MonadnockVol
New member
On Sunday (10/13/08), Mount Monadnock was a zoo. The combination of the holiday weekend, fall foliage near peak, and beautiful weather brought people out in droves. One of the rangers told me that he thought the number of visitors was the highest that the mountain had seen in the last ten years. The two mile drive from route 124 to the park tollbooth took me more than 40 minutes because of the long line of vehicles waiting for admission. Eventually all the parking spaces at all six trailheads were full.
Most of the teeming hordes were polite, friendly, knowledgeable hikers out to enjoy a day in nature (along with thousands of fellow human beings). That being said, the job of the rangers and volunteers (such as me) was made a lot harder by a small but vocal minority who complained and complained. They complained about the lines to get in. They complained about the $4 entrance fee (the park receives no funding from the state, so if you want there to be a park instead of a condo development, don’t evade the fee: rejoice in the preservation of nature). They complained about not being able to bring in their dogs; they complained about not being allowed to go off trail, and they complained about a few other things that I’ll get to in a moment. I’ll repeat what I said earlier: these hikers are the minority, but their sense of entitlement is as big as all outdoors.
So on Sunday I started up the White Dot trail. Just above Falcon Spring (where the Dot starts to get steep), I heard “Hey Ranger Guy” and had my first call of the day. A young man from Boston had gone out too hard and was feeling dizzy and nauseous. He was sitting when I got there but shortly afterwards he felt too dizzy to sit and we lay him down on the rock. Soon, I was joined by another ranger and we were doing a medical history and the other stuff that we do when the young man sat up, said he felt better and expressed his intention to continue up the mountain. We urged him to reconsider – he had told us a few minutes earlier that he had a history of fainting – and pointed out that if he fainted on a steep slope the consequences could be severe, even fatal, and that our resources for dealing with an emergency were stretched thin. In the end he continued up and we never heard from him again, so I guess he was all right.
Later I was sitting on the summit when headquarters radioed up that they had received a cell phone call from someone injured on the Pumpelly trail. (If you’re planning on getting injured on the mountain make sure your service is Verizon. I have Sprint and can never get a signal.) I was first on the scene and found a woman a hundred yards or so below the summit. She was extremely fit – she had just finished a week-long cycling vacation – but perhaps she hadn’t been stretching enough because she had been hopping from rock-to-rock when one of the muscles in her calf “popped.” Once I radioed her precise location people converged and soon we had three rangers and me there. That’s when another one of those hikers I was talking about earlier popped up. Without asking anyone, he announced that he was a pharmacist and an EMT and immediately starting manipulating the patient’s leg and asking her where it hurt. That’s when one of the rangers – who is an EMT – asked him if he was licensed in New Hampshire. “I’m on the national registry of EMT’s” he replied. “If you’re not licensed in New Hampshire, step away from the patient” said the ranger. “But thank you, for your efforts” said the other.
Maybe you are thinking that the first ranger’s response was a little brusque, but consider this: two of the rangers on the scene were wilderness EMT’s and even teach this stuff. One was the chief medical officer on an Everest expedition. They deal with over 100 leg injuries a year and have more than 20 years combined experience on the mountain. In short they know their stuff. They were standing next to the patient conferring about the best course of action when this guy with no bona fides other than his say so doesn’t consult with anyone but immediately starts handling a patient. I have seen this before: it is usually a guy, and often one who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, yet he feels a need to take charge. I suspect it is a form of testosterone poisoning because in eight years of volunteering on the mountain I have never seen a woman do this.
While this was happening several more things were occurring. The Old Toll Road trailhead radioed that they had received reports of a woman with a sprained ankle who was descending on the OTR under her own power and with the help of her party. The park manager dispatched a ranger with material to stabilize her leg and a pair of crutches to her location. At the same time HQ received a cell phone call that another young woman had sprained her ankle on the Red Spot Trail and was unable to move under her own power. A volunteer was dispatched to her location. And still at the same time two parents approached our party with the news that they hadn’t seen their child since the beginning of their hike several hours ago. And – at roughly the same time – two lost children (different from the one I just mentioned) wandered into Park HQ. And you wonder why the ranger was feeling a little testy?
In the end it was decided by Dave, the head mountain patrol ranger, to evacuate the woman by helicopter. A potential landing zone was found and the GPS coordinates radioed to Park HQ. Dartmouth-Hitchcock dispatched one of their choppers and Jaffrey dispatched one of their ambulances to the base of the mountain. And this is where some more of “those hikers” re-enter the story.
Landing a helicopter on a mountainside is an extremely dangerous thing to do. But people have watched too many MASH episodes and don’t take the danger seriously. They tend to get extremely put out if they are inconvenienced in any way. Maybe if they knew that it was for their own protection, they wouldn’t be so obnoxious. Last year, eight helicopters tipped over when trying to land. If that would to occur on the mountain, the blades of the rotor would disintegrate when they hit the rock, sending high velocity metal shrapnel and shards of rock in all directions. This particular landing zone was just below the summit which was occupied by over one hundred people. So it is standard procedure to block off the trails around the landing zone to keep the area clear. Well… you wouldn’t believe the outrage. My job was to stop the people who were coming up the trail. I stopped one couple only to catch them a few minutes later trying to sneak by me. Another volunteer had the job to stopping people descending from the summit. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and I’ll admit that he didn’t look that official (we joked later that we should have “New Hampshire Parks” tattooed on his chest) but he met with immediate resistance. One woman complained, “You can’t stop us. I’m cold and my kids are cold. We paid our money [$4 each] and if you’re going to stop us, I want my money back.”
