R06 TR: Oct 2006 Late season trips that could have gone bad

[Harlen]

Gogd wrote:

Folks consider intuition a wild ass hunch we have, almost metaphysical, mostly because we cannot articulate how we arrived at our conclusions. Research has determined there are in fact complex cognitive processes behind intuition. The reason they are experienced more as a sensation, a feeling about something, is because the mental processing behind intuition occurs without involving the parts of the brain that depend on language Our brains communicate these findings nonverbally, in the form of chemical changes that create bodily and emotional sensations.

Fascinante! Are you by chance a neurologist, and a Gogd?

I really like what you propose above, rather than giving credence to some idea of "guardian angels." People often speak about all of a sudden having a notion that an animal or a person is present. Hollywood, and bad fiction make frequent use of this experience. I believe that I have had this happen, and have found an animal because of it-- this sort of "intuition." (rlown Russ might weigh in here, as I imagine that hunters become highly tuned into this too) What you state above, and the very plausible evolutionary explanation, give credit to it. Natural selection would surely favor the genes that code for heightened awareness of either prey, or some form of danger, combined with the genes that code for action in response: e.g., "WTF! What was that"... quick look back, and: "Whoa, it's a saber-toothed cat!!!" and then primitive man, with all the right genes, wheels around with his spear, craps his fur pants, and runs away.

I think you will enjoy parts of this video below of the superlative climber Voyek Kurtyka struggling to explain why he has such a singular record of never having any deaths, or serious accidents on his climbs, when so many of his contemporary Polish climbers, et. al., have died. This video begins with Kurtyka expressing his unique feelings about climbing mountains, compared with the lesser goals of competition and personal achievement. He has won the highest award in climbing- "The Golden Ice Ax." I highly recommend this first 6 minute interview, but if you want to skip that, the part that relates to what Gogd has shared above begins at about 7 minutes in. The second interviewer says: "and you don't have any serious accidents in your excellent climbing career..." From here on for a few minutes Kurtyka struggles to explain it, using ideas like having the right amount of fear (he may have meant caution), and he speaks about a sort of mutual respect between him and the mountain. He is struggling, as we all would, to explain the sort of ineffable experience, which Gogd has elucidated through the science that deals with "complex cognitive processes." Thanks for your comments Gogd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrlzKIjl_3E

[Gogd]

@ Harlen I thought intuition as an evolved cognitive function would resonate with you, both as a mountaineer and attuned pet owner. I also thought several others would identify, based on subtle details sprinkled into their reports posted to HST and their own web pages. Hope they comment herein!

Polish mountaineers as a group are renowned as the toughest of all, second only to the Russians (must be something in the Vodka). While I was on youtube to view the link you shared, I ran into this video CV of another a Polish climber:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIaY8KgmcaM
Or perhaps this is Voyek? I couldn’t tell, due to the foreign language text. But GOOD GOD! The routes this guy put up left me absolutely gobsmacked. At least one was a first ascent pulled off soloing. Quite a few have not been repeated. IMO these are Russian roulette routes - big walls at high altitude, totally exposed, and probably require perfect weather to complete. My climbing years peaked about a decade before the heydays of this climber and his compatriots. No one was persistently doing this level of climbing at that time. The routes are as elegant and harrowing as they get. This guy definitely has a deep rapport with the mountains.

I think Voyek Kurtyka intentionally meant it when he said the “right of amount of fear” helped him evade disaster. Obviously caution plays a dominant role in avoiding danger. Fear, if managed, sharpens the senses to environmental subtleties. I can see how he exploits that. One reason I got out of extreme mountaineering was dangerous stuff doesn't rattle me that much. As such I cannot tap into the heightened sense of awareness a jolt of fear delivers. I was found myself doing projects with high levels of objective risk, and lost trust that a cool head and skill would be sufficient to continue down that path unscathed. (FWIW I think my decision on this point was one of wisdom, not intuition).

