Explore 360! Explorations of the World and Mind

Jan 29th Journal

Lonnie Dupre departing from Denali basecamp. Dmitri von Klein

It kind of feels like winter today in Colorado, for a change. It snowed in Boulder and in many of the mountains and it was only about 20 degrees this morning. Some news from the coldest wild places of the world:

Last week a plane crashed into a mountain in Antarctica (South Pole). It was a Twin Otter, a tough work-horse airplane. Though rarely seen around here, they are in service all over the world. I’ve flown in these many times, including the scary flight from Kathmandu to the mountain village of Lukla in Nepal. On that half-hour flight the pilot gets one chance to land the plane, there is no go-around. If he messes up you crash into the mountain. This has happened several times over the years and the wreckage is visible as you fly in. But because the Twin Otter is so tough, there are usually many survivors who walk away unscathed.

So it would not have been surprising to find survivors from this accident in Antarctica. It can be very difficult to find a downed aircraft in the mountains, even when the emergency locator beacon (ELT) is working. An ELT is a transmitter that activates when a plane crashes, and assuming the transmitter survives, and broadcasts a homing signal that remains active for a few days until the battery is drained. Searchers can use this signal to find a downed aircraft in the wilderness. However, if a plane goes down in the mountains, the rock faces can block and bounce the signal making it very difficult to home in on, like searching for a candle in a hall of mirrors. I write extensively about my experiences searching for, and finding, downed aircraft in Playing for Real.

The wreckage in Antarctica was found using its ELT signal and it was determined that all aboard perished, a followup story is here.

On the other side of the planet, a climber recently attempted to summit Denali in Alaska, solo and in winter. Lonnie Dupre (pictured above from his blog) had to turn back at the high camp at 17,200 feet. He reported -35 degrees Fahrenheit at his high camp on the morning he was going to attempt to summit. Though only a few hours from what would have been an historical mountaineering feat, he decided to descend and give up his attempt. A wise decision. Whereas many might think climbing a Colorado mountain is dangerous (and sometimes it is), this is truly dangerous mountaineering.

There are so many things that can go wrong and swiftly kill you. Among the hazards are extreme cold, extreme altitude, glacier travel (falling into a hidden crevasse) and hazardous technical climbing. Throw in the remoteness and the fact that he is solo on an expedition that takes many weeks, and you’ve got to wonder if he has a death wish. Even without a summit he has beaten long odds if he makes it out alive. The first person to attempt a solo winter climb of Denali was Naomi Uemura, who disappeared on the mountain during his descent after getting to the summit. He was never found.

Dupre appears to be highly experienced as an arctic explorer and attempted this before a couple years ago. He is on his descent now, good luck to him.

Jan 28th Journal

Rocky Mountain Rescue was busy on Saturday evening. The first call came at 6 pm for stuck climbers on Redgarden Wall in Eldorado Springs State Park. The second call came at 7:30 pm for climbers stuck on the Third Flatiron. You can read the news story here as well as comments that follow the story. In both cases, climbers called for help after being caught in the rain after dark.

The comments at the bottom of the story show two kind of common attitudes about this kind of rescue. One attitude is that these were bonehead climbers getting themselves into a completely avoidable situation and then asking for help. The thinking is that the climbers should be “billed” and ridiculed for doing this. The other attitude is that this kind of rescue is essentially business as usual and these climbers are no more or less deserving of rescue than any other.

It turns out the second attitude is more informed and fair. There are several points to consider.

1) You never know the entire story of how a climber gets into a situation where they need rescue. It could be ignorance and stupidity (late start, no contingency plan) or it could be something out of their control (equipment problem or helping other climbers). Usually it is more or less of each of these that necessitates a rescue.

2) You never know the entire story because media reports are notoriously inaccurate. My guess is that most reporters are so far removed from what actually takes place while climbing that they have to assume a lot. That, plus the fact that reporters are never actually at the remote climbing location to see for themselves what is going on, it’s almost impossible to get the story right.

3) We are only human and make mistakes, and shit happens. The best climbers in the world have done stupid things and gotten into trouble and the worst climbers have gotten away with murder. But the bottom line is, what difference does it make how they got into trouble? Does society really want to see someone die or get severely injured because they were reluctant to ask for help?