When the helicopter tried to land I was with the patient. We were crouched behind a rock. The LZ was a little uneven. One skid was down and when the pilot eased back on the throttle, I saw the copter start to tip sideways. “Oh sh*t” I thought, “Here we go.” But the pilot powered back up and stabilized the bird. In the end, he dropped off a paramedic and took off. The plan was for the paramedic to wait with the patient and the helicopter would return, and balance on one skid – under power – while the patient was loaded. We started to move the patient to the landing zone with a ranger on one side of her and me on the other when we had to stop for crowd control. The people – including the angry woman – had pushed past the volunteer and were starting to march through the landing zone. But one of the rangers – remember the “testy” ranger from earlier in this account? – bellowed at them, and they retreated with sullen looks.
On the second try the helicopter successfully removed the paramedic and the patient. The trails were reopened (and several hikers, clearly embarrassed by the woman’s behavior, made a point of thanking us for our efforts), the lost kid was found waiting by his parent’s car, the woman on the Old Toll Road with the sprained ankle made it out under her own power, and the woman with the sprained ankle on the Red Spot trail was carried to the regular landing zone where the Dartmouth-Hitchcock helicopter evacuated her after they dropped off the first patient at the ambulance. But even then we weren’t done with “those hikers.” Those of us who were involved on this first helicopter evacuation were sitting high on the summit cone watching the second. We noticed that there were two hikers on the Smith Connecting Trail who, when they saw the helicopter landing, started bushwhacking: running directly at the helicopter. We radioed down to the rangers waiting with the second patient but there was no way to stop them. They were within 20 feet of the rear rotors when they finally stopped spinning.
I volunteer because I see how hard the rangers work and how much good they accomplish with so little funding and so few people. My plea to my fellow hikers is for us not to make their job harder. Monadnock – with over 100,000 summit hikers every year is a special case. If you haven’t been there on a busy weekend you probably can’t understand: Mt. Washington or Marcy Dam on a Sunday don’t come close. So things that are allowable elsewhere – like dogs & bushwhacking – would just kill this mountain. It’s great having a mountain with some much beauty and challenge so close to Boston, Hartford, etc. Let’s keep it that way for future generations.
- Monadnock Volunteer (aka Steve)
Most of the teeming hordes were polite, friendly, knowledgeable hikers out to enjoy a day in nature (along with thousands of fellow human beings). That being said, the job of the rangers and volunteers (such as me) was made a lot harder by a small but vocal minority who complained and complained. They complained about the lines to get in. They complained about the $4 entrance fee (the park receives no funding from the state, so if you want there to be a park instead of a condo development, don’t evade the fee: rejoice in the preservation of nature). They complained about not being able to bring in their dogs; they complained about not being allowed to go off trail, and they complained about a few other things that I’ll get to in a moment. I’ll repeat what I said earlier: these hikers are the minority, but their sense of entitlement is as big as all outdoors.
So on Sunday I started up the White Dot trail. Just above Falcon Spring (where the Dot starts to get steep), I heard “Hey Ranger Guy” and had my first call of the day. A young man from Boston had gone out too hard and was feeling dizzy and nauseous. He was sitting when I got there but shortly afterwards he felt too dizzy to sit and we lay him down on the rock. Soon, I was joined by another ranger and we were doing a medical history and the other stuff that we do when the young man sat up, said he felt better and expressed his intention to continue up the mountain. We urged him to reconsider – he had told us a few minutes earlier that he had a history of fainting – and pointed out that if he fainted on a steep slope the consequences could be severe, even fatal, and that our resources for dealing with an emergency were stretched thin. In the end he continued up and we never heard from him again, so I guess he was all right.
Later I was sitting on the summit when headquarters radioed up that they had received a cell phone call from someone injured on the Pumpelly trail. (If you’re planning on getting injured on the mountain make sure your service is Verizon. I have Sprint and can never get a signal.) I was first on the scene and found a woman a hundred yards or so below the summit. She was extremely fit – she had just finished a week-long cycling vacation – but perhaps she hadn’t been stretching enough because she had been hopping from rock-to-rock when one of the muscles in her calf “popped.” Once I radioed her precise location people converged and soon we had three rangers and me there. That’s when another one of those hikers I was talking about earlier popped up. Without asking anyone, he announced that he was a pharmacist and an EMT and immediately starting manipulating the patient’s leg and asking her where it hurt. That’s when one of the rangers – who is an EMT – asked him if he was licensed in New Hampshire. “I’m on the national registry of EMT’s” he replied. “If you’re not licensed in New Hampshire, step away from the patient” said the ranger. “But thank you, for your efforts” said the other.
