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[l/m 7/24/2003] Morbid backcountry/memorial: Distilled Wisdom (16/28) XYZ

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Eugene Miya

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Dec 16, 2003, 7:21:18 AM12/16/03

Panel 16

The section on statistics is going to be replaced by a reference.....
to shorten this panel.

Calibration:
Hey America, what time is it?
Every 2 seconds a criminal offense
Every 12 seconds a burglary
Every 17 seconds a violent crime
Every 20 seconds vehicle is stolen
Every 51 seconds a robbery
Every 5 minutes a rape
Every 23 minutes a murder
Every 28 seconds aggravated assault
Every 30 min. news, weather, and sports
[Ref.: FBI, in Pelton.]

Ways to die involving the backcountry. Nurturing Mother Nature?
Hardly.

Most frequent: car accident going to or from a backcountry trip.
Alcohol related (frequently).

Plane crash. Flip over, equipment malfunction, pilot error, fatigue, etc.

Struck by lightning.

Falling off a rock.
Getting hit by a falling rock.
Natural rock fall
Man induced rock fall.
Getting hit by a wall of snow.
Falling into a crevice.
Other miscellaneous falling objects (trees, human objects, etc.).

Exhaustion
Loss of judgment from secondary affects

Drowning.
Canoe (any boat) capsizes in high waves, etc.
slip on a rock lining a canoe up rapids
slip on a rock fording a rapid (hikers)
Drowning because of belays on stream crossings
Attempt to canoe/kayak over low-head dam.
Attempt to canoe/kayak over too big a waterfall (Jesse Sharp, 1991,
Niagra Falls)
Foot entrapment
Rope entrapment (throw ropes, perimeter rope attached to raft, etc.)
Swimmer washed beneath undercut rock
Person in kayak or canoe, washed beneath undercut rock
Person in kayak or canoe, pinned and entrapped on rocks,
bridge abutment etc.
High volume river, low volume kayak, person drowns while still in
kayak, no entrapment (Gauley River, early 1990s)

Bit or stung by
Bees (allergies)
Spiders
Snakes: Rattlers, water moccasin
Jelly fish

Poisoning
Shell fish
Mushrooms
Contaminated food

Being eaten by:
Shark
Don't get in the water
Lion and tigers and bears, oh my!
Alligators
Ants (slowly)

Disease
Plague from flea infested squirrels
Rocky Mountain Spotted fever from ticks
Hanta virus

Skiing, cycling, driving into a tree

Explosions involving stoves, fire, etc.
Accidental gun shot (dropping)
Gun accident (being shot by partners)
1990:
Total firearms-relating hunting accidents - 1,564
Total two-party fatalities - 99
Total self-inflicted fatalities - 47
Total non-fatal, two-party injuries - 988
Total non-fatal, self-inflicted injuries - 430

Starvation

Hypothermia
Frostbite
Hyperthermia
Dehyration
Heat stroke

Breaking thru thin icy waterways
Drowning
Hypothermia
Loss of essential equipment

Swimming, rowing accident
Alcohol related

Evolution in action.
Selected against.

ran across traffic injury accident statistics for the state of California.
I don't claim that these are representative of the country as a whole. I
also wish they were more comprehensive, in terms of breaking bicycle
injuries down by age of cyclist and fault on the accident itself.
But they're all I could find on short notice.

Collision with: Accidents Deaths Injuries

Car 153829 1897 258732
Object 33614 1471 45175
Pedestrian 17014 956 17493
No collision 13029 553 17384
Bicycle 15187 126 15692
Parked car 6817 108 8645
All others* 1712 62 2637

Total 241202 5173 365758

Interestingly, on a per accident basis, you're more likely to be killed
in a car-car accident(1:81.1 accidents) than a car-bike accident(1:120.5).
Also, the ratio of injuries to deaths is only slightly better for car-car
accidents (1:136.4) than for car-bike (1:124.5). This is particularly
striking to me, because we don't have a ton of steel to protect us.
The lower speed of travel seems to outweigh our vulnerability to injury.

I interpret the low injury-to-accident ratio for car-bike accidents to
mean that for all practical purposes drivers don't get hurt by hitting
a bicyclist. I assume that in every case the bicyclist was injured, and
perhaps even more than one bicyclist. Even if it's only one bicyclist
per accident, that's only one car occupant injured in every thirty
accidents.

"After seeing this series, I can't see why anyone would want to go to
a National Park." --Comment made by the wife of a climbing partner
after seeing the short-lived TV series "Sierra."

=====

This part is for our friends, family, acquaintances, and heros who have
passed away. Regardless of whether they died climbing, travelling,
to or from climbing, or in their sleep. They were people who pushed limits.
Our friends will be missed. We remember them here.

Bill Drake
John Harlin, II
Bill "Dolt" Feuerer
Wally Henry
Mark Allen Losso
Mike Blake
John Mokri
Tim Harrison
Peter Barton
Ben Factor
Gary Gissendaner
Nick Estcourt
Don Partridge
Arkel Erb
Tobin Sorensen
Steve Jensen
Timothy Mutch
Jay Veenheusen
Karl Innes
Ted Flinn
Art van Eenenaam
Mark Hoffman
Harry Glicken
Conor Milliff
Art Caulkins
Robert Sinnock
Charles Daffinger
Bob Godfrey
Dave Simonett
Chuck Wilts
John Yablonski
R. Scott Rogers
Roland Pettit
John High
Jim Harshman
Tom Shirley
Chris Rowe
Ron Palmer
Bob Locke
Eric Dirksen
Charlie Jenkewitz
Rob Dellinger
Peter Fisher
James Campbell
Manfred Niederleitner
Franz F\"uhreder
Mark Bebie
Ronald Steven Reed
Karl Henize, NASA Astronaut, climber, ....
Matthew Maytag
Ferdinand Castillo
Beverly Johnson
Xavier Bongard
Bill Turk
John Spicer
Ron Dingus
Dr. Carl Sharsmith
Campbell Ian Grierson
Liz Hutton
Matt Pollock
Brian Waddington
William L. Burke
Rob Hall
Scott Fischer
Rich Davidson
Finis Mitchell
David Dykman
William T. Russell
Allan Bard
Phil Stuart-Jones
Chantal Maudit
Mike Spanner
Frank Reid
Herb Hultgren, MD
Jim Weaver
Bruce Carson
Bruce Jay Nelson
Jon Postel
Paul Ramer
Hugh Grierson
Jack Estes
Bill Danford
Billy Westbay
Alexei Nikiforov
Monica Elderidge
Tom Dunwiddie
Mike Sofranko
Vladimir Smirnov
Irina Libova
Ilya Krasik
Warren Harding
Clark Natkemper
Galen and Barbara Rowell
Eleanor Kamb Ray
Gomer James
*
Kalpana Chawla
Rick Husband
Willy McCool
Ilon Ramon
Dave Brown
Laurel Clark
Michael Anderson
Anita Borg
Andy Embrick, MD
Larry Hofman

In admiration:
George Leigh Mallory
A. F. Mummery
H. W. 'Bill' Tilman
Walter Starr, Jr.
Hermann Buhl
Jim Madsen
Norman Clyde
Larry Williams
Don Jensen
Don Sheldon
Ian Clough
Dougal Haston
Don Whillans
Gary Ullin
Marty Hoey
John Cunningham
Bill March
Naomi Uemura
Sheridan Anderson
Dave Johnston
Leigh Ortenburger
P. S. Lovejoy
Nanda Devi Unsoeld
Joe Tasker
Peter Boardman
Mick Burke
Ome Daiber
Mugs Stump
Gary Ball
Wolfgang Guellich
Derek Hersey
David Hume
Stephen Ross
Debbie Marshall
Tommi Heinonen
Ari Mattila
Jacques Yves Cousteau
Anatoli Boukreev
Ned Gillette
Eugene Shoemaker, III
Paul Petzolt
Chuck Pratt
Larry Penberthy

Lord, guard and guide the men who fly
Through the great spaces in the sky.
Be with them always in the air
In darkening storm or sunlight fair.
Oh hear us when we lift our prayer
For those in peril in the air. Amen.

HIGH FLIGHT
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds--and done a thousand things
You have not dreamed of--wheeled and soared and sung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

POSTSCRIPT FROM ONE, WHO LIKE HIS AGE, DIED YOUNG.
by Anonymous
(Found in the wreckage of a WWII Marine Corps fighter
that was shot down over New Ireland)

I have skimmed the ragged edge of lightning death
And torn from bloody flesh of sky a thunder song.
Across the nakedness of virgin space
I've blistered my frozen hand in feathered ice
And dared angelic wrath to smash
The snarling will of my demon steed.

Far above sun-glint on winded spume
High executioner of laws no man has made,
I've welded Samurai knights into fiery tombs
And hurled them down like the plumed Minoan
Far down the searing heights to punch
Their livid crates in the sea.

"Enemies", you say. They were not mine.
More than blood brothers, I swear,
With tawny skin and warrior eye.
Bushido-bred for hell-strife joy.
Much closer my kin, my race than those
Who cud-chew their lives can ever be.

"War-lover", you say, "Sadist, psychotic"
That sick cycle of canned cliches masking
Your lust for eternity fettered to time.
Go, epigonic pygmies, make peace with hell,
Drag the myths of our ancient might
Through the miserable muck of a cringer's dream.

What could you know
Who have never heard
The soaring song of the Valkyries,
Felt thunder-gods jousting with livid peaks:
You who have never dared to walk the razor
Across the zenith of your peevish soul?

POSTSCRIPT FROM ONE, WHO LIKE HIS AGE, DIED YOUNG.
by Anonymous
(Found in the wreckage of a WWII Marine Corps fighter
that was shot down over New Ireland)

TABLE OF CONTENTS of this chain:

16/ Morbid backcountry <* THIS PANEL *>
17/ Information about bears
18/ Poison ivy, frequently ask, under question
19/ Lyme disease, frequently ask, under question
20/ "Telling questions" backcountry Turing test (under construction)
21/ AMS
22/ Babies and Kids
23/ A bit of song (like camp songs)
24/ What is natural?
25/ A romantic notion of high-tech employment
26/ Other news groups of related interest, networking
27/ Films/cinema references
28/ References (written)
1/ DISCLAIMER
2/ Ethics
3/ Learning I
4/ learning II (lists, "Ten Essentials," Chouinard comments)
5/ Summary of past topics
6/ Non-wisdom: fire-arms topic circular discussion
7/ Phone / address lists
8/ Fletcher's Law of Inverse Appreciation / Rachel Carson / Foreman and Hayduke
9/ Water Filter wisdom
10/ Volunteer work
11/ Snake bite
12/ Netiquette
13/ Questions on conditions and travel
14/ Dedication to Aldo Leopold
15/ Leopold's lot.

