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
Posted in Journal by Mark with comments disabled.