Maybe you are thinking that the first ranger’s response was a little brusque, but consider this: two of the rangers on the scene were wilderness EMT’s and even teach this stuff. One was the chief medical officer on an Everest expedition. They deal with over 100 leg injuries a year and have more than 20 years combined experience on the mountain. In short they know their stuff. They were standing next to the patient conferring about the best course of action when this guy with no bona fides other than his say so doesn’t consult with anyone but immediately starts handling a patient. I have seen this before: it is usually a guy, and often one who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, yet he feels a need to take charge. I suspect it is a form of testosterone poisoning because in eight years of volunteering on the mountain I have never seen a woman do this.
While this was happening several more things were occurring. The Old Toll Road trailhead radioed that they had received reports of a woman with a sprained ankle who was descending on the OTR under her own power and with the help of her party. The park manager dispatched a ranger with material to stabilize her leg and a pair of crutches to her location. At the same time HQ received a cell phone call that another young woman had sprained her ankle on the Red Spot Trail and was unable to move under her own power. A volunteer was dispatched to her location. And still at the same time two parents approached our party with the news that they hadn’t seen their child since the beginning of their hike several hours ago. And – at roughly the same time – two lost children (different from the one I just mentioned) wandered into Park HQ. And you wonder why the ranger was feeling a little testy?
In the end it was decided by Dave, the head mountain patrol ranger, to evacuate the woman by helicopter. A potential landing zone was found and the GPS coordinates radioed to Park HQ. Dartmouth-Hitchcock dispatched one of their choppers and Jaffrey dispatched one of their ambulances to the base of the mountain. And this is where some more of “those hikers” re-enter the story.
Landing a helicopter on a mountainside is an extremely dangerous thing to do. But people have watched too many MASH episodes and don’t take the danger seriously. They tend to get extremely put out if they are inconvenienced in any way. Maybe if they knew that it was for their own protection, they wouldn’t be so obnoxious. Last year, eight helicopters tipped over when trying to land. If that would to occur on the mountain, the blades of the rotor would disintegrate when they hit the rock, sending high velocity metal shrapnel and shards of rock in all directions. This particular landing zone was just below the summit which was occupied by over one hundred people. So it is standard procedure to block off the trails around the landing zone to keep the area clear. Well… you wouldn’t believe the outrage. My job was to stop the people who were coming up the trail. I stopped one couple only to catch them a few minutes later trying to sneak by me. Another volunteer had the job to stopping people descending from the summit. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and I’ll admit that he didn’t look that official (we joked later that we should have “New Hampshire Parks” tattooed on his chest) but he met with immediate resistance. One woman complained, “You can’t stop us. I’m cold and my kids are cold. We paid our money [$4 each] and if you’re going to stop us, I want my money back.”
When the helicopter tried to land I was with the patient. We were crouched behind a rock. The LZ was a little uneven. One skid was down and when the pilot eased back on the throttle, I saw the copter start to tip sideways. “Oh sh*t” I thought, “Here we go.” But the pilot powered back up and stabilized the bird. In the end, he dropped off a paramedic and took off. The plan was for the paramedic to wait with the patient and the helicopter would return, and balance on one skid – under power – while the patient was loaded. We started to move the patient to the landing zone with a ranger on one side of her and me on the other when we had to stop for crowd control. The people – including the angry woman – had pushed past the volunteer and were starting to march through the landing zone. But one of the rangers – remember the “testy” ranger from earlier in this account? – bellowed at them, and they retreated with sullen looks.
On the second try the helicopter successfully removed the paramedic and the patient. The trails were reopened (and several hikers, clearly embarrassed by the woman’s behavior, made a point of thanking us for our efforts), the lost kid was found waiting by his parent’s car, the woman on the Old Toll Road with the sprained ankle made it out under her own power, and the woman with the sprained ankle on the Red Spot trail was carried to the regular landing zone where the Dartmouth-Hitchcock helicopter evacuated her after they dropped off the first patient at the ambulance. But even then we weren’t done with “those hikers.” Those of us who were involved on this first helicopter evacuation were sitting high on the summit cone watching the second. We noticed that there were two hikers on the Smith Connecting Trail who, when they saw the helicopter landing, started bushwhacking: running directly at the helicopter. We radioed down to the rangers waiting with the second patient but there was no way to stop them. They were within 20 feet of the rear rotors when they finally stopped spinning.
I volunteer because I see how hard the rangers work and how much good they accomplish with so little funding and so few people. My plea to my fellow hikers is for us not to make their job harder. Monadnock – with over 100,000 summit hikers every year is a special case. If you haven’t been there on a busy weekend you probably can’t understand: Mt. Washington or Marcy Dam on a Sunday don’t come close. So things that are allowable elsewhere – like dogs & bushwhacking – would just kill this mountain. It’s great having a mountain with some much beauty and challenge so close to Boston, Hartford, etc. Let’s keep it that way for future generations.
- Monadnock Volunteer (aka Steve)
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