From: tam...@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael K. Tamada)
Subject: Yet More Cougar Attack Statistics, and Dog Statistics Too

The LA Times this Sunday had a feature article on cougars/mountain
lions/pumas. According to the article, there have been 11 deaths caused
by cougars in the US and Canada over the past 100 years. This is compared
to 12 deaths by lightning per year and 40 deaths by bee sting per year.
On the other hand, the rate of human/cougar interactions has been
rising in recent years -- partly because housing keeps getting built
in their habitat, but also because cougar populations have been
recovering in several areas (e.g. a cougar was spotted in Nebraska for
the first time in several decades).
The article also had some statistics on pet dog/cougar interactions
around some town, Boulder I think. There have been 37 such "interactions"
in the past x years, and as the author of the article put it, "so far
the score is cougars 15, dogs 0."

--Mike Tamada
Occidental College
tam...@oxy.edu

From: Andy Freeman <an...@sail.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <930121010...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
To: eug...@amelia.nas.nasa.gov
Subject: Re: [l/m 12/16/1992] Morbid backcountry/memorial: Distilled Wisdom (16/28) XYZ

In article <1993Jan16....@nas.nasa.gov> you write:
> Accidental gun shot (dropping)
> Gun accident (being shot by partners)
> 1990:
> Total firearms-relating hunting accidents - 1,564
> Total two-party fatalities - 99
> Total self-inflicted fatalities - 47
> Total non-fatal, two-party injuries - 988
> Total non-fatal, self-inflicted injuries - 430

Actually, we know somewhat more about those "accidents". It is
becoming clear that many of them are really duels and others are
suicides. "Cleaning gun" appears to be coroner/police-speak for "the
family needs the insurance money".

-andy
--

Article 22285 of rec.skiing:
From: som...@scd.hp.com (Jeremy Sommer)
Newsgroups: rec.skiing
Subject: some 91-92 USA Avalanche stats

Avalanche Fatalities in the United States: 1991-92 Season

1. Ski tourers and ski mountaineers ......... 10
2. Climbers ................................. 4
3. On piste ................................. 0
4. Off piste ................................ 3
5. Workers .................................. 1
6. On highways .............................. 0
7. In buildings ............................. 0
8. Miscellaneous (e.g., snowmobile) ......... 2

Avalanche Totals in the United States: 1991-92 Season

1. Alta, UT ................................ 580
2. Alpine Meadows, CA ...................... 553
3. Crystal Mountain, WA .................... 437
4. Snowbird, UT ............................ 375
5. Stevens Pass, WA ........................ 318
6. Alyeska, AK ............................. 258
7. Mt Hood Meadows, OR ..................... 244
8. Bridger Bowl, MT ........................ 231
9. Squaw Valley, CA ........................ 225
10. Kirkwood Meadows, CA .................... 221
11. Solitude, UT ............................ 219
12. Big Sky, MT ............................. 159
13. Aspen Highlands, CO ..................... 146
14. Sugar Bowl, CA .......................... 130
15. Wolf Creek, CO .......................... 127
16. Arapahoe Basin, CO ...................... 110
16. Aspen Snowmass, CO ...................... 110
18. Alpental, WA ............................ 108
19. Jackson Hole, WY ........................ 98
20. Telluride, CO ........................... 87
21. Mt Rose/Slide Mt, NV .................... 47
22. Heavenly Valley, CA (sic)................ 44
23. Monarch, CO ............................. 39
24. Big Mountain, MT ........................ 34
25. Aspen Mountain, CO ...................... 32
26. Park West, UT ........................... 23
27. June Mountain, CA ....................... 22
28. Crested Butte, CO ....................... 21
28. Grand Targhee, WY ....................... 21
30. Vail, CO ................................ 20
30. Winter Park, CO ......................... 20
32. Copper Mountain, CO ..................... 17
33. Breckenridge, CO ........................ 16
33. Loveland Basin, CO ...................... 16
35. Sun Valley, ID .......................... 15
35. Taos, NM ................................ 15
37. Mammoth Mountain, CA .................... 12
38. Sunlight, CO ............................ 10
39. Beaver Creek, CO ........................ 8
40. Steamboat, CO ........................... 5
41. Ski Cooper, CO .......................... 3
42. Keystone, CO ............................ 2

Method of Location of Some Avalanche Victims in the United States: 1991-92
Season

Method Dead Alive
------ ---- -----
Beacon ................ 7 ......... 0
Probe ................. 4 ......... 0
Visual ................ 3 ......... 3
Dog ................... 0 ......... 1
Sound ................. 0 ......... 1

From Ski Patrol Magazine, Spring '93; article by Robin D. Faisant, Assistant
National Avalanche Advisor. Quoted without permission. All errors are mine.

Article 10115 of rec.climbing:
From: pe...@poincare.wbme.jhu.edu (Peter.N.Steinmetz)
Newsgroups: rec.climbing
Subject: Risks of Rock Climbing

Since the subject of relative risks in climbing has come up, I thought
these numbers might be of interest:

Involuntary Risks: Risk of death/person-year
-------------------------------------------------------------
Struck by automobile (USA) 1 in 20,000
Struck by automobile (UK) 1 in 16,600
Lightning (UK) 1 in 10 million
Influenza 1 in 5000

Voluntary Risks: Deaths/person-year (odds)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Smoking, 20 cigs/day 1 in 200
Motorcycling 1 in 50
Automobile driving 1 in 5,900
Rock climbing 1 in 7,150
Skiing 1 in 1,430,000
Canoeing 1 in 100,000
Pregnancy (UK) 1 in 4,350

So, overall rock-climbing is less likely to kill you than being
pregnant! And apparently one is more likely to die of influenza than
from rock-climbing. It also appears to be the case that in the UK
driving an automobile is more risky than rock-climbing overall.

The source for this information is Dinman B.D. The Reality and
Acceptance of Risk. JAMA 244:1226. 1980.

----------------------------------------------------

Date: 22 Jul 1993 16:00:50 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Gavin D. Watt" <G...@cccs.umn.edu>
Subject: Re: [l/m 5/18/1993] Morbid backcountry/memorial: Distilled Wisdom
(16/28) XYZ
To: eug...@amelia.nas.nasa.gov
Organization: Colon Cancer Control Study, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

Eugene,
Here's one to add to your list....
>From memory, watching the local news in Elroy WI (after an easy, fun day on
the Sparta-Elroy bike trail) I'm sure it made AP or Clari-net.
July 17, 1993
A woman was killed while canoeing the Brule river in NW Wisconsin.
She was struck by a falling poplar tree which had been gnawed thru
by a beaver. Not clear what precipitated the tree's fall.

-- Gavin 930722.1602CDT g...@cccs.umn.edu
... NE Minneapolis halfway between the N. Pole and the equator

Article 36970 of rec.backcountry:
Newsgroups: rec.backcountry
From: tam...@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael K. Tamada)
Subject: Re: Shooting Bears?

A year or two ago the LA Times had an article on mountain lions,
and gave the following figures (I have no idea where they came from or
how accurate they are):

Cause Deaths/year

Bees 40
Lightning 12
Mtn Lions 0.11

My guess is that lightning outranks bears, but bears out rank
mountain lions.

--Mike Tamada
Occidental College
tam...@oxy.edu

Newsgroups: rec.climbing
From: mue...@isi.ee.ethz.ch (Daniel Mueller)
Subject: mortality rates
Message-ID: <CFnGL...@bernina.ethz.ch>
Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH

Yesterday I found the following data in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung. It is
a table of mortality rates of different activities evaluated with Swiss
statistical data.

dead from
10000 people
per year

pedestrian in traffic 0.4 per 100 hours
jogging 1.5
housekeeping 2
driving 2.5
mountaineering 4 including: climbing,mountaineering,
mountain hiking and biking,ski,
snowboarding, hunting...
members of swiss
alpine club 3.3
professional guide 24
Matterhorn 30 per ascent
members of GHM 70 Groupe de Haute Montagne: a french
group of extreme alpinists
Himalaya 200 per expedition (no trekking)
Eiger north face 1670 per ascent (1935-1970)
travel by air 30 per 100 hours
smoking 36
motorcycling 90

hope this helps
Dani
--
/-----------------------\-------------------------------------------------/
/ Daniel Mueller o|\ Signal and Information Processing Laboratory /
/ -------------------- \^\ ETH Zuerich Sternwartstr.7 CH-8092 Zuerich /
/ mue...@isi.ee.ethz.ch / \ phone: +41 1 6322773 fax: +41 1 2620943 /
/-------------------------------\-----------------------------------------/

Date: Thu, 16 Dec 93 13:58:40 EST
From: Guest Account <gu...@bio1.bst.rochester.edu>
Message-Id: <931216185...@bio1.bst.rochester.edu>
To: eug...@amelia.nas.nasa.gov
Subject: bike/car fatalities

The possible reason the bike-car fatalities
had lower fatality ratio than the car-car
fatalities is probably because in a
bike-car accident you almost always get
at most 1 fatality. In a car-car accident
there can easily be more than one fatality,
ie both cars mashed bad or just one car
filled with many people.

I would expect the bike-car ratio to
be much higher if you computed
the ratio accidents involving fatality/accidents

Chuck Spiekerman cspi...@biostat.washington.edu

From brh...@panix.com Fri Feb 3 15:35:25 1995
From: Bill Rhodes <brh...@panix.com>
To: "Eugene N. Miya" <eugene>
Subject: Deaths on Washington
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950203...@panix.com>

115 Deaths on Mount Washington
as counted by Yankee Magazine, February 1995 in
a sidebar to the main article, Fatal Attraction by Nicholas Howe
# date of death, age if given, name, home town, cause if known
* When dates are the same, Indicates those who died together
in same incident
No records prior to 1849, maybe Indians had more sense than to tempt
the spirt of Mannitou.

