https://nhfishgame.com/2025/02/04/overnight-hiker-rescue-conducted-on-mt-washington/
Two very lucky hikers. What were they thinking?
Two very lucky hikers. What were they thinking?
Overnight Hiker Rescue Conducted On Mt. Washington
- Thread starter KRooney
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In too deep too late in the day. Wonder if they were doing a loop from The Ammo or an out and back.
"Crews immediately set up emergency shelters and began to warm both of the hikers. The warming process took an hour, but by approximately 3:00 a.m., the hikers were able to move on their own and the group continued down the Jewell Trail toward the base station of the Cog Railway"
My hat's off to the rescuers who were able to warm them enough so they could move in those conditions. Subzero and high winds? Jeesh...
My hat's off to the rescuers who were able to warm them enough so they could move in those conditions. Subzero and high winds? Jeesh...
They were doing a loop of Monroe and Jefferson...
IMO, these kinds of loops are dangerous because you don't know what the condition of the trail you are going to descend is. In this case, apparently the Jewell Trail was not broken out or able to be followed well enough to stay out of trouble. I've descended that trail a few times in summer and found it to be difficult to follow above treeline. In summer, no sweat because you can generally discern the trail if you look closely. In winter, good luck if it is obscured by wind blown snow.
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/mount-washington-rescue-kathryn-mckee/
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ImYourHuckleberry
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They got some pretty bad results for sure, but there are lots of little mistakes that can compound and put you in that kind of situation with the right amount of bad luck. (Unless I missed something in the article explaining something really obviously dumb that they did.)
Thanks for posting this additional an article with the planned itinerary, although it is not clear if they made it to Jefferson and got stuck in the spruce traps on the way back to Jewel. Three years ago March, I hiked Jefferson by ascending the Cog path and traversing on Gulfside for my pm grid quest (beginning noontime or later) and made some mental notes about finding the top of Jewel Trail instead of descending the Cog path on my way back in the dark. Once on Jefferson’s summit with only an hour of daylight remaining, I decided to take the safer descent route down Caps Ridge, even with the scrambling and added mileage of the Jefferson Notch and Cog roads.
I have an incredible respect for spruce traps, and the weather conditions form the past 4-5 weeks this winter without rain and sun crusts to give the snowpack much structure makes for classic spruce traps conditions. A lot of viewers mocked Naomi Watts’ (aka Pam Bales) spruce trap debacle in the film “Infinite Storm,” but not I. Well, maybe there was some embellishment in the film, but the parts with snowshoes getting stuck and losing one’s energy trying to extricate from spruce trapa are all too real in my experience.
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