4) Rescuers want to rescue. They perform a highly specialized and necessary service to the community, but it’s also something each and every one of them is eager to perform. This isn’t to say that volunteer rescuers want to be overworked with unnecessary missions, but they are more than happy to perform rescues when asked. Mountain rescuers have seen many more situations than anyone else and are the least judgmental about them.

5) Rescuers are specifically trained to not endanger themselves. The argument is always made that it is irresponsible to endanger others so that you can be rescued. But this is almost never the case. It sure appears to be a highly dangerous vocation, I mean, here is a rescuer going to get someone who is in a dangerous situation. How can it be that the rescuer is safe? It’s because specialized techniques, extensive training and strict safety rules keep rescuers safe. There are of course exceptions where a rescuer will be in a very dangerous position, but this is rare.

You can read more about these issues and gain insights into what motivates a rescuer in Playing for Real.

Jan 23rd Journal: The Myth of SAR Funding, Part 1

The Myth of Search and Rescue Cost and Funding

Here is an interesting article about the controversy surrounding the funding of search and rescue operations. I heard the tail end of this story on NPR while driving in to work today. Though the story is centered on a problem in Vermont, the questions of SAR expense and funding always comes up when a SAR operation is perceived as “expensive,” especially for people who are perceived to be “ignorant,” “reckless” and “endangering others.” The use of the quotes because these are perceptions, usually propagated by the media in sensationalized stories but not really based on facts.

I discuss many issues surrounding SAR funding in my books Colorado 14er Disasters and Playing for Real. Here are some myths and facts:

Myth: Search and Rescue operations are expensive.

Fact: Depends on how you define “expensive.”

Several years ago there was a large search operation in the foothills of Boulder for a missing person named Lance Hering. He was reported to have been in a hiking accident: He had tripped on the trail, fell down a slope and hit his head on a stone that rendered him unconscious. His friend and hiking partner Steve Powers ran several miles down the trail for help and by the time rescuers arrived, Lance was gone. He had apparently regained consciousness and walked off in an unknown direction. Boulder County then mounted a large, multi-day search operation in the rugged terrain involving hundreds of searchers, dogs, and even helicopters. The searchers never found Hering because he wasn’t there. He and Powers had staged his disappearance so that Hering could get a head start going AWOL from the Marines.

This SAR operation probably cost more than any other in Boulder County that year due to the length of time (many days) and equipment used (helicopters), so I will claim this example is expensive. Regardless of the fact that it was fraud, this is a good example because once every few years a real multi-day SAR operation of a similar nature takes place. However, because this was fraud, we have a public accounting of the cost.

Hering was eventually found and prosecuted. As part of the legal proceedings, the Sheriff presented a cost accounting of the operation and asked for reimbursement of $32,000. Ok, then that is what expensive is around here (by the way, this cost is nothing compared to the cost of the rescue described here). But if you read the article, much of the cost was due to “overtime wages, fuel for volunteer groups, use of the Denver Police helicopter.” Normally these would not be charged to a victim that actually needed help, but as part of the prosecution of Hering and Powers, the County asked that they be reimbursed.

This is of course fair. However, what would the cost to various agencies have been if there had been no operation? The answer is, about the same. Sheriff officers may not have worked overtime but on the other hand, may have anyway. Volunteer groups may have used the fuel elsewhere. The helicopter is a major expense, but this expense could probably have been absorbed in a training budget or even just a normal operation budget.

Other than those hard expenses, the vast majority of volunteers do this for free, which, by the way, is an excellent and valuable example of local volunteer service to a local community. Equipment wear-and-tear is relatively minimal and the equipment is necessary anyway if you want to rescue anyone.

Hering and Powers either have or are in the process of reimbursing the hard costs of the search which were essentially tax funded. What happened to that money? Were the taxpayers reimbursed? No. We can guess it went into some general fund somewhere in Boulder.

So what was the real cost of this expensive search?

In part 2 I’ll discuss SAR funding.

