kpeter wrote:For a gripping adventure story and a cautionary tale about climbing Banner/Ritter from the Nydiver vicinity, you might read this about the famous 1971 incident in which five climbers made the mistake of trying to summit in bad weather. Actually they left from Ediza, but Nydiver is mentioned too. Here is the lead:
"The worst accident in the modern history of Sierra mountaineering happened on Mt. Ritter, during Memorial Day weekend in 1971. This event strongly affected an entire generation of Sierra hikers and climbers, but it is almost forgotten now."
It was a good thing you hunkered down in your tents last year.
http://www.stanford.edu/~galic/rettenba ... r1971.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Wow, this brings back some haunting memories of my childhood. Growing up in Palo Alto, and also going on more than a few hikes with the Peak climbing section of the Loma Prieta Sierra Club chapter, I remember this vividly, but I never read such a detailed account. It was particularly spooky to me and my dad at the time because we had been up Carson Peak after some bad weather cleared up at about the same time the year earlier (1970). When we climbed Ritter in 1973 via the west face route from Ritter Lakes we wondered if the unmarked graves at Ritter Lakes were the graves of some or all of those who died on the mountain in 1971. There are the unmarked graves at Ritter Lakes as well as a marked grave (with plaque) below Glacier Pass that apparently held a couple that died decades earlier (I seem to recall the names Conrad and Anna Rettenbacher or something like that).
The Loma Prieta chapter had its share of mountaineering deaths during this era and the other two I remember both appear to involve cold. One death was in the mid 70's when a trip leader refused to turn back on Mt Shasta when weather closed in. Another also occurred on Shasta (I seem to recall this was a bit later), when I leader was found dead in the snow a few hundred feet below his tent in the morning. I never heard the post mortem on the latter, but I've always assumed that the poor fellow went out at night to relieve himself and slipped, then died of hypothermia in the cold night. My dad was scheduled to co-lead a trip with this guy to Mt Russell the following weekend.