can you just share your gear list so we will all know what to bring?
Without getting into specifics, I'd say bring what you need to survive a night of awful weather, and bring extras of all life-saving items, especially hat, gloves/mittens, neck, face and eye protection, socks, base layers.Originally Posted by Hosh
My winter day-hiking backpack weighs as much or more as my summer backpack loaded up for a three day section. I leave behind the kitchen and most of the food, but I carry several different traction devices, and the above-mentioned spares and survival items.
With luck, none of it will be needed. I'm OK with that.
My gear would have saved me from the hypothermia, had I made the correct decision to don it at the decision point. The point I was making was that it was the initial incorrect decision not to don the correct gear that I had brought that f'd me.
So, to bring the tale of shivering woe to close, I was not able to get the tent bag out of the pack, using the buckle on the pack. I did don the rain jacket, after a ton of effort, but couldn't manipulate the zipper. I made a run for woods to get out of the wind until my former TrailPartner(tm) caught up. She deployed the tent from my pack and I crawled inside while she staked and guyed it. I was unable to be of assistance in any of the tent set up as the shivering had set in, despite the rain jacket. Once out of the wind in the tent in the rain jacket it took about ten minutes to stop shivering. She had put my balaclava on for me and that was helping greatly. Got the mat inflated and crawled in the down bag. Twenty minutes later I was able to function correctly.
When I said it was too late, I was referring to the fact that it was too late in the progression to immediately halt the onset of the shivering. Plan B was to wrestle the tent out of the shove-it pocket with sheer adrenaline and wrap myself in the fly like a cocoon and warm up via VBL effect. I do believe I could have accomplished this, but it wasn't a guarantee, by any means...
Yeah, a 5 foot tall, 95 pound girl saved me, OK? She was quite the TrailPartner(tm)...just sayin...
great post. hiking on the white blaze trail is different than walking through woods. it's so hard to convince people just how common/easy it is to miss your pack, campsite, even the trail when you venture away from it...Btw, study the above pic. This was the day I did something very stupid. I went over the top of Huckleberry Bald in a blustery tremendous windstorm and decided to head off the side of the mountain a little ways down into some tree cover where I found several level spots for my tent.
I dumped my full pack in the trees off the "trail" at a level spot and wanted to explore the area for a better recon.
This is the spot I initially dumped my pack and then went on a stupid exploratory recon. Well, I got lost and separated from my pack for many panicked minutes and dangit I could not find this one solitary spot with my normally-huge but now tiny pack sitting in the middle of nowhere. I went back and forth all over the side of this foggy mountain breakdown and finally decided to head up as up would take me to the memorial cross and the top of the hill. Once on top I pulled a below-the-bald perimeter hike in a big circle until I found the faint trail leading into the trees. Staying on the trail I finally found my beloved pack.
Moral of the story? NEVER leave your pack to go looking for better campsites, especially in high winds, fog and cold. Lesson learned.
what's VFTT?
https://tinyurl.com/MyFDresults
A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. ~Paul Dudley White
Views from the top. A blog frequented primarily by White Mountains peakbaggers.
Do we know when it started raining?
https://tinyurl.com/MyFDresults
A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. ~Paul Dudley White
LMFAO! Only that kind of omnipotence and omniscience could come from beyond the grave! Seriously laughing so hard I have to tinkle a little. Any word on what this poor dead kid had with him - and not with him? I'm guessing no poles or crampons. I've got to go back and read the whole thread - fortunately there's lots of meteorological winter left! Thank you Walter, for making peeking out my tent fly at the planet Hoth funny again!
Yes it would. It seems these incidents just fade away. Just like the boy that was attacked by a bear in the smokies. That was reported to be a random incident at the time. Did the survey of the evidence lead to that same conclusion or do they believe there might have been some other factor that drew in the bear (e.g. nearby food)?
I think having details and facts along with a summery of what should have been done differently, if anything could have been done, would be nice.
Why would it matter? In terms of preparedness or prevention, it's irrelevant. One really needs to plan for the worst. Which is likely what happened here, since it appears he made it to the summit and then a short way back.
One thing that hasn't been stressed enough in this thread (IMO) is the element of time, and fatigue over time. If you read Krakauer's Into Thin Air you see it played out. Climbers were too slow getting to the summit but failed to turn back. They were caught high on the mountain with all systems flashing red -- fatigue, weather, visibility, oxygen.
Chapter 8 of Following Atticus has a vivid, harrowing account of a walk along the Mt. Bond ridgeline in winter -- deep drifts, blowing snow and near zero visibility.
The story in Alive is worth mentioning as well. The ascent was harder and took longer than expected. The near-fatal mishap occurred on the descent.
