Fatality on Moosilauke 3/14-3/15

[Rainman]

https://nhfishgame.com/2021/03/16/hiker-fatality-on-mt-moosilauke/
Looks like he got caught by the cold front Sunday.

 

[Andrew]

The squalls were very fierce on Sunday, more so then I would have imagined. I usually spend quite a few hours in the woods on the weekends; had no desire to do so on Sunday.

 

[peakbagger]

A tough one. I expect a lot of folks are trying to get some last winter summits in before Saturday AM when spring arrives. I have been caught more than few times by the winds that seemed to go up exponentially once the trail leaves the trees on the carriage road.

RIP

 

[skiguy]

Sorry to hear this. Interesting he was found on Gorge Brook after the plan was up and down Glenncliff. Not sure of the wind direction but possibly he decided it was easier to keep the wind at his back. Condolences to his family and friends.

 

[mirabela]

Sorry to hear this. Interesting he was found on Gorge Brook after the plan was up and down Glenncliff. Not sure of the wind direction but possibly he decided it was easier to keep the wind at his back. Condolences to his family and friends.

I was thinking the same. And it's easy to imagine a person having a very tough time finding where the Gorge Brook trail enters the trees in high wind and poor visibility. This is very sad.

 

[B the Hiker]

I was up about a month ago. Blue sky, but at the Glencliff trailhead it was "snowing" lightly. Actually snow blowing off the summit. Met a guy coming down who said it was whiteout and he had to wait for the winds to die down to find the next cairn on the return. Said footprints were gone the second he made them. Met a young woman on the ridge who said essentially the same, although she downplayed it.

No footprints to follow at all once on the summit cone--drifting snow everywhere, although the underlying trail was packed down. Strong winds, and while not a complete white out, I could see someone being shaken by the experience. Face mask and goggles necessary for the return. Very few footprints to follow, only on the lee side of a rise. It was my twelfth separate month on the summit, almost entire from the Glencliff Trail, and even then, having been from that direction so many times, it was still a struggle to find the path back down. I can easily see how someone could lose the trail.

Dang! You know, you drive up, you hike up, you see conditions you don't like, but the summit seems so close. You know you don't like the conditions, and yet, it's so hard to make the call the turn around...

 

[Puma concolor]

Very sad.

Haven’t done a ton of winter hiking in the Whites, but two of my trips have struck home this week. Finally started reading “The Last Traverse,” which follows a Franconia Ridge loop attempt that so many of us have done in the heart of winter. And now this exact agenda I completed a bunch of years back on a frigid but sunny winter day which was somewhere between kind of pleasant and very unpleasant.

Always feel a sense of loss when one of us is peeled from the ranks of the living but also feel as if a good death is an appropriate punctuation mark to a good life.

RIP, Roy Sanford.

 

[Mike P.]

Sunday's squalls were quite severe, I was driving over the Kanc in one of them. Monday's weather was amongst the coldest and windiest of the season, Middle Sugarloaf was plently of exposure on 3/15. My condolences to Roy's family