignored.

Likewise, you can call 911 on a "disconnected" phone or one with no SIM card.

------
js2
Link to the lobsterman story mentioned in the article:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/magazine/a-speck-in-the-
se...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/magazine/a-speck-in-the-sea.html)

Terrific read and I think it may have been posted here.

------
tom_jones
A great example of the difference between academic knowledge and real world
experience.

~~~
rwallace
Be careful not to write it off too lightly. As far as I can see from the
article, the professor _did_ have real world experience, and still got into
bad trouble by being overconfident.

~~~
001sky
Still massively overconfident and un-prepared. Its easy to have "experience"
but be lacking in the correct type of experience. Simple examples here:
treefall. His previous experience was in the alpine, so maybe he wasn't
expecting this? Also, its not clear how much basic experience he had was in
the back-country (self-supported). That would seem to explain his lack of
basic preperation (re: 10 essentials). Nor is it clear how well he studied his
maps--lots of water-crossings--some of these issues should not have been
surprises.

~~~
rwallace
Yep. The more general lesson I see to be learned from this story is: never
take inherently dangerous activities or situations lightly, even if you've
done it a few times before and nothing seemed to go wrong.

------
mbubb
There was a story of a guy in South Carolina a few weeks back who went out in
the woods with 2 kids and had to be rescued. He was incredibly unprepared and
was lost with young kids for ~ 2days. There is a distortion, where map
distance and proximity to civilzation gives a false sense of security and we
under prepare.

These stories are useful. Both to get ideas and to validate/ challenge choices
I make when going hiking. To critique it is not to say "Look at that dumass,
my hero Bear Grillz would have known what to do..." but rather "Wow - this can
happen so easily and relatively close to warm beds, even to experienced folks"

And this guy sounds much more experienced than I am. But:

When you do this kind of hiking you register the route with someone who
expects you to be out by such and such a time... Last hike I wnet on my friend
logged our route in a trail book. It is easy for someone to get injured, cross
country skiing will give you nasty twists and breaks.

Fire equipment? They are in a pine forest and could have gotten a fire going.

Also those aluminum foil-like emergency blankets - they are so small and
light, there is space in any pack. Came in handy on my last overnight as a
sleepingbag liner as the night got colder than expected.

How/Why did his feet get wet? Crosscountry ski boots are usually a Gortex-y
material with a hard base and a cleat for the bnding. Wonder if he fell in a
stream, etc. If so that is time to stop and make a fire. Get warm and dry.

I am curious what they were wearing. It was warm enough that some of the
streams were not ice covered - so probably below freezing at night but with
normal walking they should have stayed warm.

Hypothermia can happen when the air temp is quite a bit above freezing esp. -
if you are wet.

Last winter I was on well marked xcountry ski trails in the Adirondacks (NY
State) with my boys and another father and children. The loop took longer than
expected and we spent the last two hours getting back in the dark. No cell
service and we got off the skis. I bound all the skis together and carried
them and we hiked back.

It was well below freezing and was concerned about the little toes and
fingers. Since we had registered the hike a snowmobile came out for us and
caught us in the last km - didn't take us back though, the bastard. :)

I did not have a pack on but had compass, firestarter and a few emerg blankets
in my coat. I had two small LEDs - I gave one to the other father and we used
them to check for blazes and read map. WHen the smowmobile came they were
useful for signaling. Plus a metal water bottle to melt snow if needed...

So that situation worked out ok. I am not really comparing it to the situation
in the article. I was glad to have the foil blankets and firestarter, in case.

My wife says I overpack (and she is not wrong). We have animated discussions
before going out. "Why do you need this rope?" "I dunno - that's the point"
"What are you going to do with this axe?" "Etc..."

An overly heavy pack is a liability as well. I could not keep up with my
friend on my last overnight. We also had to climb cliffs and I seriously
considered tieing off the bag and pulling it up the cliff after I got up.
(with the paracord my wife was complaining about - ;) )

Also when you fall extra weight increases the impact... And I fall on
occaision. So I must learn to reduce.

But, I think if I were in that group - I would be angry with the lack of prep
- angry at my self mostly.

~~~
japhyr
> I seriously considered tieing off the bag and pulling it up the cliff after
> I got up.

I'm not sure about your particular situation, but that's a clear sign that
people are getting into a situation where they should seriously consider
turning back. I have worked in mountain rescue for a while now, and that's a
common story when people end up needing help.