Since 1849
1 Oct 19, 1849, Fredrick Stickland, 29, Bridlington, England, lost in storm
2 Sept 14, 1855, Lizzie Bourne, 23, Kennebunk, ME, exposure/storm
3 Aug 7, 1856, Benjamin Chandler, 75, Wilmington, DE, exposure
4 Oct 4, 1869, J.M. Thompson, local, drowning
5 Feb 26, 1872, Pvt William Steven, U.S. Army Signal Corps, natural causes
6 Jun 28, 1873, Pvt William Sealey, U. S. Army Signal Corps, injuries
7 Sep 3, 1874, Harry Hunter, 21, Pittsburgh, PA, exposure
8 Jul 3, 1880, Mrs. Ira Chichester, Allegan, MI, coach accident
9 Jul 24, 1886, Cewall Faunce, 15, Dorchester, MA, falling snow/ice
10 Aug 24, 1890, Ewald Weiss, 24, Berlin, GE, missing/presumed dead
11 Jun 30, 1900, William Curtis, 63, NYC, NY, exposure/storm *
12 Jun 30, 1900, Allan Ormsby, 28, Brooklyn, NY, exposure/storm *
13 Aug 23, 1900, Alexander Cusick, sled accident
14 Sep 18, 1912, John Keenan, 18, Charlestown, MA, missing/presumed dead
15 Aug 5, 1919, Harry Clauson, 19, South Boston, MA, sled accident *
16 Aug 5, 1919, Jack Lonigan, 21, Boston, MA, sled accident*
17 Nov 1927, A woodsman named Harriman, drowned while fishing
18 Apr 1928, Elmer Lyman, Berlin, NH, exposure
19 Dec 1, 1928, Herbert Young, 18, Salem, MO, exposure
20 Jul 20, 1929, Daniel Rossiter, Boston, MA, train accident
21 Jul 30, 1929, Oysten Kaldstad, Brooklyn, NY, drowned fishing
22 Sep 18, 1931, Henry Bigelow, 19, Cambridge, MA, falling rock injuries
23 Jan 31, 1932, Ernest McAdams, 22, Stonham, MA, exposure *
24 Jan 31, 1932, Joseph Chadwick, 22, Woburn, MA, exposure *
25 Jun 18, 1933, Simon Joseph, 19, Brookline, MA, exposure
26 Jun 18, 1933, Rupert Marden, 21, Brookline, MA, exposure
27 Sep 9, 1934, Jerome Pierce, 17, Springfield, VT, drowned
28 Apr 1, 1936, John Fowler, 19, NYC, NY, 900 foot slide injuries
29 May 23, 1936, Grace Sturgess, 24, Williamstown, MA, falling ice injuries
30 Jul 4, 1937, Harry Wheeler, 55, Salem, MA, heart attack
31 Aug 24, 1938, Joseph Caggiano, 22, Astoria, NY exposure
32 Jun 9, 1940, Edwin McIntire, 19, Short Hills, NJ, fall into crevasse
33 Oct 13, 1941, Louis Haberland, 27, Roslindale, MA, exposure
34 Apr 7, 1943, John Neal, Springfield, MA, skiing accident
35 May 31, 1948, Phyllis Wilbur, 16, Kingfield, ME, sking accident died June 3
36 May 1, 1949, Dr. Paul Schiller, Cambridge, MA, skiing accident/fall/drowning
37 Feb 2, 1952, Tor Staver, skiing accident died Feb 5
38 Aug 23, 1952, Raymond Davis, 50, Sharon, MA, heart attack/exposure
39 Jan 31, 1954, Phillip Longnecker, 25, Toledo, OH, avalanche *
40 Jan 31, 1954, Jacques Parysko, 23, Cambridge, MA, avalanche *
41 Feb 19, 1956, A. Aaron Leve, 28, Boston, MA, avalanche
42 Sep 1, 1956, John Ochab, 37, Newark, NJ, fall
43 Jun 7, 1956, Thomas Flint, 21, Concord, MA, fall/exposure
44 May 17, 1958, William Brigham, 28, Montreal, QE, falling ice injury
45 Jul 19, 1958, Paul Zanet, 24, Dorchester, MA exposure *
46 July 19, 1958, Judy March, 17, Dorchester, MA, exposure *
47 Aug 22, 1959, Anthony Amico, Springfield, MA, heart attack
48 Jun 2, 1962, Armand Falardeau, 42, Danielson, CT, exposure
49 Sep 12, 1962, Alfred Dickinson, 67, Melrose, MA exposure
50 Apr 4, 1964, Hugo Stadmueller, 28, Cambridge, MA avalanche *
51 Apr 4, 1964, John Griffin, Hanover, NH, avalanche
52 May 3, 1964, Remi Bourdages, 38, Spencer, MA, heart attack
53 Mar 14, 1965, Daniel Doody, 31, Cambridge, MA fall *
54 Mar 14, 1965, Craig, Merrihue, 31, Cambdridge, MA, fall *
55 Sep 6, 1967, Beverly Richmond, Putnam, CT, railroad accident *
56 Sep 6, 1967, Eric Davies, 7, Hampton, NH, railroad accient *
57 Sep 6, 1967, Mary Frank, 38, Warren, MI, railroad accident *
58 Sep 6, 1967, Kent Woodward, 9, New London, CT, railroad accident *
59 Sep 6, 1967, Shirley Zorzy, 22, Lynn, MA, railroad accident *
60 Sep 6, 1967, Charles Usher, 55, Dover, NH, railroad accident *
61 Sep 6, 1967, Mrs. Charles Usher, 56, Dover, NH, railroad accident *
62 Sep 6, 1967, Monica Gross, 2, Brookline, MA, railroad accident *
63 Jan 26, 1969, Scott Stevens, 19, Cucamonga, CA, climbing accident (fall?) *
64 Jan 26, 1969, Robert Ellenberg, 19, NYC, NY, climbing accident (fall?) *
65 Jan 26, 1969, Charles Yoder, 24, Hartford, WI, climbing accident (fall?) *
66 Feb 9, 1969, Mark Larner, 16, Albany, NY, injuries in a slide
67 Oct 12, 1969, Richard Fitzgerald, 26, Framingham, MA, fall
68 Nov 29, 1969, Paul Ross, 26, South Portland, ME, plane crash *
69 Nov 29, 1969, Kenneth Ward, 20, Augusta, ME, plane crash *
70 Nov 29, 1969, Cliff Phillips, 25, Island Pond, VT, plane crash *
71 Mar 21, 1971, Irene Hennessey, 47, plane crash *
72 Mar 21, 1971, Thomas Hennessey, 54, plane crash *
73 Apr 24, 1971, Barbara Palmer, 46, West Acton, MA, exposure
74 Aug 28, 1971, Betsy Roberts, 16, Newton, MA, drowned
75 Oct 1971, Geoff Bowdoin, Wayland, MA, drowned
76 May 17, 1972, Christopher Coyne, 21, Greenwich, CT, fall
77 Sep 23, 1972, Richard Thaler, 49, Brookline, MA, heart attack
78 Apr 21, 1973, Peter Winn, 16, Bedford, NH, skiing accident
79 Aug 22, 1974, Vernon Titcomb, 56, Santa Fe, CA, plane crash/storm *
80 Aug 22, 1974, Jean Titcomb, 53, plane crash/storm *
81 Dec 24, 1974, Karl Brushaber, 37, Ann Arbor, MI, injuries
82 Oct 23, 1975, Clayton Rock, 80, MA, heart attack
83 Mar 26, 1976, Margaret Cassidy, 24, Wolfeboro, NH, fall
84 May 8, 1976, Scott Whinnery, 25, Speigletown, NY, fall
85 Jul 12, 1976, Robert Evans, 22, Kalamazoo, MI, fall
86 Feb 14, 1979, David Shoemaker, 21, Lexington, MA, fall/exposure *
87 Feb 14, 1979, Paul Flanigan, Melrose, MA, fall *
88 Aug 21, 1980, Patrick Kelley, 24, Hartford, CT, fall
89 Oct 12, 1980, Charles La Bonte, 16, Newbury, MA exposure
90 Oct 13, 1980, James Dowd, 43, Boston, MA, heart attack
91 Dec 31, 1980, Peter Friedman, 18, Thomaston, CT, fall
92 Aug 8, 1981, Myles Coleman, 73, Wellsville, NY, stroke
93 Jan 25, 1982, Albert Dow, 29, Tuftonboro, NH, avalanche while searching for lost climbers
94 Mar 28, 1982, Kathy Hamann, Sandy Hook, CT, fall
95 May 25, 1982, John Fox, 47, Shelburne, VT, stroke
96 Jan 1, 1983, Edward Aalbue, 21, Westbury, NY, fall
97 Mar 24, 1983, Kenneth Hokenson, 23, Scotia, NY, fall
98 Mar 27, 1983, Mark Brockman, 19, Boston, MA, fall
99 Jul 30, 1984, Paul Silva, 22, Cambridge, MA, auto accident
100 Aug 22, 1984, Ernst Heinsoth, 88, Burlington, VT, heart attack
101 Mar 15, 1986, Basil Goodridge, 56, Burlington, VT, heart attack
102 Apr 5, 1986, Robert Jones, 54, Bridgton, ME, heart attack
103 Aug 24, 1986, McDonald Barr, 52, Brookline, MA, exposure/storm
104 Jun 30, 1990, Edwin Costa, 40, Manchester, NH, skiing accident
105 Oct 2, 1990, Jimmy Jones, 34, TX, plane crash *
106 Oct 2, 1990, Russell Diedrick, 24, plane crash *
107 Oct 2, 1990, Stewart Eames, 27, plane crash *
108 Feb 24, 1991, Thomas Smith, 41, Montpelier, VT, fall
109 Jan 27, 1992, Louis Nichols, 47, Rochester, NH, exposure
110 Aug 12, 1992, George Remini, 65, Efland, NC, heart attack
111 Jan 15, 1994, Derek Tinkham, 20, Saunderstown, RI, exposure/Hassed
hassed -- to be left out in the cold to die while your more experienced
partner takes off down to safety.
112 Feb 26, 1994, Monroe Couper, 27, NJ, exposure *
113 Feb 26, 1994, Erik Lattey, 40, NJ, exposure *
114 May 1, 1994, Cheryl Weingarten, Somerville, MA, fall
115 June 4, 1994, Sarah Nicholson, 25, Portland, ME, falling ice

As of summer 1994

Of course this list does not take into account those who disappeared without
a trace, of which there are doubtless some, nor does this take into account
serious injuries which may have lead to death later.

Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 15:09:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Bill Rhodes <brh...@panix.com>
To: "Eugene N. Miya" <eugene>
Subject: Wash1.txt
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950207...@panix.com>

Fatal Attraction (whole article, part 1)
by Nicholas Howe
Mt. Washington, NH
From the February 1995 "Yankee"

(typos are probably mine, and yet I won't be
held responsible for them (:-))

There have been joys too great to be
described in words, and there have been
griefs upon which I have dared not to dwell,
and with these in mind I must say, climb if
you will, but remember that courage and
strength are naught without prudence, and
that a momentary negligence may destroy the
happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste,
look well to each step, and from the
beginning,think what may be the end. --Edward
Whimper, 1st known ascent of the Matterhorn
On February 28 of last year, Brian Abrams
was part of a rescue team searching for two
lost climbers on the upper slopes of Mt.
Washington in northern New Hampshire. That
morning the weather observatory on the summit
recorded temperatures holding steady between
-13 and -15 F; at 0500 the wind peaked at 128
miles per hour.
Brian saw a huddled knot of color in the
lee of some rocks, and thinking it was
another member of the rescue team, he made
his way over through the fierce blast and lay
down close beside a man in a blue outfit;
it's a mountaineer's way of getting a bit of
shelter in extreme conditions above
timberline. The man was leaning toward an
open pack and his gloves were off;
apparently he was getting something to eat.
He didn't seem aware of Brian's presence, the
rescuer realized that the man providing his
shelter was dead.
Mount Washington rises at the end of our
north meadow, and even as children, we knew
that people died up there. Fredrick Stickland
was the first to die, a young Englishman who
gave out in October 1849 after becoming lost
in bad weather. We thought most about Lizzie
Bourne; she died in September 1855, and we
imagined her wearing a skirt that swept the
ground and leg o'mutton sleeves like the
ladies in the earliest pages of our family
photo albums.
Our summers were filled with hiking, and
the greatest trips were on the Presidential
Range: Madison, Adams, Jefferson, and the
crowning heights of Mount Washington. The
trees got smaller and smaller as we climbed,
until the last of them were squashed into
moss and there was only rock and sky in
front of us. There was a metal sign about
here on every trail, bright yellow with
black lettering: "STOP Weather Changes Above
Timberline Are Sudden And Severe. Do Not
Attempt This Trail Unless You Are In Good
Physical Condition, Well Rested and Fed, And
Have Extra Food And Clothing. Turn Back At
The First Sign Of Bad Weather."
I still look toward Mount Washington
everytime I go outdoors; I look at it as a
sailor looks at his compass. Many days it's
bright and clear, and often I go up on the
range for a hike. Other days are bright and
clear in every direction except that one and
the mountain is covered by a shroud, a smear
of storm cloud like the furred back of a cat.
For most of history, people would not go up
there on such days; now they often do, and in
the valley we wait for the call to go out to
the rescuers.
It first came to me in 1952. I spent
teenage summers working for Joe Dodge in the
mountain huts of the Appalachian Mountain
Club. Joe set up camp in Pinkham Notch in
1922, at the foot of Mount Washington, and
for climbers over the years he was Mount
Washington and its sky-born neighbors. Joe
was a barrel of a man with a core of iron and
a heart of gold, and inspiration for every
half-formed neophyte who ever came near, and
a person whose command of spoken English
often carried sufficient force to get the
toughest job done with words alone.
August 23 was a major annual event in the
hutman's calendar. This was "Guinea Day,"
established some years before to celebrate
the birthday of Vinny LaManna, who was chief
of the storehouse and affectionately called
"Vinny the Guinea." His birthday was late in
the summer and provided a convenient
occasion for a party to mark the end of the
season.
That week in 1952 had brought very severe
weather, but about 25 hutmen got to the party
in Pinkham Notch. It was always a spaghetti
and beer bust, and momentum gathered quickly.

Suddenly, a young woman appeared. She was
wet, muddy and out of breath; she said she
was a nurse and a man had collapsed up above
Tuckerman Ravine. Her companion, another
nurse, had stayed with him.
Joe Dodge's example taught us not to
hesitate at times like this, so we put down
the spaghetti and the beer and took off up
Mount Washington at a trot. The clouds closed
in on us, the rain turned to sleet part way
up Tuckerman, then ice was gathering on the
rocks. It was the weather those signs warned
about and it was tough going, but at 19 you
are not only invincible, but you are also
immortal, and were all 19. When we got to the
man, he was dead..
Most of us had never seen death so close,
and many had never seen death at all; we
hadn't learned that when lifeless flesh is
pressed, it does not rebound, it does not
press back. This man seemed extraordinarily
large, too heavy to lift, and we learned the
meaning of "dead weight," a weight that
doesn't help you at all. We could barely keep
our feet as we headed down over the
headwall; we half-dropped our burden several
times and we did drop it several times. Some
laughed, saying we should just let him slide
down the slope, he wouldn't mind, and we'd
catch up later. That, apparently, is what
you do when you're at the height of your
powers and carrying a dead man you can
hardly lift.
Being tall, I was at the downhill end of
the load. one of his booted feet was flopping
right beside my shoulder, just flopping
there with an absolute limpness I'd never
seen. The nurse who had stayed behind said
she'd found a prescription for heart medicine
in the man's pocket, and I kept wondering
what he was thinking when he passed the sign
telling how the weather changes above
timberline are sudden and severe. I kept
looking at the boot laces on the foot
flopping on my shoulder. They were tied with
a double bow knot, and I kept thinking the
same thing over and over, that when he tied
that bow this morning, he was looking forward
to the day.
My friend Chan Murdoch was level with the
man's arm, and he told me later that all the
way down he could only think of how the man's
limp elbow kept nudging him as he struggled
with the carry, just that persistent
mindless nudge. When Chan said that, I
realized that we'd both seen our first death
in very small parts.
For Joe Dodge, there was other business to
attend to. He lived with emergency like his
own shadow, and he'd led the charge countless
times. So when we got to the Appalachian
Mountain Club headquarters at the bottom of
the trail, Joe made the call. It appeared,
however, that the person at the other end of
the line insisted on hope. Finally Joe
said, "Hell no, lady, it's worse than that.
The poor son of a bitch is dead."
He was the 38th person to die. Now the
total is 115, and the pace is quickening.
Last year five people died up there from
mid-January to early June, the fastest start
on mortality since records began. Like
Lizzie Bourne, the numbers are still people,
among both the living and the dead.

Tinkham and Haas

The first death of 1994 came on January
15, a Saturday. Joe Dodge's legacy is a
cluster of buildings at the AMC headquarters
in Pinkham Notch and the "pack room" is a
popular spot, the place where climbers
gather when they're about to start on a climb
or are just returning from one. Thursday
evening a young man was speaking at
considerable length on his plans, a four-day
traverse along the skyline ridge of the
Presidential Range. Another hiker was
forcibly struck by how easily he dominated
the room and the people there, and how his
companion sat by, silent and enthralled.
The speaker was Jeremy Haas; his companion
was Derek Tinkham, both college students,
Derek loved the mountains, he went climbing
up here whenever he could, he meant to go to
work as a guide, and he'd gotten a job with
the rescue team at Yosemite for the coming
summer. His long-time friend Jennifer Taylor
often drove him up to the mountains to start
a trip and picked him up when it was done.

