https://youtu.be/tiZ5xiKkChE
Very sad. :sad:
Pat
Mt. Washington has a mean reputation for killer weather. Feel bad for the man and his wife. It sounds like he was experienced and so likely pretty well prepared. The margin between dying and making it out safely probably wasn't much, just a little more of something he didn't have, be it metabolism, will or gear. He got a tough break.
it's amazing the amount of people that go up there completely unprepared and clueless. A few years ago they change the rules so now the state can charge people for the cost of the rescue which is usually thousands of dollars. but they can also buy a card called a hike safe card which is basically insurance to cover the cost of a rescue. mother nature weeds out the weak and stupid with ruthless efficiency. Mother nature is not woke!
And that is the reason that I don't climb mountains. Well, then the fact that my knees wouldn't do it and I would probably fall in the parking lot going to get the hike safe card.
It is easy to die on that kind of mountain. The trick is to keep from dying. I nearly died on 12,000' Mt. Adams when I was 18. Sawmill broke down so a co-worker and I rode his motorcycle to Mt. Adams and climbed it to 10K on a bright sunny August day in jeans and work clothes. Adams is a long walk uphill if you follow the main climbing trail, nothing technical required on that route.
A blizzard came in blowing wet sleet straight up the mountainside like buck shot. We couldn't see 30 yards, lost the trail on a windblown snowfield, and a degree off as you start down a cone shaped mountain means a mile or more off at the bottom. Found the trail (which saved our lives), got to the motorcycle and rode it to his forest ranger uncle's house a few miles from the bottom of the mountain. Ranger's wife took one look at me, had me strip and wrap in a blanket and sit in front of a fireplace while she dried my clothes in a clothes drier. I could barely speak or move, and a measure of how far gone I was is that this shy country farm boy did what the lady snapped orders for me to do.
25 years later I climbed the same mountain on a sunny August day with my two sons. Several hundred people on the mountain that day, an amazing number of them in shorts, T-shirts and tennis shoes. A boy scout died on the mountain that day, got off trail in a crevasse section.
I bet those fresh from the dryer warm clothes felt good ha ha.
I learned to respect the power of mother nature at a very early age.