"Live" Rescue On Facebook: Hiker Lost On Lafayette

[iAmKrzys]

The below news release was posted in one of the Facebook groups. I was not able to find it on F&G web site but assuming it is real (I don't have any reason to think otherwise) the bit that I find interesting is that F&G did not have accurate coordinates for the location of the hiker until 911 call went through. The lesson I draw from this is that if anyone wants to make SAR efforts more effective they should open up google maps with location service enabled, copy their current location from google maps and paste it into 911 text. Google maps also has continuous location sharing but I would worry about this eating up my phone battery too much while not providing any additional value if I were staying put.

News release from Fish and Game:

Franconia: On Friday December 14, 2018 shortly after 10:00 am Fish and Game was alerted to a hiker in distress on Mount Lafayette.

Several callers to NH Fish and Game Department reported seeing a post on Facebook stating “send help, stuck by cairn on Old Bridle in alpine between hut and Lafayette Summit. Wind took map and compass white out conditions”. At the same time a text was received by NH 911 from 25 year old Robert Cummings of Loudon NH that he needed help on Mount Lafayette.

Weather conditions at the time showed winds around 40 miles per hour and temperatures in the twenties with blowing snow causing white out conditions. Eventually Conservation Officers were able to communicate with Mr. Cummings by text. Mr. Cummings had tried to locate additional cairns but was unable and did not want to lose the trail altogether.

A group of Conservation Officers started up the trail shortly after noon. Eventually Mr. Cummings was able to place a short call to 911 and accurate coordinates were obtained showing that he was just below the summit of Mount Lafayette on the Greenleaf Trail.

Conservation Officers located Mr. Cummings at 4:30 PM and were able to guide him out to the trailhead where they arrived at 7:00 PM. Mr. Cummings explained that he had departed on his hike at approximately 2:00 Am with the intention of summiting Mount Lafayette via the Old Bridle Path.

As he approached the summit of Mount Lafayette at 7:00 AM he saw approaching bad weather. He decided to turn back short of the summit but was overcome by high winds and no visibility. He spent three hours trying to locate the cairns that delineate the trail. At 10 AM he notified friends and Facebook of his plight and took cover in a snow cave until Conservation Officers arrived.

 

[sierra]

We're not all robot, mountaineering super heros like you Sierra.

I know, but don't feel bad. I didn't get this good by surfing social media.

 

[TJsName]

If you already have a phone and data signal... https://caltopo.com/map.html#

Hit the button to center in location (bullseye).

Allow location information (if needed).

 

[Mike P.]

Like Sierra, I spent several teen years hunting. Outside of the gun, it's basically bushwhacking and finding your way back. Years of Dad driving around getting us lost, asking if we knew where we were & then turning the corner to be someplace we knew but never approached from that direction helped too. (What we did for fun in the 70's after looking at license plates and getting truckers to blow their air horn, before pong and that silly football game with the three red blinking lights)

Sounds like he was much higher than I thought, he was not close to the scrub line but close to the summit. Saying he was on the OBP & where he was is a relatively common mistake as most go up OBP and then Greenleaf and not up the Greenleaf Trail from Cannon and through Eagle Pass. Like Sierra, I seldom carry a map in the Whites, I probably would stuff it in my pack in winter. If I was going someplace new I would carry it. (For me, new seldom visited places would be Evan's Notch, Wildcat from 113 area Northern approaches for Whiteface and Passaconaway for me)

Some of your planning should be reading the trail descriptions several times and studying the map beforehand you even drive up to the Whites.

I can only sumise his map was ripped from his hand in a 40 MPH wind because he was unfolding it on the trail. That's a mistake, before you go, your map should be pre-folded to just show the area you are hiking in. For the whites, other than the larger scale Presidential map, most hikes you take can be pre-folded so they fit in a quart zip-lock bag. This is a 5"x 5" or so map instead of trying to unfold the whole map out in the field. (It stays in your hands, not blown into the wilderness, sorry M&M's for misquoting your iconic saying. For the Presidentials you may have to fold so above treeline is visible & your pre-planning should be extensive.)

