DayTrip
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 13, 2013
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The one thing I'll conjecture in her defense is that, per the Obs hourly reports, at 5 am the conditions, for a very strong and experienced hiker such as she was, were not terrible - 35-ish mph winds and -4 F, probably much calmer down at 1200 feet elevation. By 10, conditions were deteriorating pretty rapidly. The track history from her PLB will give a better idea of what happened, whether she summited one or both of the peaks, was trying to retreat to shelter or to find the Valley Way down, whatever was the case.
I'd not go out into such conditions, but maybe she was well ready to turn back from submitting M or A, or both, or maybe she was trying to, and got injured. The location where they reportedly found her, per Mike Cherim on his FB page - he was on the S&R team - suggests she was trying to get out of the worst of the winds by descending the steep wall south of Star Lake. Maybe the fall she took, per Mike, was here, maybe before. She might have suffered multiple falls or injuries.
We'll likely learn more with time. It's sad that she got into such a bad situation - one would like to think she was not engaged here unreasonably, but it's hard to see how so, sorry to say.
The forecast was for far worse weather. Even if it was decent at 5AM and she was a strong hiker she was going to be on some pretty dangerous peaks in pretty dangerous weather. If we all made decisions based on the trail head conditions only there would be a hell of a lot more accidents.