Their route usually took them through
North Conway, 20 miles south of Mount
Washington, and Derek would always stop at
International Mountain Equipment, a major
source of serious gear, advice, and
companionship. Jennifer noticed that Derek
would only let one person wait on him; no
matter how small the transaction or how many
unoccupied people were behind the counter,
he always waited until a short, compact
fellow was free. Finally Jennifer asked her
friend why he always waited for that person.
Derek explained that the person he waited for
was Rick Wilcox, owner of the store; that he
was a great mountaineer, that he'd climbed
Mount Everest, Jennifer understood.
What they could learn from Rick Wilcox
should also be understood, because it's the
key to everything that followed. Rick had
started with the neighborhood mountains of
New England and worked his way up. Now he's
made five trips to the Himalayas, and he
knows how very small are the margins that
determine not just whether a summit is
reached, but whether a climber returns at
all.
A Himalayan summit day begins years
earlier, when the leader applies for
permission to make the try. The planning,
the money-raising, the risk to business and
family relations, the long trek to base
camp, the push higher and higher up the
flanks, all increase the pressure to make
those last few hundred yards to the summit.
That's what we're taught to do; our culture
is obsessed with success and climbers are
our surrogates -- they're the ones that keep
pushing upward.
For Rick Wilcox, and his climbing mates,
the weather had gone bad just a few hundred
yards below the summit of Makalu, fifth
highest in the world. They turned around
without hesitation. six days of dizzyingly
steep snow climbing protect the summit ridge
of Cho Oyu, then there's a very long knife
edge, and just below the summit, a small rock
wall with a drop of 10,000 feet at the
climber's heels. Rick's partner, Mark Richey,
let the first move onto that wall and sensed
the brittle quality of the rock. He looked
at Rick, and with hardly a word, they turned
around. The summit was right there, and they
turned around and headed for home, half a
world away.
On his fifth Himalayan expedition, the
summit of Everest was son still that Rick sat
there for an hour. From the beginning, he'd
had the feeling that finally, on this trip,
it was his turn. The clouds came in that
afternoon, and Rick's partner kept track of
his own descent by noting the curious
markers at the top of the world. There are
frozen bodies on the summit patches of
Everest, climbers who did not plan as well or
who kept pushing when the signs were bad.
It's too difficult to take dead climbers
down, so they stay there forever and wiser
climbers use them as guides.
The hike Jeremy had planned for himself
and Derek began Friday afternoon, but like a
Himalayan expedition, the important decisions
had been made much earlier. Jennifer had
urged Derek to take along a small
mountaineering tent, but Jeremy wanted to
travel light, so they took bivouac ("bivy"}
bags instead, weather-resistant coverings for
their sleeping bags. Jeremy also left his
over mitts at home, he wanted the added
dexterity of gloves.
Something else had already been
established, probably years earlier; Jeremy
had a tendency to keep pushing. He'd led a
climb for the University of New Hampshire
Outing Club, and when they returned, many of
the group complained that he'd kept charging
ahead and was not sensitive to their needs;
he was told he could not be a trip leader
anymore, and he resigned from the club. He
took Chris Rose on a Presidential Range
traverse over the Christmas break, and Chris
got so cold that all his toes had to be
amputated. The trip Jeremy planned for
himself and Derek was the same route as the
one that had claimed his friend's toes two
years earlier.
The pack room at Pinkham Notch were Jeremy
held forth was built many years after we set
out to rescue the failing hiker on Guinea
Day, but other elements have not changed.
Detailed weather reports and predictions at
upper elevations are always posted at the
AMC, and climbers check them as a reflex
before starting up. High winds and extreme
cold were predicted for that weekend. Jeremy
and Derek started for the base of the Air
Line Trail, a popular route departing
through the tiny town of Randolph and rising
to skyline on the northern end of the
Presidential Range.
The trees grew smaller and more dense as
they neared timberline. There are openings
here, certified as overnight campsites by
years of native wisdom. The two climbers
stopped in one and settled into their bivy
bags. As they slept, the weather above
timberline, severe enough when they began,
grew worse.
The summit observatory recorded -6F at
midnight and -23F at 0800; the wind moved
into the west and was steady in the
40-mile-per-hour range, not high by local
standards, but a west wind rakes straight
across the 6.5 mile ridge Jeremy and Derek
would traverse. They climbed to the top of
Madison, then Adams, the second-highest peak
in the Northeast. It was close to noon now,
and they'd been making quite good time.
This section of the trail leads down to
Edmands Col, a mile of easy going. Derek was
going slower and slower, a sign that betrays
the onset of hypothermia. Edmands Col lies
between Adams and Jefferson, and the mild
descent took many times what it would in
summer.
Hypothermia is not just cold hands and
feet; it comes when the cold has bitten right
through, and the body's core temperature
begins to drop. The body circles up the
metabolic wagons to make one last stand
against death, blood is concentrated in the
viscera, the mind becomes sluggish and limbs
erratic.
At this point, there were three refuges
nearby, all below timberline: The Perch is a
three- sided shelter, Crag Camp just had a
complete rebuild, and Gray Knob had also been
rebuilt and had a caretaker, heat, lights,
and radio contact with the valley. The two
hikers discussed a retreat to one of them,
but decided to continue upward toward the
summit of Jefferson. Jeremy's original plan
was to go on to Sphinx Col, a mile and a half
up Jefferson and down the other side; he
remembered an ice cave there during his
previous trip, and his idea was to use it as
shelter for the second night of this trip.
In the prevailing weather conditions, it
had become a plan of breathtaking stupidity.
Ice caves are ephemeral. What Jeremy had
seen two years earlier might not be there at
all this year.
Even if it was, Sphinx Col would be a
furious torrent of Arctic wind and an ice
cave was not what they needed. As bad as it
was in Edmands Col, it could only be worse in
Sphinx Col, higher and nearer the Mount
Washington weather vortex. The climbers were
getting weaker, the storm was getting
stronger.
Afterward, Jeremy said the decision to
push on was a mutual one. But experienced
climbers agree that at this point it was
Jeremy's job, as the more experienced
climber, to get Derek down to shelter, any
shelter. As Rick Wilcox puts it, "When you
climb solo, you only have to worry about
yourself, but when you climb with another
person, it's your responsibility to look out
for him."
In fairness to Jeremy, he was suffering
from the same extreme conditions, and that
might have affected his judgement.
When they got to the summit of Jefferson,
Derek collapsed. Having left a tent at home,
Jeremy tried to get him into a sleeping bag,
then left for the summit of Mount Washington,
more than three miles away. It was 4:30
p.m., darkness would soon overtake him, the
summit temperature had dropped to -27 F, and
the wind was in the 80s with a peak gust of
96 miles per hour. Jeremy lost his
gloves, and having left his heavy overmitts
at home, his hands were too cold to let him
get at the food and the flashlight he had in
his pockets. He kept his hands under his
armpits as he staggered and crawled along the
ridge.
Conditions like this do not match normal
experience. One year I went up to the summit
for Thanksgiving dinner with the observatory
crew; the weather was moderate and the climb
enjoyable, but the day after the feast, the
wind rose to 150; the day after that the
recording pen went off the chart at 162. In
lulls, the observers would climb the inside
of the tower to the instrument deck to clear
ice from the sensors. I'd go and help and
found a curious situation: Facing the wind
made it difficult to exhale, back to the wind
made it difficult to get a breath in.
Strictly speaking, it was physics, but it
felt like I was drowning of an ocean of air.
Purposive effort hardly worked at all, and
years later when I saw news footage of people
getting hit by police water cannons, I
thought of that storm on Mount Washington.
Supper in the observatory on the Saturday of
Jeremy and Derek's trip was a noisy meal.
There was the hammer of an 80-mph wind and
cracking sounds from the building itself. The
concrete and the embedded steel reinforcing
rods contract at different rates. Ken
Rancourt and Ralph Patterson were on duty,
and they were used to this, but now Ken
suddenly looked intent, he'd heard a
different, more rhythmic banging in the midst
of the uproar. He and Ralph traced the sound
to a door on the north side of the building:
Someone was out there.
A few minutes later, Jeremey was inside.
He was barely able to talk, but as Ralph
checked for the most obvious signs of
damage, he asked Jeremy if he was alone.
Jeremy indicated that he'd left his partner
near the summit of Jefferson. The wind peaked
at 103 that night, and between midnight and
0400 the temperature held steady at -40 f.
Some newspaper reports described Jeremy's
fierce traverse as "heroic." Others had
worked out a different calculus of risk, and
they did not share that view. Prominent in
the latter group are the ones who tried to
rescue Derek Tinkham.
By 2100 the observatory crew had called
the valley to report the emergency, and the
message reached the Mountain Rescue Service.
Joe Letini answered, then and co-leader Nick
Yardley put the "A Team" on standby. The
first decision had already been made: The
combination of darkness and brutal
conditions made a rescue attempt that night
impossible. It's a difficult but accepted
calculation; at a certain point, many lives
cannot be risked in a try to save one. At
0500 the team left for the base of Caps
Ridge Trail, the shortest route up Jefferson.
Conditions were extraordinarily bitter as
the 11 team members started up. Joe Lentini
was keeping a sharp eye out for signs of
frostbite or falter among his crew. Caps
Ridge takes its name from a series of rock
outbursts heaping up above timberline like
the bony spires on the back of some
prehistoric monster. Summertime hikers have
to hold on up there, and in winter it's
immeasurably tougher. The caps are clad in
ice, with wind-blown snow in the sheltered
parts of the jagged skyline. The dwarf
spruce under drifts is impossible to see, and
when the climbers stepped in the wrong
place, they'd fall up to their ribs.
Up past the last cap, Tiger Burns advised
Joe that his feet were getting cold. Knowing
that it would only get worse and that a
disabled team member higher up would vastly
increase their problems, he descended to a
sheltered place to wait for the others to
return. He was still above timberline, but
he was ready.
Tiger's outfit was typical of MRS team
that day. He had many layers of specialized
clothing under his waterproof outer shell.
He had insulated bin-pants and parka with a
heat-reflective Mylar lining, a balaclava, a
pile lined Gore-tex hat under the hood, and a
scarf snuggling up the spaces around his
face. He had polypropoylene liner gloves,
expedition-weight wool gloves, extra-heavy
expedition mitts with overshells, and
chemical heaters for hands and feet. In his
pack, Tiger had two sets of backups for his
gloves and mitts, two more hats, another
scarf, extra chemical heat packs, and a bivy
bag. Unlike most of the climbers, he was not
wearing goggles. Instead, as his balaclava
froze, he pinched it into narrow slits over
his eyes.
Up above, the trail led onto an alpine
zone of ice and rough broken rock, with the
1,000 foot summit pyramid of Jefferson
rising above it. It was just here that the
wind hit the rescue team, a blast so severe
that they could communicate only by putting
their heads together and yelling. At 1000,
Al Comeau spotted a bit of color up near the
peak of the mountain.
It was Derek's bivy bag. It was just below
the summit, and Derek was lying there half
out of his sleeping bag. He was wearing a
medium-weight parka, and it was only partly
zipped; his other clothes were barely
sufficient for a good-weather winter climb,
and his hands were up at his face as if
trying to keep away the calamity that fell on
him at dusk the day before. There were two
packs with sleeping bags nearby, on top of
an insulated sleeping pad. Troubled things
had happened here, but there was no time for
reflection now.
As the team started down, the wind hit
them straight in the face. It was -32 f , the
wind was peaking in the high eighties, and
they were keeping ahead of it in clothing
like the outfit Rick Wilcox had on the top
of Everest. In conditions like this, you
don't go where you want to go, you go where
the wind and the terrain let you go.
Suddenly Maury McKinney broke through the
crust and the whole of his weight drove his
heel down, injuring his calf. The Andy
Orsini's eye froze shut. Bob Parrot helped
Andy cover up completely and Maury leaned
against his other side, partly to guide him,
partly to relieve his own bad leg. The
battered troika made its way down through the
ice and rock for several hundred yards until
Maury was able to reach in through Andy's
wrappings and rub the melting ice out of his
eyes.
When the team reached Tiger Burns, they
took their first rest in eight hours of
continuous maximum effort. Several times
they'd considered leaving the body behind and
saving themselves, but then they thought of
Derek's family and how they'd feel if their
son was still up there, alone with the
storm, and they kept going. Once in the
woods, they talked among themselves about
what had happened. "Bottom line," said Joe
Letini, "I would never ditch a partner like
that."
Later there was time for reflection. Like
many members of the recovery groups, Andy
Orsini had instinctively shut out the
emotional aspects of the job in order to get
on with it. By Tuesday this insulation had
turned to anger. He had the newspaper account
and read that if he had any regrets, Jeremy
had said "Yes, I wish I'd brought mittens
instead of gloves." Andy was so appalled
that he called the newspaper to verify the
remark. "It's something I have to live with,"
said Al Comeau, "seeing Derek there. He was a
victim of Jeremy's state of mind and over-
ambitiousness. That one really bothered me."

