Repost: Mt. Washington Article
Bill Rhodes
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."
Bill Rhodes
Fatal Attraction (whole article, part 2)
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 (:-))
Lattey and Couper
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.
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
about people rushing into ill-advised risks.
Huntington Ravine has always been a place
of risk. It looks like the impression left by
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
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
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.
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
teens, winds on the summit increasing to 40
to 60 mph. They wouldn't be going to the
summit, so it looked good.
Saturday morning, Monroe and Erik left the
Harvard cabin at around eight, then had to
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
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.
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.
Going up in ice climbing must be understood
conditionally: While one climber is moving,
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.
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.
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.
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.
At 0600, 33 climbers gathered at the AMC
headquarters; the plan was to send teams up
several climbing gullies of Huntington Ravine
and also comb the adjacent area, the most
likely places to find the missing pair.
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.
After all the teams were back down on the
wooded plateau near the Harvard cabin, it
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.
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.
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,
"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."
First lessons in climbing teach people to
climb, not escape, Monroe and Erik had kept
pushing upward.
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
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.
Early Monday morning the teams started up
again. The summit temperature was steady
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
habits as if it were his backyard.
Ben's group reached the intersection of
Odell with Alpine Garden and found a cleavage
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
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.
As soon as Al Comeau came over the crest
of South Gulley, he saw someone there in the
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
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.
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.
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
beer. This was, after all, volunteer work.
Weingarten
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
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.
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
charge of safety here; skiers usually stop
climbing up at the point dictated by thoughts
of skiing down.
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
planned to ski down with someone from the
observatory, trusting him to navigate on my
youthful and somewhat tremulous behalf.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
With extraordinary courage and presence of
mind, Julie held onto her tiny bit of safety,
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.
Not really knowing where they were, Julie
and Nick probably hadn't realized that the
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
dow this drop of ice and rock and snow that
many climbers would hesitate to attempt
without full equipment.
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.
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.
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.
The next day, a New Hampshire State Fish
and Game Department brought a dry suit and
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.
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.
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. Habituļ¼“ 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
headfirst down behind the snowpack 45 years
earlier to the month, week day and hour.
Nicholson
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.
Last June 4, Sarah Nicholson looked up and
saw a car-sized block of ice sliding and
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?
Sarah's moment of hesitation broke the
hearts of her friends and brought the list
to 115. -30-
Bill Rhodes
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
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 dissapeared without a trace, of which
there are doubtless some, nor does this take into
account serious injuries which may have lead to
death later.
Bill Rhodes
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.
David Rhoades
dave
(transplanted Boston to Seattle)