You made a comment on special angels. That is also a thing, but not related to intuition. It is known as the third man factor. John Griger wrote a book by that title, expounding on this phenomenon. It is a compelling read. He documents the accounts of mountaineers, seafarers, combatants and others confronted with dire circumstances, where they perceive the presences of an apparition. It can be vivid as a full blown personage of a family member, or as ethereal as a faint whisper in the wind, just the mere sensation of something in your presence, or something in between. Most members of the ill-fated Scott Antarctic expedition independently wrote in their journals of having experienced the third man factor. Religious folks tend to associate it with God or angels, while the atheistic are comfortable not assigning a label to the apparition. My hunch is the third man factor is also an evolutionary survival feature, that help marshal our will to survive and get us through danger, when we were more vulnerable in our primitive past.

BTW:
GOGD = Good Old Grateful Dead.
I got soul, but I'm not a soldier.
And I've got nerve, but I'm not a neurologist!

Ed

[sparky]

I have a certain level of superstition when I enter the mountains. I keep my eyes and ears open to any and all signs. Good luck and bad luck comes and goes on the breeze, but often the bad luck goblins travel in packs

"In Franklin's tower there hangs a bell
It can ring, turn night to day
It can ring like fire when you lose your way"

[SSSdave]

... extreme weather when my fingers were so cold they look like gray wood, leathery, firm, numb and were almost useless. Sometimes high altitude mountaineering does that, regardless how well equipped you are. Perhaps almost as bad is the onset of that excruciating pins and needles burning sensation, that set in when I was able to rewarm them. Even days later the slightest contact felt like the sun searing the surface of my finger tips. Ed

Decades ago as a novice skier, at day's end while riding a long long Colorado ski lift, I unawares after probably removing both warm gloves maybe to do something with other stuff in my pockets, then accidentally dropped one of the ski gloves. By time I reached the lift top I only wanted to reach the bottom ski base warm lodge room not wasting time hunting for the glove. Do not recall how unsuccessful I was keeping that bare hand less than frozen till reaching the lodge except that it was like in your description Ed, not in a state one is going to be trying to gauge how cold it actually might be. Likely tried to ski with 2 poles in one hand and the gloveless hand in a coat pocket or even in through whatever gap to inner clothing. Well just the room temperature air the warm lodge was enough to put me through some ugly pains for awhile as my hand thawed out just like you describe. Given its enormous amount of complex motion our brain neocortex controlled human hands are capable of, it also possesses a whole lot of sense and control neurons that also has a greater capacity for pain versus most other body parts when it goes wrong.

[scottmiller]

We were in Emigrant in mid-September, with a weather forecast of "slight chance of sprinkles at higher elevations." It started snowing pretty hard as we were going south over Mosquito Pass. By the time we got to Emigrant Lake there was about 6 inches on the ground. It was a crowded night in the tent, but the next morning the sky was cloudless. It was beautiful, but not something I would do on purpose.
One member of our group was freaking out because he had two friends who had died in a Sierra snowstorm about 30 years ago. He wanted to pitch the tent and hunker down as soon as it started snowing hard. We assured him that we all had good gear and a good tent and we would be OK.
The story of his friends is very sad:
http://publications.americanalpineclub. ... amarck-Col

[mkbgdns]

that Labor Day storm 44 years ago...took my wife on her 1st backpacking trip out of Leavitt Meadow, we decided to bail at Cora Lake after very strange late afternoon skies (enormous cumulus racing across sky). drenching rain all the way out, had to pull over over several times on sonora pass road because couldn't see the road very well. later heard about a pair who died on Lamarck, another pair on Whitney. years later spoke with a guy who spoke with the Seaburys when they decided to make a run for it over the crest rather than risk the crossings on the descent to Florence. according to him, the choice was not at all clear-cut. he hunkered down and exited a couple of days later via florence.

I'm a weather nerd, and that storm arrived without much warning. my wife had no further interest in backpacking.

[Harlen]

Man that's a sad saga Scott. Yet edifying in the final note from mkbgdns. We too wondered why the Seaburys didn't carry on down toward the safety of the lower forest, where a fire could have dried out their gear, and kept them warm. Hindsight, of course, and they apparently did consider that route.

They knew they had to get out, too, and had started down Evolution Valley but found the trail flooded.

I wonder what they meant by the flooded condition of the trail, which was one reason they headed back up?

