New Book on Kate M.

[Raven]

It seems to me people toss around the terms 'Spot' and 'PLB' fairly generically. It's too bad she didn't replace some of those electronics with a sleeping bag.

Read the book if you haven't. Good detail.

 

[ChrisB]

The unit was found in her pack with the antenna folded. It would appear that she initially signaled using it correctly and then closed it up and put it back in her pack.

A selfie she took at the Madison Hut shows frost nip on her face. My theory is that several hours later, at the time she deployed the beacon, she was feeling the effects of hypothermia. If that was the case, she can't be faulted for the poor decision to put the device in her pack.

Running on empty and probably not thinking clearly she did the best she could.

cb

 

[egilbe]

It was heroic that she was even able to properly deploy it in that condition

 

[akafuzzjones]

A selfie she took at the Madison Hut shows frost nip on her face. My theory is that several hours later, at the time she deployed the beacon, she was feeling the effects of hypothermia. If that was the case, she can't be faulted for the poor decision to put the device in her pack.

Running on empty and probably not thinking clearly she did the best she could.

cb

Agree. She might have been feeling it well before that which clouded judgement to even continue.

Think it’s interesting about the operation of the unit - I don’t own a PLB so never had to read the instructions but I’ve talked to others who do and while they were aware of the antenna and face plate up they never considered the potential ramifications of putting it away while it was still active.

 

[TCD]

Now, that's really just adding pure speculation, which has limited value at best. The device has an antenna that should be "up", it was down and in her pack. That makes more sense then, her being blown around, imo.

Well, I do agree it was speculative. But it was based on some real observations. If you watch the video of the rescuers taken the next day, you can watch a much larger and heavier man being blown across the snow by the wind, which had subsided considerable at that point. 0:19 in this video, which was posted on the original thread about this incident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP4u6VyrgCk

 

[sierra]

Well, I do agree it was speculative. But it was based on some real observations. If you watch the video of the rescuers taken the next day, you can watch a much larger and heavier man being blown across the snow by the wind, which had subsided considerable at that point. 0:19 in this video, which was posted on the original thread about this incident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP4u6VyrgCk

That was a cool video. Man it looks awful up there.

 

[hikerbrian]

Those are some hard men in that video, to be up in those conditions.