Jan 16th Journal

Here is a tragic but not uncommon story about getting lost in the wilderness. A father and two sons died of hypothermia after becoming lost and getting caught in a cold rainstorm in the Ozarks. Without knowing the details it is only speculation as to what happened there, but this incident appears to have a lot in common with mountaineering accidents I write about in Colorado 14er Disasters, namely the story about Michelle Vanek’s disappearance on Mount of the Holy Cross. In both of these cases an experienced leader made simple navigation errors, was ill prepared for contingencies and underestimated the deadly forces of nature. They ignored a chain of mistakes that finally ended in tragedy.

Well, as most of Colorado knows, last weekend was frigid. Some northern valleys saw temps approaching minus 40 degrees, a rarity in our state even in dead winter. That is cold! 72 degrees below the freezing point of water. Ice turns rock hard at that temperature and it’s basically too cold to snow. If there is any wind at all, even a breeze, your skin will freeze almost instantly. I remember experiencing this kind of cold a few times at 17,200 foot high camp on Denali, we really couldn’t do anything but hunker down in our huge, fluffy sleeping bags.

Another avalanche death near Marble. One interesting note on this article is the comment near the end on the rescue team response. It says that the Pitkin County team is not the primary response team for this area. Many of the mountains around Marble are just outside of Pitkin County, Marble is in Gunnison County. However, the winter access to the area is far easier from Pitkin County. Also, the Pitkin County team Mountain Rescue Aspen is one of the better teams around, it makes much more sense for the Aspen team to respond. Apparently there is a jurisdictional issue. Bottom line: If you have an accident in the Colorado mountains, choose your county well.

On an administrative note, if you’d like to leave a comment on an article, click the article title above and add comments in the form at the bottom of the page. Ignore the “comments are closed” status, they are not closed. There is a bug somewhere that I hope to get fixed soon.

-Mark

Jan 7th Journal

Another good ice climbing article here. It tells a more objective story about why people climb ice, at least why the more gonzo climbers do it.

The article mentions an RMR collegue of mine who describes losing a crampon while leading an ice formation in Cody, Wyoming. He finished the climb using only the leg with the securely attached crampon. Scary stuff. It happens more often than you think.

It happened to me in 1994 at 24,000 feet on Makalu when a crampon slipped off my overboots. I saw it just in time and was able to fix it, and several of us rescued a British mountaineer on Manaslu in 1996 who was dangling by a single ice tool holding him from dropping thousands of feet down an ice chute to certain death. Both of his crampons had come off his boots due to misfitting. We were able to tie him off and belay him to safety. I saw it happen again in 2005 on Pisco in Peru, this time due to a manufacturing defect in the crampon. We had to rig up a fix to complete the descent on an ice glacier and ended up overnighting high on the mountain due to the time it took to fix the crampon and descend slowly.

Bottom line: Make sure you use a proper boot/crampon combination (they don’t always fit together) and check the crampons occasionally during the climb to make sure they haven’t loosened.

Surprising news, the iconic Boulder mountaineering store Neptune Mountaineering has been sold to a Texas based outdoor chain. Well wishes to Gary and goodbye to a longtime Boulder landmark.

Coming soon, last weekend’s excursion to Eldora!

Jan 1st Journal

The New Year is upon us! This is day 1 of my year long outdoor blog project.

The storms in the last week of December have (finally!) produced good to excellent backcountry ski conditions for the beginning of this year. Keep the snow coming!

On a sad note, the end of last year saw the seasons first avalanche fatality. Patsy Hileman, a highly experienced professional ski patroller in Snowmass was caught in a snow slide and swept over a cliff. She died of “blunt force trauma” as opposed to suffocation. This accident emphasizes two important characteristics of avalanche fatalities: Professionals such as ski patrollers are statistically more likely to be caught in an avalanche, and that many times injuries and fatalities suffered by avalanche victims are caused by trauma. All the training and emphasis on the use of avi beacons, such as quick searches and digging out the victim, tend to give people the impression that burial and suffocation are the biggest danger with avalanches. Not necessarily true. An avalanche beacon doesn’t offer much help against hitting boulders and trees, or going over a cliff. If you think a slope may avalanche, it’s wise to avoid it.

If we’re lucky, 2013 could be the year of the comets.