If you have to take your pack off to go up something you weren't planning to
go up, you should probably head back the way you came. Otherwise you can
easily find yourself unable to go up any higher, and unable to get back down
on your own. It's way easier to go up than it is to go down.

~~~
mbubb
Good point.

I was with a more experienced friend who was carrying less weight. I never had
to take my pack off. If I had thought I would need to I would have shed some
non-polluting weight. I was carrying 6L water at that point and there was the
prospect of potable springs on the trail ahead. We also had h2o filters...

That hike taught me about weight. I need to pack less on overnights.

Where do you do mountain rescue?

~~~
japhyr
I live in southeast Alaska. I've been mostly inactive the last few years
because I had a kid, but I was pretty active for about ten years. I'm getting
back into it as my kid grows up. Rescue work has been one of the most
interesting and rewarding things I've ever done.

------
tod222
Given its high profile, including the linked article in the Boston Globe, this
incident will likely be analyzed in the Accidents column of a forthcoming
issue of Appalachia Journal. [1] I don't expect that the analysis will let
this group off lightly. Both the participants and commenters here have already
pointed out basic mistakes that were made by the group.

This newspaper account lacks information important to understanding the
incident, such as the temperature and forecast. Additionally, snow conditions
could have been reported by checking with the Forest Service, the Appalachian
Mountain Club, and the Mount Washington Observatory. Analysis of this incident
in Appalachia Journal will likely include such details. Winter conditions in
the White Mountains are highly variable from year to year and have a
tremendous impact on the outcome of backcountry trips.

One thing that hasn't been touched on either by the article or by the
commenters—they were doing this as a ski trip. It doesn't say what kind of
boots they had, but cross country ski boots tend to have less insulation than
winter mountaineering boots (often much less). While temperatures at nearby
Whitefield airport weren't bad during the daylight hours of the 16th, they
went below zero (F) in the early hours of the 17th. [2] There's no way I'd
want anyone in my group wearing lightly insulated cross country boots in below
zero temperatures.

It is significant that the trail wasn't broken out. That it took them nine
hours to go from Stillwater Junction to the closed Franconia Brook campsite
indicates that snow and trail conditions were terrible.

I think that both the article and commenters here overemphasize the value of
GPS. The route is not difficult to follow. Most of their second day was spent
following a watershed downstream. For this you need a GPS? Warm boots are far
more useful (note that the article says that a GPS failed). There is no cell
reception where they were, either. When (not 'if') the electronics fail will
you be able to cope?

The most important thing that this group did right was to get themselves out
under their own power. People who come from urban areas have an incredible
temptation to dial 9-1-1 or push a magic "rescue me" button on a PLB device.
There is no fleet of helicopters standing by to come get you.

So many people come to New Hampshire to hike or enjoy the outdoors that there
are numerous incidents requiring rescue. This has stressed the budgets of the
state and federal agencies involved and taxed the energy of the volunteer
organizations. Some of the incidents are due to ignorance, negligence, or
irresponsibility. People discount the danger to which they expose their
rescuers, but meanwhile most of the NH SAR community is aware that volunteer
Albert Dow was killed taking part in a search. [3]

New Hampshire started the hikeSafe program [4] due to the increase in the
number of search and rescue incidents. It's disappointing that this article
didn't interview any SAR personnel or people with winter hiking experience to
highlight this group's mistakes. Nor does it list any sources of backcounty
education, such as the AMC New Hampshire Chapter's Winter Workshops. [5] It's
typical for downcountry media to make heroes of participants and treat such
incidents as adventures rather than discuss errors, and this article somewhat
follows that pattern.

[1]
[http://www.outdoors.org/publications/appalachia/](http://www.outdoors.org/publications/appalachia/)

[2]
[http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KHIE/2014/2/17/D...](http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KHIE/2014/2/17/DailyHistory.html)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Herr#Early_life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Herr#Early_life)

[4] [http://www.hikesafe.com/](http://www.hikesafe.com/)

[5] [http://amc-nh.org/committee/excursions/index-
winterworkshop....](http://amc-nh.org/committee/excursions/index-
winterworkshop.php)

~~~
marvin
This is what I was thinking too, as a Norwegian that's been skiing my whole
life. A 15-mile trek in temperatures close to zero F is not something you'll
do lightly. Sounds like at least the trip leaders were in great physical shape
but not with the right equipment for this kind of trip.

If you're going in conditions with lots of poweder snow and no trails, you
need proper mountaineering skis if you want to do it halfway comfortably. E.g.
something like this: [http://www.asnes.com/produkt/combat-
nato/](http://www.asnes.com/produkt/combat-nato/), that's sufficiently wide
and works with skins in rough terrain, etc. Otherwise you'll sink through on
every step and waste lots of energy. Also, as you say, the boots are better
insulated. Standard touring BC bindings will freeze if you get snow in them,
making is tough to get your ski back on. Taking _off_ your skis and walking
when the snow conditions are anything less than hard and frozen? Sounds
painful.