We all have different abilities here, and from what little I've heard, the FB groups even have a wider range of ability and comfort levels. I would hope that everyone in the FB groups would not try and do everything that the group does. Once upon a time here, I organized a few hikes with other VFTT'ers and the couple of AMC Chapter hikes I went on had several emails go back and forth so you knew everyone's comfort level and experience. if you are overly cautious, you don't want to be in a group that thinks crawling the last 100 yards to reach the summit is okay.

It sounds like Mr. Cummings was experienced in making several trips to Lafayette and familiar with the Whites. (Like Inuit for snow, many adjectives can be used for one's knowledge of an area, he was familiar, maybe knew them well, not intimately apparemtly.) Some of us would call 40 MPH and 30 feet of visibility very ugly, some would call it challenging but not extraordinary. Given his sunrise picture taking, my guess is that he is used to solo hiking, unless he has a friend with the same love of sunrise pics, finding partners for 2:00 AM starts are few and far between except for Presi-traverses. (Many White Mountain rescues usually involve 2:00 AM as a bedtime upon meeting friends Friday night and then they start Saturday later than planned. )

Again, he lived, he had a fair amount of gear to last seven hours just sitting there. I'd be curious if the cairn he was near was the iconic cairn...… (PM me if you want more info)

 

[miehoff]

Wow. Has this become a forum for folks to talk about how great they are as hikers? When I first joined this place it was a welcoming and helpful environment. Reading all of these posts makes me feel like I am in rush hour traffic with every driver thinking that they are the best; eagerly ready to judge the other. Come on!

 

[CaptCaper]

Wow. Has this become a forum for folks to talk about how great they are as hikers? When I first joined this place it was a welcoming and helpful environment. Reading all of these posts makes me feel like I am in rush hour traffic with every driver thinking that they are the best; eagerly ready to judge the other. Come on!

I know..it's changed over the years..

 

[richard]

Sometimes I’m a little hesitant to ask a question. Although,I still get a lot of helpful information.

 

[DayTrip]

Sometimes I’m a little hesitant to ask a question. Although,I still get a lot of helpful information.

Don't be! I've asked tons of stupid questions on VFTT over the years and learned quite a bit and improved my experience and confidence level a lot faster than I would have on my own. Can't let other people's opinions stand in the way of learning. Plenty of people on this forum will answer your questions, give you quality advice and "tell it like it is" if you're really venturing off into "stupid land", even if they're rolling their eyes at you at home in their living room.

 

[JoshandBaron]

I don't see the "string" method as viable at all. You(')r(e) going to carry 100ft of cord for the very slim chance you need it?

I need to guy out my tarp with something. 200 ft of Dyneema weighs 3.5 ounces.

 

[Tom_Murphy]

Random comments:
I think it was clever thinking to try posting to FB. I applaud him for not caring about the negative comments to that action. He needed help any way he could get it.
He had an enough insulating layers to survive the seven hour wait. So that shows some minimum level of preparation. I assume he managed his layers well enough on the way up that he avoided sweating into his base layers.
I would like to know if he had a CCF pad and if not how he insulated from the ground. I am also curious as to his food and water supplies.
I give him the benefit of the doubt on the map, compass, and bivy. Those items sit in my emergency bag when hiking on trail in the three seasons; so I can easily envision them blowing away.
If I was in that situation, I believe I would go downhill in any direction possible, to get to the shelter of the treeline.

 

[Mike P.]

Always ask questions. The group has changed in nature as once upon a time, VFTT and the AMC's website were the only two sites that had any collection of online advice and trail conditions. There was once even a climbing section here and on occasion the ranting (gaslighting existed, however the word and new meaning did not exist) was epic at times.