Fatal Attraction (whole article, part 2)
by Nicholas Howe =20
Mt. Washington, NH =20
From the February 1995 "Yankee" =20
(typos are probably mine, and yet I won't be
held responsible for them (:-)) =20
=20
Lattey and Couper =20
=20
That winter, Jim Dowd had also been
bothered. He was caretaker of the Harvard
cabin below Mount Washington's Huntington
Ravine and about two miles up from the
highway in Pinkham Notch, and it seemed as
if practically every climber who came through
said he'd read an article about ice climbing
in Pinnacle Gulley up in the ravine. It was
in Climbing magazine, it was written by an
eager but inexperienced teenager who'd gotten
into trouble up there with his friend, and
people kept telling Jim they thought it was a
great story. =20
Talk like this made Jim feel a little
sick, and he'd made a point not to read the
article; when Jim was 11 years old, his
father had died while climbing the next
ridge. One of the reasons Jim was working up
here was a sense that he'd like to give
something back, and he didn't like to hear=20
about people rushing into ill-advised risks. =20
Huntington Ravine has always been a place
of risk. It looks like the impression left by=20
some immense primordial fist driven into the
side of Mount Washington, rock-lined, 1,800
feet high, and the toughest of all trails
for summer hikers. It also loomed large in
our youthful inventory of awe. Jessie
Whitehead was a librarian at Harvard
University, she was flinging herself against=20
difficult obstacles when even the bravest of
men were cautious, and we knew she'd had a
terrible fall while ice climbing in
Huntington Ravine in 1931. Jessie survived,
but she was almost crippled by a stutter,
and we thought her affliction was a relic of
that fall. Sue used to stay at our summer=20
place, and we'd try to get close enough to
hear her try to talk. We tried to imagine the
frightful circumstance that inflicted such a
penalty. =20
Monroe Couper and Erik Lattey were
planning their own climb in Huntington
Ravine. They were friends in New Jersey,
both had young families, and both were just
getting started in winter climbing. Now they
headed for New Hampshire and signed in at the
AMC headquarters at 1330 on Friday
afternoon, February 25. The weather forecast
for the next day was favorable: Highs in the=20
teens, winds on the summit increasing to 40
to 60 mph. They wouldn't be going to the
summit, so it looked good. =20
Saturday morning, Monroe and Erik left the
Harvard cabin at around eight, then had to=20
return --they had forgotten their climbing
rope. They started up Pinnacle at about noon.
The weather forecast, however, had been
wrong; conditions higher up were
deteriorating rapidly. Bill Aughton is
director of Search and Rescue at the AMC, and
he was guiding a trip across the=20
Presidentals that day. He was so struck by
the unexpectedly bad weather that he took a
picture looking ahead to Mount Washington,
then turned his group around. =20
A climber at the bottom of Huntington
Ravine spotted Monroe and Erik in upper
Pinnacle Gully at 1700. They were not moving
well. Guides allow three hours for Pinnacle;
Monroe and Erik had been up there for five.
The usual turn-around time is 1430 or 1500;
they were 2.5 hours past that and still
going up, toward the approaching night. =20
Going up in ice climbing must be understood
conditionally: While one climber is moving,=20
the stays in a fixed position to tend the
rope and belays, the safety margin. Thus,
either Monroe or Erik had been almost
motionless for half of their time in
Pinnacle, absorbing the cold.=20
The overnight lodgers at the Harvard
cabin were settling in, tending to their gear
and making their various preparations for
supper, when someone noticed two packs in a
corner that didn't belong to anyone there. =20
The top of pinnacle eases over onto the
Alpine Garden, well above timberline. This
place is a summer delight, table-flat and
almost a mile wide, and spread with tiny
flowers, dense moss and delicate sedges. One
of the several unique plants that lives here
has its growth cells at the bast of its
stalk instead of its tip, the better to
withstand the brutal winters. =20
This was a brutal winter, and as Monroe
and Erik felt their way out of the top of
Pinnacle, they found only wind-scoured ice
and rock. Just above them on the summit, the
wind averaged 90 mph between nine and eleven
that evening, gusting to 108 at 2150; by
midnight the temperature had fallen to -24
f. A maximum rescue effort was being
organized in the valley. =20
At 0600, 33 climbers gathered at the AMC
headquarters; the plan was to send teams up=20
several climbing gullies of Huntington Ravine
and also comb the adjacent area, the most
likely places to find the missing pair. =20
The plan was quickly modified. The climbers
were getting into their routes soon after
0900. It was -16 f at the observatory on the
ridge above them, and the wind averaged over
100 miles per hour from 0700 until 1200 with
a peak gust of 127 at 0945. Tiger Burns was
working his way up Escape Gulley with two
partners, and he suddenly found himself in
midair, blown out like a heavily dressed
pennant, with only one elbow looped through a
webbing strap to keep him from a very long
fall. Nick Yardley and his partners were the
only ones to get above timberline, and then
only briefly -- they had to crawl down. =20
After all the teams were back down on the
wooded plateau near the Harvard cabin, it=20
occurred to Jim Dowd that Monroe and Erik
might have gotten into Raymond Cataract, a
broad basin adjoining Huntington Ravine,
remarkably regular in contour, no steeper
than a hiking trail, and funneling out into
an outlet nearby. Jim was thinking that
Monroe and Erik might have made a snow cave.
They might still be there, unhappy, but safe.=20
Jim Dowd and Chad Jones started up into
the Cataract. Snow drifts in heavily here,
and it almost avalanched on them. Jim had a
grim sort of chuckle: Al Dow had died in an
avalanche near here during another winter
search mission -- there's a plaque honoring
him on a rescue cache in Huntington Ravine
-- and Jim was thinking that if this slope
let go, they could just add (d) to the name
on the plaque to remember him as well. =20
Their hopes lifted when they found boot
tracks, but they turned out to be from Nick
Yardley and his partner, descending. Other
than that, there was only a mitten and a pot
lid, found in the floor of the ravine. They
were on top of the snow, so they couldn't
have been there long; they'd probably been
blown loose from somewhere higher up. Jim and
Chad made a last visual check of Pinnacle
and saw nothing. Then they looked at each
other and said almost at the same moment,=20
"They're still on the climb." Privately Jim
thought, "Damn, we missed the boat. We were
looking in the escape routes." He imagined
the climbers thinking, "We need to get out of
here and the direction we are going is up." =20
First lessons in climbing teach people to
climb, not escape, Monroe and Erik had kept
pushing upward. =20
When Jim got back to the cabin that
evening, there were the usual number of
recreational climbers in for the night, but
the usual banter was missing. "Everyone was
looking at me with these big eyes, like,
what happened to those guys?" Jim had gone
through their packs earlier to see if he=20
could get an idea of what they had with them
by seeing what they left behind. He'd also
found two steaks, so now, after the long day
of work trying to find the missing climbers,
he cooked their steaks for own supper. =20
Early Monday morning the teams started up
again. The summit temperature was steady=20
between -13 and -15 f; at 0500 the wind
peaked at 128 mph. Ben Miller was with a
group climbing Odell Gulley, just left of
Pinnacle. Ben had the longest association
with Mount Washington: His father worked up
there for 39 years. A climber of long
experience, Ben knew the mountain and its=20
habits as if it were his backyard. =20
Ben's group reached the intersection of
Odell with Alpine Garden and found a cleavage=20
plane -- laying flat, Ben felt that if he put
his head up, the wind would simply peel him
off the snow. Working his way up over the
crest, he saw others on the Garden fighting
through the wind, their ropes bowed out into
taut arcs. Rick Wilcox and Doug Madera went
up the ridge above the right wall of the
ravine. This place has no difficulties for a
summer hiker, but when Rick wasn't totally=20
braced against his crampons and ice ax, the
wind would send him sprawling along the
ground. There was a 2,000 foot drop 30 feet
away. =20
As soon as Al Comeau came over the crest
of South Gulley, he saw someone there in the=20
sun. As with Derek Tinkham, Al was the first
to reach the victim, but this was a moment
all rescue climbers dread --it was someone
he knew. Al recognized Monroe Coupler, a
climbing student he'd had the winter before,
a musician of unusual talent and sensitivity,
a person Al remembered with great affection.
Not seeing Erik Lattey, Al went down the top
section of Pinnacle to see if he had gotten
stuck there. When he returned, Brian Abrams
and some others were there. They realized=20
that Monroe had died in the act of trying to
make something hot for himself and his
friend. Erik was nearby, lying face down in
the rocks with his arms outstretched, heading
toward Monroe, as if he'd tried to find an
escape route Saturday evening, then gone back
for his partner. =20
This was a tough one. Members of the
climbing community had little sympathy for
Jeremy Haas, but Monroe and Erik had tried
to do things right. They'd taken climbing
lessons from the best in the business, and
in their last moments they were trying to
take care of each other. =20
The bodies were finally recovered on
Tuesday. Then after three days of almost
continuous effort, the teams gathered for a
debriefing down at AMC headquarters. An
official from the US Forest Service offered
to arrange psychological counseling for
anyone who felt the need, but there were no
takers. The consensus was that they'd rather
have the Forest Service arrange steaks and=20
beer. This was, after all, volunteer work. =20
Weingarten =20
=20
Tuckerman Ravine is a sort of twin to
Huntington Ravine, a left-hand punch into the
side of Mount Washington by the same giant
hand who made Huntington with his right. The
surrounding topography is a little different
though -- it has the effect of an immense
snow fence, and the drifts pile into
Tuckerman all winter long. By spring, snow
has banked up against the headwall 150 feet=20
deep, and skiers from all over America hike
up from the highway and test nerve and
technique on some of the steepest skiing
anywhere on the planet. "Going over the lip,"
making the vertiginous plunge from the
higher snowfields down into the bowl, is a
major rite of passage. =20
In fact, going up over the Lip can be as
scary as most people would want. It's not
like climbing a slope in any familiar sense
-- it's more like climbing a thousand-foot
ladder. There's always a line of steps
kicked into the snow at the right side of the
headwall, and as the slope steepens, the
surface of the snow gets closer and closer to
the front of bended knees. Darwin is in=20
charge of safety here; skiers usually stop
climbing up at the point dictated by thoughts
of skiing down. =20
Darwin was not with me the first time I
skied down over the Lip. I'd climbed an
alternate route to take the mail to the crew
at the summit observatory; not only that, but
fog came in on the way down. There are
several major choices of route: Gulf of
Slides and Raymond Cataract both end at the
same place in the valley and are far more
accommodating to nerve and technique. I=20
planned to ski down with someone from the
observatory, trusting him to navigate on my
youthful and somewhat tremulous behalf. =20
Being above timberline, on snow, in fog, is
like being inside a milk bottle: It's a
whiteout with no visual references at all.
At best your lost, at worst you totter with
vertigo or nausea. As we skied down, my
increasing speed told me the slope was
steepening, and even though years of hiking
had taught me the terrain in mapmaker's
detail, it was fair-weather mapmaking. I
asked where we were and heard, "The Lip is
right down there." In this case, the whiteout
was my friend, and I made my rite of passage
over the lip because I couldn't see well
enough to be scared. =20
Not everyone skis, and a good spring day
will also bring out hikers who enjoy the
cushiony surface underfoot, the bright sun,
and the spectacle. Last May 1, Cheryl
Weingarten and her friends Julie Parsons,
Anna Shapiro, and Nick Nardi, all in their
20's, had come up for the day. Anna stayed
in the ravine to ski, the others headed for
the summit. =20
The weather was tolerable, and they
followed the skiers up the ladder of step at
the right side of the ravine. Trouble was
already with them, though; fog had come in,
and they couldn't see the larger picture.
Caution is largely determined by vision --out
of sight, out of mind. On the way down from
the summit they had fun sliding in the soft
snow of the upper, milder terrain. They were=20
on my youthful track exactly, but they didn't
have my guide; with no horizon and no
shadows, slope and detail disappeared in a
wash of gray. =20
As spring advances, melt water from the
slopes above Tuckerman Ravine runs over a
flat rock at one side of the Lip, then
plunges down the headwall behind the snow.
Julie was in the lead as the three friends
hopped and slithered along, and suddenly she
slid out onto the rock. With a lunge, she
got hold of a bit of a dwarf spruce. Then
Cheryl slid past her and on out of sight. =20
With extraordinary courage and presence of
mind, Julie held onto her tiny bit of safety,=20
then pulled herself away from the water and
crawled back up to Nick. As they tried to
collect their wits, they heard voices off to
one side. They called, made contact, and
crossed the fog-shrouded slope toward the
voices. They found skiers who said they were
headed down themselves, and they led the way
through the fog. =20
Not really knowing where they were, Julie
and Nick probably hadn't realized that the=20
footstep ladder they'd come up was right
beside them when Julie pulled herself off the
ledge. It was right there, just a few steps
away. Though forbiddingly steep, it was still
the safest way down. The skiers they now
joined were headed for the Chute, so scary a
run that many veteran ravine skiers have
never attempted it and no plans to do so.
Incredibly, Julie and Nick got themselves=20
dow this drop of ice and rock and snow that
many climbers would hesitate to attempt
without full equipment. =20
They didn't find Cheryl when they got to
the floor of the ravine, and they didn't know
where she was. Cheryl had grown up as the
kind of girl who was ready for anything.
Bright, active, and very popular, she had an
endless vest for life: she'd been studying in
France and had only recently survived a
head-on crash in Morocco. Knowing Cheryl's
eager enthusiasms, her parents sometimes
worried about her. =20
Now they got a call from the White
Mountains. Brad Ray is the Forest Service
supervisor for Tuckerman Ravine, and by
Sunday evening he'd pieced together the
sometimes contradictory details and realized
what had happened: Cheryl had gone over the
waterfall below the flat rock and been
carried down behind the snowpack. Brad called
the Weingartens and told them the situations
was very serious. =20
By now the call had also gone to Rick
Wilcox. He talked with situation over the
other lead people in the rescue network and
realized that by the time a group was in
position to do anything, it would be late in
the evening, extremely dangerous for the
rescuers, and almost certainly too late for
Cheryl Weingarten. =20
The next day, a New Hampshire State Fish
and Game Department brought a dry suit and=20
scuba breathing apparatus in addition to
their more usual ropes and security devices,
but they found the overnight chill had
slowed the melting and reduced the volume of
water.=20
The dry suit was enough. Jeff Gray made
the difficult descent into the crevasse and
reached the place where Cheryl lay. They
took the million-to-one chance and began
resuscitation attempts as they carried her
down. An ambulance met the evacuation group
at the foot of the trail, and the attending
doctor discovered that Cheryl's neck was
broken. =20
That waterfall forms every spring, and a
trace of it often remains in summer, just to
the left of the hiking trail as it rounds up
over the top of the headwall. Habitu=82s of the
ravine call that place Shiller's Rock to
remember Dr. Paul Shiller, a skier who died
after sliding over the rock and falling=20
headfirst down behind the snowpack 45 years
earlier to the month, week day and hour. =20
=20
Nicholson =20
The most recent Mount Washington death, as
I write, was, like the very first, by falling
ice. As the sun climbs toward summer, it
loosens the ice that forms on the ledges
lining Tuckerman Ravine at the level of
Schiller's Rock. It's on just such lovely
days that the greatest number of skiers come
up and when the telltale crack is heard, the
cry "ICE" goes up. Sound carries well in the
vast acoustic focus, everyone hears the call,
and everyone looks up the slope. =20
Last June 4, Sarah Nicholson looked up and
saw a car-sized block of ice sliding and=20
bounding down toward her. Gravity is also on
the side of the skier, and a quick escape
left or right downslope almost always avoids
the danger of falling ice. But this block was
breaking into fragments, and it wasn't clear
which way led most quickly to safety. It's a
familiar sidewalk dilemma: Step left or
right to avoid the collision?=20
Sarah's moment of hesitation broke the
hearts of her friends and brought the list to 115.

Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 20:07:24 -0500 (EST)
From: Bill Rhodes <brh...@panix.com>
To: "Eugene N. Miya" <eugene>
Subject: Mt. Wash stats

Here are the stats I have done for the deaths on Mt. Washington, should
be interesting for the morbid like me.
Statistical breakdown of Mt. Washington Deaths

Since 1849 there have been 115 known deaths on Mt. Washington, NH

Of the known dead, the ages of 98 victims are known for certain... the average
age of death is 31.3 years old. The oldest victim was 88, the youngest was 2.

August and September are the most deadly with 16 each, December the least
3. Although it should be noted that September 6, 1967 was a train wreck which
killed 8, including the youngest three victims 2, 7 and 9.

Other months totals:
January 10, February 9, March 9, April 7, May 9, June 10, July 9, August 16,
September 16, October 13, November 4, and December 3.

The most deadly days:
8 on September 6 - 8 killed in a train accident
4 on October 2 - 3 in a plane crash, 1 by falling
4 on August 22 - 2 in a plane crash, 2 heart attacks
4 on January 31- 2 by exposure, 2 by avalanche
3 on January 26- 3 killed in the same fall
3 on October 13- 1 by exposure, 1 heart attack, 1 drowning
3 on November 29 - 3 in a plane crash

There is a tie for the most deadly year with 1967 and 1969 sharing this
dubious honor, each with 8. Of course 67 had the train crash and no other
deaths. 69 had 3 in a plane crash, 3 in a fall and two others, making it, in
my opinion the most deadly.

Other years in descending order:

Both 1971 and 1994 had 5 deaths.
1980 and 1990 share 4 each.
Several years had 3 each, 1900, 1956, 1958, 1964, 1974, 1976, and 1986

Causes of death requires some explanation. Some people may have died of more
than one cause, or the exact cause may not be known, only surmised. Of the
known causes this is the breakdown of the most common ones:
Exposure -28
Injuries from a fall - 24
Crashes air/car/coach/horse/sled - 19
Drowning - 10
Skiing - 6
Avalanche - 6
Being stuck by falling objects ice/snow/rock/other climbers - 5
Heart attacks - 4

Coincidence:
On May 1, 1949 Dr. Paul Schiller of Cambridge, MA was skiing and fell off a
rock now named for him this was about 11:00 a.m., he fell behind the accumulated
snow mass and drowned. On May 1, 1994, at the same time of day, Cheryl
Weingarten of Somerville, MA fell at the same spot, also behind the snow mass
and died.

Bill Rhodes When privacy is outlawed,
brh...@panix.com only outlaws will have privacy!

PGP fingerprint 08 18 89 C2 3E 37 EE F4
B8 10 70 3D 05 4E 74 A2 finger for PGP 2.6.2 Public Key

Reported avalanches in the US for 93-94 were 8,419 and 10,350 in 92-93

93-94 92-93
The number of people caught 132 206
Buried 56 91
injured 9 15
Killed 11 29

of those 11, two (2) wer ski tourers and ski mountaineers
nine (9) were snowmobilers

Fort Collins Coloradoan 19 climbers or hikers died in Colorado in 1994
Falls accounted for 80% of the
deaths. "Human error was responsible for nearly all the deaths."

Accidents in the Home/Year (US pop = 249M)
3.5M disabled

23.76K murders

1/421 injured on any given ski day

Skiing as a sport:

%chance of Emergency Room visit this year
3.7 ice hockey
2.7 basketball
1.4 softball
1.2 skiing
1.2 bicycling
0.5 inline skating
0.2 tennis/golf

chance of admittance to hospital on any given ski day
1/7949

Skiing vs modes of transportation:

boat fatalities 784/yr

NASA STS - 55 (.55 per 100 million person*miles at 10,000 mph)
US commercial air - 2.3 (.38 per 100 million person*miles at 600 mph)
US automobiles - 0.85 (1.7 per 100 million person*miles at 50 mph)
Railroads - 0.22
General aviation (small aircraft) - 6.5

air crash 1 in 7M major airline departures
1 in 2M commuter departure

US fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled: 1.7
US auto crashes per day: US News & World Report 7/3/95 NHTSA
100 fatalities
1900 hospitalized
20000 medical care

Skiing vs other causes of death (from Almanac):

1/10M commercial airline accident
1/5.5M bee sting
1/1.9M lightening
1/1M train trip, coast to coast
1/450K tornado
1/88K bicycle accident
1/14K car trip, coast to coast
1/600 smoking (by age 35)
1/2 cardiovascular disease

200 die from blowfish sushi (fugu) each year

source: Nat'l History Museum of LA County, MIT, UCB, Travel Weekly

elevator 2x safer than stairs

The chance of fatality is less than 1 per 1.3E6 skier-days. If you ski
1000 days in your skiing lifetime, that is a 0.13% lifetime risk. This
is roughly ten times less than the lifetime risk of croaking in a car
accident.