These sagas from the Sierra hit hardest don't they? Years ago, a climber friend sent me another such sad story, this time from Cathedral Peak, which was also shocking. In that case, the two climbers had become soaked while on the face of the peak, bailed out, but with minimal clothing, became hypothermic on the way down Budd Creek, and one died of it, just about a mile from the road!

I guess the salient point, with regard to Wandering Daisy's OP about late season trips, is that in the increasingly cold temperatures of Fall, if you get stuck out in it-- especially if you get wet, you can die even while on your feet and moving. That is generally not the case in summer, when if you can keep moving, you will keep yourself warm. So, if caught out in dangerous conditions in the Fall, one should err on the side of either staying put in camp, or heading down into the lower forest where you have more options for warmth.

There are so many variables though aren't there? When balzacom wrote: "A dear friend of mine points out that bad trips are almost never the result of a single bad decision, but rather a series of poor decisions..." I recalled the famous lines at the beginning of Anna Karenina where Tolstoy writes

‘All Happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’

In sort of parallel, All successful trips are similar: the right gear, the right route, good judgement used... and when it comes to trips that go bad, we've seen that there are so many factors, which can then build upon each other in a variety of ways.

So plan well, and good luck out there.

[scottmiller]

I've had stage 2 hypothermia, which is when you stop shivering, you can't think right, and it's hard to walk. That was from swimming for hours in very cold water, which I could have avoided but I didn't know better. I was with a bunch of friends and when I got back to camp they piled all the sleeping bags on me and laid around me and on top of me. After 2 hours I started shivering, and I shivered for an hour. These days, I kind of over-pack in the warm clothes department.

[Gogd]

Man that's a sad saga Scott. Yet edifying in the final note from mkbgdns. We too wondered why the Seaburys didn't carry on down toward the safety of the lower forest, where a fire could have dried out their gear, and kept them warm. Hindsight, of course, and they apparently did consider that route.

They knew they had to get out, too, and had started down Evolution Valley but found the trail flooded.

I wonder what they meant by the flooded condition of the trail, which was one reason they headed back up?

Two possible flood locations: they could have meant where the creek draining Darwin Canyon crosses the JMT trail; but most definitely a strong storm could make Evolution Creek un-crossable where the JMT trail fords near the mouth of Evolution Valley. I wonder why all three didn't seek refuge at the McClure Meadow ranger hut, after all it was probably still manned that time of year.

Ed

[rormisto]

I just wrapped up Lowest to Highest and will write it up at some point-- despite our group having something like 10,000 mi of backpacking experience all together, we barely clawed our way through, and were pretty miserable. The weather window for the route pretty much requires October/shoulder season, so you don't fry in Death Valley. We were out 10/20 - 10/26.

The summary is, even if you get lucky with weather and don't get snowed on, in an experienced group, shoulder season conditions are nothing to mess around with.

A little overconfident, we prepared for the forecast, and stashed our true cold-weather gear in a car at Whitney Portal. "We'll be there in 5 days, how much could things change?". When the cold front rolled in (severe enough that we got an emergency weather warning), we were ready for 40-degree nights, not 18F and gale winds. After 2 frigid days through Saline Valley and the Whites, we bailed off the Inyo crest and road-walked HWY-136 into Lone Pine. That sounds like a responsible decision, but we had >24 hours of walking in weather we were altogether unprepared for before we were able to bail. It was too windy to keep tents up. Not expecting the cold, our filters froze the first cold night. Each morning and evening, I walked with my sleeping bag around my shoulders and arms. We barely slept. It was sometimes still 90 degrees during the day.

This was the version where we got lucky. I'd like to think that if we got clouds, we would've turned around from the Whites, backtracked at low elevation back to a road. But, sleep-deprived and stubborn, there's a potential outcome where we get snowed-in at high altitude, slowed down, and frozen. Not great. To again echo Balzacom, one bad decision (stash gear) is all it takes to throw you into a bad position, from which you can make more bad decisions. Despite the misery, we had a good trip, because we cut ourselves off at the one bad decision.

3/5 of us ended up summiting Whitney after we made it to our gear, but helping two of our friends bail out of the trip was a very stressful endeavor, and a bad feeling.