Bears investigate just about anything that smells. People smell, people smell like food and they go together like peanut butter and chocolate. It was more like a tasting than it was an attack. They shot the bear of course and people went nuts about it until there was something else to take umbrage with, then they changed the channel. The bit kid actually put an awesome post on here to dispel the wild speculation on WB, and calls for his head etc. Turns out he did NOT slick up with honey and jam before bed, and was a very responsible and vigilant hiker. Sorry I'm Irish - okay I'm not sorry - so death is a subject for humor, (as long as it's not my own) in this case the bears. I'm also amused by folks who eat meat at every meal then go looking to crucify a hiker for the unforgivable sin of packing Snicker Bars while overlooking entirely how terrifying - not to mention painful - a late night bear tasting episode is.
equipment/decisions decisions/equipment???
nobody's talking about training and experience. if this kid HAD the equipment necessary to survive and didn't use it, that wasn't a decision. it's training/experience that let's you recognize the dangerous conditions and the onset of hypothermia symptoms to prevent them before they occur.
it's not a decision to stop and strip off your wet clothes and climb into your bag and emergency bivy once your hands are so stiff and you're shaking so bad you can't do that and even sophisticated knowledge fails if you haven't the training or experience to put things into use when the chips are down.
a good emergency drill is called "man in the creek", where you attempt to make a fire with crotch-high flames as quickly as possible -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEZlRy0lyZU
one of the smallest/lightest emergency tools is the Palmer Furnace, named for the cave explorer Arthur Palmer who used his carbide lamp held under his shirt to warm up. you can easily make a functional one with your poncho, a large trash bag with a hole in it for your head, or a mylar emergency blanket and a candle. a couple of tealight candles will work but not as quick as a larger one.
the idea is to sit on a warm dry spot (your pack), cross your legs and place the candle(s) between them and cover yourself completely with the trash bag or e-blanket. pretty quickly the temp inside will raise 20 or more degrees which should give you enough advantage to prevent or reverse hypothermia symptoms, allowing you to take more substantial measures for survival.
but again, you have to decide to carry this emergency equipment but even then, simply having gear won't help you unless you've actually been trained to recognize dangerous circumstances and apply life-saving skills...
i agree, good post!
I did something like this (minus the candle) this spring on the GAP. Temp was about 45 with hard rain that just wouldn't quit. I didn't feel like setting up my tent, things weren't anywhere near that desperate and it was still early in the day. So instead I found a bench to sit on, pulled my knees up so that I was completely covered by my poncho, and just sat quietly. After about 15 minutes of that I was warmed up enough to ride some more.
Although totally different situations, the documentary "Touching the Void" is an interesting perspective on getting out of a pretty dire situation. A climber was left for dead in an ice crevice after breaking his leg. I watched it on Netflix just last week.
Such incidents don't fade away for me. I copy these various mishaps and take them out with me on my backpacking trips and read thru them one by one. I often describe them in my trip reports and weigh the good, the bad and the ugly. I write reviews of each one, from Jeff Kish's rescue on Mt Hood to Mike Gourley's hell hike in the Smokies to a score of others.
You bring up what I call The Turn Around Time. It not only pertains to mountaineers with summit fever but to common winter backpackers who get over-extended, wasted, wiped out and collapsed. All hikers need to keep a finger on the pulse of their day's hike---and know when to either turn back or set up camp.
What is the turn around time for a backpacker? Simple---Do I have enough mojo left to find a campsite and set up the shelter? Do I have enough reserves in the tank to battle one last hour to square away camp and collapse in a heap in my tent? Winter is the main time to be doing this self-inventory on an hourly basis. MOST ESPECIALLY ON SOLO TRIPS.
You're basically talking about Timing---see my above words. If a person pushes his turn around time too far he will be paralyzed with fatigue and cold and not care to even get into his pack and maybe not even care to take it off. "Self-inventory (of your mojo) on an hourly basis" is what we're talking about.
Tipi, I explicitly mentioned turn-around time in my first post of this thread. (Msg. #17).
If spending the night in the woods is to be avoided, it's kind of an important concept.
Yes, I'm familiar with the mountaineering definition of Turn Around Time no matter what condition you find yourself in at the time. It's more of a technique set for an established hour in the day, such as a 1pm turn around time. Dayhikers in the Whites could set a 2pm turn around time, for example, and still be far from wiped out or fatigued. Backpackers on the other hand could set a different kind of Camp Now Time and go further before setting up.Tipi, I explicitly mentioned turn-around time in my first post of this thread. (Msg. #17).
If spending the night in the woods is to be avoided, it's kind of an important concept.
My hiking/backpacking turn around time is based more not on the hour of the day but on personal exhaustion levels and how much juice I've got left to go on. But it's not a turn around time really but a Set Up Camp Time. "Camp Where You Stand" is another definition.
This knowledge unfortunately only comes thru knowing your body well enough in a hiking sense to know your limits. It's like gas in a car---when it runs out you're finished. Spare Gas in this analogy is the gear on your back.
Last edited by Tipi Walter; 12-31-2016 at 18:57.
Views From the Top - VFTT.ORG VFTT.com still exists as a zombie site, it hasn't been updated for several years. VFTT is one of the oldest NE hiking forums. It is mostly oriented towards the whites but also has ADK section and about the only forum that has Maine coverage.
A very fascinating read. Thank you. I'm going to save this since I hope to get to the White's eventually as I section hike the AT northbound.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