Some of us would be rich if we had a dime for every, can I climb Mt. Washington question that was answered. (with drinking buddies, nude hiking day, winter, walk up the road, the train tracks, does it count if I ride up, or down etc.) Other sites now house the majority of hiking condition reports and FB and Meet up groups are places where trips are planned and information is shared. In order to keep this board on topic, it was decided by those in charge to have members to be by invitation. For the most part, that means in many cases we are a group of reasonably (maybe not reasonable) experienced all season hikers. (We often are guilty of preaching to the choir)


Regarding having your map prefolded for your destination, here are two maps showing Middle Carter, which of these do you want to hold and read on a miserable day.

 

[Will]

Wow. Has this become a forum for folks to talk about how great they are as hikers?

Agreed. Terrible to see this. I"m embarrassed for them as they're not nearly as great as I am.

 

[Mike P.]

Agreed. Terrible to see this. I"m embarrassed for them as they're not nearly as great as I am.

I was saving that for how great I am as a driver which was also mentioned. In my youth I was also a great drunk driver. (I had a great sarcastic rant on how bad CT drivers but lost it)

 

[Mike P.]

In rereading the Facebook post, his map and other items slid/were blown away because he had them in a nylon bag that he placed on a hard icy surface that wind and likely slope aided in him losing them.

As a group we have dissected search and rescues for decades, yes decades, going back to the 90's before VFTT blew up in 2003. No one is beating their chest saying how could they have failed on a trip I do blindfolded, no one has blamed him (yet & I won't) for hiking solo and we have learned that his method of initiating the rescue requires less bandwidth or signal strength then a phone call. In poor conditions the upper section of the Greenleaf trail is tricky, there have been several rescues in the last ten years and a couple of fatalities high on Lafayette either on the Greenleaf, the FRT or Garfleid Ridge Trail, north of the summit.

As a group, we take risks that most of the non-hiking community do not understand or understand why we go. (How many of your co-workers think you are nuts for winter hiking in the mountains?)

Accidents in North American Mountaineering is published annually, you can buy it on Amazon Prime. (I had to look it up to get the title correct.) It is not published to shame those in it, it's published so the rest of us can learn from other people's mishaps so we don't have to learn them on our own.

 

[sierra]

Wow. Has this become a forum for folks to talk about how great they are as hikers? When I first joined this place it was a welcoming and helpful environment. Reading all of these posts makes me feel like I am in rush hour traffic with every driver thinking that they are the best; eagerly ready to judge the other. Come on!

Maybe one of the reasons this site has such a small level of activity, is that it can be uptight in nature. Some of us still have a sense of humor. While your pointing out how others judge, you in the same sentence do the same thing. Irony at its best.

 

[TJsName]

Wow. Has this become a forum for folks to talk about how great they are as hikers? When I first joined this place it was a welcoming and helpful environment. Reading all of these posts makes me feel like I am in rush hour traffic with every driver thinking that they are the best; eagerly ready to judge the other. Come on!

First off, I think that everyone here is thankful for the rescue and safe return of this hiker. If I'm wrong, don't hesitate to call me out.

To your point, I don't think the greatness of our hiking is the point most people here are trying to make, but the group's overall experience level is pretty impressive. With that experience comes confidence and anecdotes. I also think that people here are good at honestly assessing how they would react in that situation and if they think they are prepared to handle it. I appreciate that this assessment can come off as elitist, but I think it's a valuable discussion. The cast of characters here means that those assessments will happen in different ways, but I generally appreciate them all.

A lot of people here have had close calls one way or another and have learned from them (hopefully). Being in a white out is an intense experience, and being disoriented can cause panic in bad weather, and it sounds like the gentleman generally kept his wits about him and didn't storm off into a ravine and become impossible to find. This point should not be understated, IMO.

For an anecdote, I did find myself in a situation where I was above treeline in the dark in heavy snow (coming down Boott Spur). We couldn't see the next cairn as visibility was maybe 50 feet at most (the intense snow was blinding with our headlamps). We would send one of us ahead to find the next cairn, and we did that all the way to the junction with the Boott Spur Link, and again down to treeline. Thankfully there was no wind, and it being night actually might have made it easier to navigate, as we became moving lighthouses for one another. I.E., him knowing where I was made it easier to know where to look and then it was easy for me to come to him once he found the next cairn. The experience was definitely Type I fun, but still also good for learning.

