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 article with the planned itinerary, although it is not clear to me if they made it to Jefferson and got stuck in the spruce traps on the way back to Jewell Trail.
Three years ago March, I hiked Jefferson by ascending the Cog route and traversing on Gulfside for my pm grid quest (beginning noontime or later) and made some mental notes about finding the top of Jewell Trail instead of descending the Cog route on my way back in the dark. Once on Jefferson’s summit with only an hour of daylight remaining, I called an audible and decided to take the safer descent route down Caps Ridge, even with the scrambling and added mileage of the Jefferson Notch and Cog roads to get back my vehicle in the Cog lot.
I have an incredible respect for spruce traps, and the weather conditions over the past 4-5 weeks this winter without rain and sun crusts to give the snowpack much structure makes for classic spruce trap 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 traps are all too real in my experience.
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Bothy tents are amazing!
Do the SAR groups carry Bothy tents? Gwynneley nests? Or both?
Bothy, I think, like the one seen from the Blackhawk in the Little Haystack rescue this past December.
How does one interpret this: "The women, who both live in central Massachusetts, were prepared and made it past their turnaround points"?
ImYourHuckleberry
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I think it probably means that they picked a point where they would decide whether to continue with the loop or turn around. And they made it there and decided to continue.
Or, something was lost in translation by the reporter, which is not unusual as reporters typically do not know the lingo and edit the best that they can (ex., usually we talk about turn-around times rather turn-around points). The Worcester chapter of the AMC has been traditionally a good group for mentoring and prepping hikers for wintertime hikes.
ImYourHuckleberry
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A loop hike generally requires thinking about a TAT as well as a point since eventually it becomes harder to turn around than continue, even if you've reached your TAT.
Exactly the reason that I changed my plans for the return route from Jefferson in my earlier post.
CaptCaper
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I agree. Back in the day I used a 36 in snowshoe. Hit a good spruce trap and after that went to a smaller shoe. Also the snow was spring wet. Got soaked.
Not co compare Jefferson with Nanga Parbat, but I was thinking about the Messner brothers when I decided to descend Caps Ridge, which I figured would be unbroken from the winter’s snowfalls, which turned out to be the case. But, that beats dealing with spruce traps on the upper Jewel Trail and I had my trusty MSR snowshoes, which hardly ever get used now, usually going along for the free ride, so proceeded down. I got off the rock scrambling just as it was getting pitch dark, and used all four of my Tika headlamps for the bottom 1.5 miles to the parking lot at 3000 ft on J Notch Road.
After the Messner brothers summited Nanga Parbat in 1970 via the unclimbed Rupal Face, they decided that they could not safely backtrack that route so descended the unknown Diamir Face instead where Gunther died near the bottom, probably swept by an avalanche. Reinhold barely survived and was met with much controversy over his version of events leading to Gunther’s death. Just a few years ago, Gunther’s remains melted out of the receding glacier ice at the base of the Diamir Face, verifying Reinhold’s version of the climb. There is a lot more to this story, along with the previous decades of German carnage on Nanga Parbat in first ascent attempts, well summarized on Wikipedia if you do not have the inclination or time to read a couple dozen or more books about Nanga Parbat.
I could not get the Messner brothers on Nanga Parbat out of my mind during my two-hour slog from the Caps Ridge parking lot back to my vehicle at the Cog station. And this recent debacle by the two women getting stuck in spruce traps on the upper Jewell Trail did much to confirm to me that I made the right decision in my descent route from Jefferson.
IMO TATs and TAPs should both be used as it gives a larger and better understanding of the situation. Especially on longer and out and back itineraries such as this incident. Basically, know where you are and how long it took to get there all the time and extrapolate distance and time to get out at any given time. In other words, understand your pace and its relation to your location. TAPs should be crossed referenced with TATs. First having a definitive start time then setting benchmark destinations with a time expectation to reach that point. If expectations are not met, then itinerary should be adjusted accordingly.
DayTrip
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I'm sure I've brought this up before and no doubt someone yelled at me then too but I never really bought into turn around times and rigid, time based goals. I've never used them at any point in my hiking "career" either now or as a newbie. The concept that some absolute time decided on at home or in the parking lot never made sense to me. I hike alone most of the time but even when I hike with a friend it's pretty much the same process. I suppose in large groups it needs to be a consideration. I feel like most people use a turnaround time specifically just to get out of the woods before dark (and in many cases probably because they don't carry a light source).
Until you are actually out on the trail, observing the conditions and getting a sense of your overall stamina, mental state and physical condition, determining what is or isn't doable seems very arbitrary. I always went off my gut feel of how I was feeling relative to the potential risk of what I was undertaking. Being knowledgeable and prepared greatly influences this decision making. This is an ongoing process revisited many, many times throughout the day, not something you decide at a specific time on a watch. I'll significantly lengthen or shorten a hike quite often, and the time of day rarely hasn't anything to do with it. (And when it does it usually involves prior plans back in civilization or maybe a good craft beer).
Thanks for posting but does not give a whole lot more insight. It is too be seen if the actually went by the entrance of The Jewel on their way over to Summiting or not on Jefferson. Might have been good to have inspected the entrance on the way by if not actually wanding that entrance for the return.
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