92-93: 42 fatalities (12 out of bounds), 29 serious injuries
out of 54M visits, 0.53 serious injuries/million skier visits
0.77 fatalities/million skier visits

Total Number of On-snow Participants Year Alpine Cross Country Snowboarding 1993 10,495,000 3,727,000 1,841,000

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 96 13:32:00 PST
From: lang...@shasta.wr.usgs.gov (John Langbein)
Message-Id: <960125213...@shasta.noname>

Here is some "junk" email

From: Grace Boockholdt, Sun - Corporate Legal on Wed, Jan 24, 1996 4:50 PM
Subject: Skier's Dictionary
To: Beatty Pauline; Bbo...@aol.com

A Skier's Dictionary
======================
Condensed from "Skiing: A Skier's Dictionary"
Henry Bread and Roy McKie

Alp: One of a number of ski mountains in Europe. Also a shouted request for
assistance made by a European skier on a U.S. mountain. An appropriate
reply: "What Zermatter?"

Avalanche: One of the few actual perils skiers face that needlessly frighten
timid individuals away from the sport. See also: Blizzard, Fracture,
Frostbite, Hypothermia, Lift Collapse.

Bindings: Automatic mechanisms that protect skiers from potentially serious
injury during a fall by releasing skis from boots, sending the skis
skittering across the slope where they trip two other skiers, and so on and
on, eventually causing the entire slope to be protected from serious injury.

Bones: There are 206 in the human body. No need for dismay, however: TWO
bones of the middle ear have never been broken in a skiing accident.

Cross-Country Skiing: Traditional Scandinavian all-terrain snow-travelling
technique. It's good exercise. It doesn't require the purchase of costly
lift tickets. It has no crowds or lines. It isn't skiing. See
Cross-Country Something-Or-Other.

Cross-Country Something-or-Other: Touring on skis along trails in scenic
wilderness, gliding through snow-hushed woods far from the hubbub of the ski
slopes, hearing nothing but the whispery hiss of the skis slipping through
snow and the muffled tinkle of car keys dropping into the puffy powder of a
deep, wind-sculped drift.

Exercises: A few simple warm-ups to make sure you're prepared for the
slopes: 1) Tie a cinder block to each foot with old belts and climb a flight
of stairs. 2) Sit on the outside of a second-story window ledge with your
skis on and your poles in your lap for 30 minutes. 3) Bind your legs
together at the ankles, lie flat on the floor; then, holding a banana in
each hand, get to your feet.

Gloves: Designed to be tight enough around the wrist to restrict
circulation, but not so closefitting as to allow any manual dexterity; they
should also admit moisture from the outside without permitting any dampness
within to escape.

Gravity: One of four fundamental forces in nature that affect skiers. The
other three are the strong force, which makes bindings jam; the weak force,
which makes ankles give way on turns; and electromagnetism, which produces
dead batteries in expensive ski-resort parking lots. See Inertia.

Inertia: Tendency of a skier's body to resist changes in direction or speed
due to the action of Newton's First Law of Motion. Goes along with these
other physical laws: 1) Two objects of greatly different mass falling side
by side will have the same rate of descent, but the lighter one will have
larger hospital bills. 2) Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but
if it drops out of a parka pocket, don't expect to encounter it again in our
universe. 3) When an irrestible force meets an immovable object, an
unethical lawyer will immediately appear.

Prejump: Manuever in which an expert skier makes a controlled jump just
ahead of a bump. Beginners can execute a controlled prefall just before
losing their balance and, if they wish, can precede it with a prescream and
a few pregroans.

Shin: The bruised area on the front of the leg that runs from the point
where the ache from the wrenched knee ends to where the soreness from the
strained ankle begins.

Ski! : A shout to alert people ahead that a loose ski is coming down the
hill. Another warning skiers should be familiar with is "Avalanche!" -
which tells everyone that a hill is coming down the hill.

Skier: One who pays an arm and a leg for the opportunity to break them.

Stance: Your knees should be flexed, but shaking slightly; your arms
straight and covered with a good layer of goose flesh; your hands forward,
palms clammy, knuckles white and fingers icy, your eyes a little crossed and
darting in all directions. Your lips should be quivering, and you should be
mumbling, "Why?"

Thor: The Scandinavian god of acheth and painth.

Traverse: To ski across a slope at an angle; one of two quick and simple
methods of reducing speed.

Tree: The other method.

Here are some death statistics for Yellowstone, from 1839 to 1994
(they exclude heart attacks and car accidents, which are the two most
common causes of death):

Drowning 101
Falls 24
Burns from hot springs 19
Hypothermia 9
Indian battles 7
Accidental shooting 7
Falling trees 5
Avalanches 5
Lightning 5
Bear attacks 5

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09/25/coolsc.critters.attacks/index.htm

Message-ID: <001501bdbcef$ecc549c0$63bf...@wrightjm.erols.com>
From: "Jerry M. Wright" <wrig...@erols.com>
Subject: Alpine skiing accidents
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 21:58:45 -0400

This is part of the article I found on-line

http://www.skinet.com/news/safety0106.html

"Skiing and snowboarding are no more dangerous than other high-energy
participation sports, and less so than some common activities," states
the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) in a December 8, 1997 report.

While not looking to downplay the need for caution and common sense on
the slopes, statistically the NSAA is able to prove its case. The report
found that during the past 13 years, about 32 people have died skiing
per year on average.

That may come as a surprise to snow sports enthusiasts, but this number
seems small compared to other sports. In 1996, there were 716 deaths in
recreational boating accidents and 800 deaths in bicycling accidents.
Given an average of about 50 million skier/snowboarder visits over the
last 13 years, the 32 yearly deaths work out to a fatality rate of .69
per million visits.

"If you measure skiing against other high energy sports that provide you
with a similar thrill, skiing is statistically safe," said Stephen Over,
Executive Director of both the National Ski Patrol and the Professional
Ski Instructors Association of America.

Numbers also show that a person is less likely to die on the slopes
than, say in the bathtub or in a car. The National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration reports that car crashes kill an average of 115
people each day--or one every 13 minutes. One could perhaps argue that a
skier is probably at greater risk while driving to the slopes than when
actually skiing down them.

While not strictly a scientific comparison, it is important to note that
non-skiing related accidents take more victims on average each year.
Here's a breakdown provided in the NSAA report:

Automobile accidents 42,000
Fall to death 13,000
Poisoning 6,500
Drowning 4,500
Choking 2,900
Hit by falling object 800
Slip in shower/bathtub 300
Struck by lightening 89
Skiing 32

Still, what seems to have struck a chord with the public is that both =
Kennedy and Bono were capable skiers on intermediate slopes--two freak =
accidents. Or were they?=20

According to the NSAA, the majority of skiing fatalities and injuries =
involve better-than-average skiers who are skiing fast and to the side =
of intermediate trails. In Kennedy's case, witnesses confirmed that he =
was skiing fast and somewhat carelessly. There were no witnesses to =
Bono's accident, although his body was found about thirty feet off the =
trail into a fairly open glade of trees. It is still unclear whether he =
was crossing through the trees from one trail to another, or practicing =
skiing into and out of the trees from the blue trail.=20

Message-ID: <363648B6...@panix.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 22:27:02 +0000
From: Bill Rhodes <brh...@panix.com>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
To: "Eugene N. Miya" <eugene>
Subject: Re: Panel 16
References: <1998102802...@sally.nas.nasa.gov>

I hereby propose, pending approval of the committee for the re-election of the
net.ranger the following corrections for panel 16...hideous deaths on Mt.
Washington, since a few more dolts did not think it could happen to them since
I last did it almost 4 years ago (god, is that possible?). 4 years, wow.

anyway...you can replace the whole section which starts with
"Since 1849 there have been..."

with...

Since 1849 there have been 122 known deaths on Mt. Washington, NH

Of the known dead, the ages of 105 victims are known for certain... the
average
age of death is 34.8 years old. The oldest victim was 88, the youngest was 2.

August and September are the most deadly with 16 each, December the least 3.
Although it should be noted that September 6, 1967 was a train wreck
which killed 8, including the youngest three victims 2, 7 and 9.

Other months totals:
January 11, February 11, March 13, April 7, May 9, June 10, July 9,
August 16,
September 16, October 13, November 4, and December 3.

Other years in descending order:
1996 had 6 deaths, all between 1/5 and 3/24...a tough winter.
Both 1971 and 1994 had 5 deaths.
1980 and 1990 share 4 each.
Several years had 3 each, 1900, 1956, 1958, 1964, 1974, 1976, and 1986

Causes of death requires some explanation. Some people may have died of
more than one cause, or the exact cause may not be known, only surmised. Of
the known causes this is the breakdown of the most common ones:
Exposure -29
Injuries from a fall - 27
Crashes air/car/coach/horse/sled - 19
Drowning - 10
Skiing - 6
Avalanche - 9
Being stuck by falling objects ice/snow/rock/other climbers - 5
Heart attacks - 4

Coincidence:
On May 1, 1949 Dr. Paul Schiller of Cambridge, MA was skiing and fell
off a rock now named for him this was about 11:00 a.m., he fell behind the
accumulated
snow mass and drowned. On May 1, 1994, at the same time of day, Cheryl
Weingarten of Somerville, MA fell at the same spot, also behind the snow
mass and died.

ESTIMATE OF FATAL RISK BY ACTIVITY>
Activity # Fatalities per 1,000,000 exposure hours
-------- -----------------------------------------
Skydiving 128.71
General Aviation 15.58
On-road Motorcycling 8.80
Scuba Diving 1.98
Living (all causes of death) 1.53
Swimming 1.07
Snowmobiling .88
Passenger cars .47
Water skiing .28
Bicycling .26
Flying (scheduled domestic airlines) .15
Hunting .08
Cosmic Radiation from transcontinental flights .035
Home Living (active) .027
Traveling in a School Bus .022
Passenger Car Post-collision fire .017
Home Living, active & passive (sleeping) .014
Residential Fire .003>
Data compiled by Failure Analysis Associates, Inc., published
in Design News, 10-4-93

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