When I think of the comparisons from the two situations, there are two major differences that stand out. First, is I wasn't alone. This isn't a hike I would have done alone knowing that we'd be unlikely to encounter many people along the route, and the potential for some snow. Hiking alone reduces the margin for error to a degree that makes me uncomfortable in bad weather. That said, I certainly don't think it reckless. Second, I had a GPS enabled phone with USGS topo maps if needed. This is a good supplement to paper maps, especially in windy conditions (I still usually bring a tyvek map along for the ride just in case). I bring this up, because the individual was able to use their phone to ask for help - I do wonder if they tried to use it for navigation (compass app, caltopp, etc).

I think it's a fair assessment to say that this person had enough gear to survive for a while and made good decisions for the situation they were in (because he did!). I think it's also fair to point at that while they had hiked the hike before, and had even done it in winter, they were too dependent on the trail to find their way. After all, they still referred to the upper section of the Greenleaf Trail as the Old Bridal Path. This is a common mistake that I used to make too. The point is - experience hiking and experience hiking in those conditions are very different. Trail finding is an important skill that one isn't forced to learn by doing the 4k by their main routes. While it is good that they opted to descend when conditions deteriorated, they didn't have the skills and experience to make it down (another ipso facto statement, I know). By that I mean that not losing your map and compass in bad weather is a skill.

This isn't meant to be a condemnation, but rather an emphasis on some soft skills that are very important and that I hope people reading this will remember. Most incidents offer lessons, and this one is no exception.

 

[TJsName]

Maybe one of the reasons this site has such a small level of activity, is that it can be uptight in nature. Some of us still have a sense of humor. While your pointing out how others judge, you in the same sentence do the same thing. Irony at its best.

Am I the only one who attributes what someone writes to the avatar next to it? It's very satisfying for me to imagine your dog typing out these posts, es[ecially because it seems to be making a 'come on, man' face.

 

[jfb]

If I was in that situation, I believe I would go downhill in any direction possible, to get to the shelter of the treeline.

I'd probably do that also. I've also seen plenty of times where visibility improved lower down a mountain.

 

[Mike P.]

While Walker Ravine is lower, it is a steep thick tangled mess, people who have tried to descend that way took a lot longer escaping. It certainly is better than death from exposure, however, it probably is a last resort. Since cold fierce winds on the ridge typically are from the N, W or variation of NW, when hikers in the past have fled the ridge, they have often ended up in the Pemi. Escaping into the teeth of the gale seldom takes place.

 

[nartreb]

While Walker Ravine is lower, it is a steep thick tangled mess, people who have tried to descend that way took a lot longer escaping. It certainly is better than death from exposure, however, it probably is a last resort. Since cold fierce winds on the ridge typically are from the N, W or variation of NW, when hikers in the past have fled the ridge, they have often ended up in the Pemi. Escaping into the teeth of the gale seldom takes place.

QFT. The near-treeline zone on Lafayette includes a number of areas that are steep, icy, and seldom traveled. Aiming blindly for treeline means walking into unknown objective dangers, with the possibility of getting stranded by cliffs and/or a ten-mile walk to Lincoln Woods through unbroken snow and/or with multiple unsafe stream crossings. If you hole up at treeline, you will be far from the trail, out of sight and unable to see or hear any attempt at rescue. This hiker's choice to build a snow cave beside a cairn was an excellent way to ride out the storm, assuming he found suitable snow conditions.

Terrain problems are part of what people mean when they say a map & compass are not much use in horrible visibility. Generally, the terrain features you need to be aware of are too small for the map. If you can't find the exact spot where the trail hits treeline, you're not just stuck bushwhacking, you have to find your own way through terrain problems. Imagine you're in the ravine south of the Agonies, high up, and the terrain is getting uncomfortably steep. Should you try to go north, south, east or west? You may not be completely sure which ravine you're in, and you almost certainly don't know what part of the ravine you're in.