Just before Thanksgiving week the petite 20 year old in NH was hiking about
20 miles along a ridge that hit three four-thousand foot peaks, but she died, mainly because she only had the light clothes she wore for the 25 degree temperatures that day and 30 mph winds from the south and south west and north west.
They found her off the north/south ridge between the creek headwaters and the trail, and they found some of her few articles on the trail above that point. The assumption is she made all three peaks but missed a turnoff.
The theory was she was blown off the ridge and couldn't survive the 15 to
20 degree nights but my question, which I've been pondering, is not what she SHOULD have done (duh) but what she COULD have done given the situation she was in.
If all you had were what SHE had, could you survive? Was it even possible?
How?
What would you do to stay alive given ONLY what she had with her that night?
The hut was closed for the winter but you could break in. However what she lacked was experience and common sense or she wouldn't have been in that position. It isn't mentioned but I doubt she had any means to construct a rudimentary shelter or light a fire.
formatting link
There are some recent logs, one mentioning people leaving flowers. Scroll down to the one by Mike Ryder on the 19th.
formatting link
That's another young woman that tried the fast and light approach and failed. I've done winter hikes in the Whites and Adirondacks. Plan on horrible conditions and be pleasantly surprised if they don't come to pass. For that matter people have died on washington in the summer when they didn't anticipate the weather going to hell.
I agree she could have sought shelter - but she'd have to know where it was although any cellphone would have told here exactly where she was so I have to assume she didn't have one because the assumption is she missed a turn.
There is no mention of tower pings in the early rescue reports. Just her planned (aggressive) route. We have to assume no cellular signal but GPS is always available so any decent topo map would have found that hut for her.
But we don't know if she had a map or a phone so we have to assume neither.
I read all the reports and I see no mention of any basic camping equipment.
Not even a flashlight or a book of matches. Although, I'm sure most of you know, lighting a fire in windy snow-blown conditions and keeping it lit long enough to warm up rocks to put in a hole (which isn't dug because there's no shovel) and then gathering/cutting all that wood with the knife or saw that isn't there, isn't going to be one of her real options.
Even if she had them, I've tried to build a campfire big enough and long enough to warm both sides of me all night and it's damn near impossible unless you already spent the entire day chopping, drying & stacking.
I think a fire may have been out of the question as a result of that.
Even a hole might have been out of the question but almost certainly a fallen log or jumble of boulders would have been accessible to her.
That's a great catch. Thanks. I had assumed 20 miles but it looks like six, but they say it's an all-day hike so you know it's got some ups & downs.
He says the peaks were 5K which I thought were 4K and every 1K up is a lot tougher in terms of conditions than the 1K down. He mentions crampons where she had "hiking sneakers", but her trail conditions may have been different than his of about a foot of snow on the trail.
He mentions it's easy to miss the turnoff which we believe she missed, where he mentions GPS but we don't know if she had any means for geolocation yet. Don't know if she was heading clockwise or CCW yet.
Wow. You see two hikers blown over at the same time. I've never been blown over, although this is an area of slippery footing and side sloping with no break from the wind.
But that's the kind of John Krakauer detail we'll need to figure out what Emily Sotelo could have done to survive, where in the case of Kate Matrosova she even successfully initiated a search & rescue, and still died.
They were likely dressed similarly, and both petite, but we don't know how different the weather conditions were, but it's clear Emily Sotelo had only, what? An hour? Two hours? Not much more than that to find good shelter, right?
I'm thinking, assuming she had almost nothing on her, she only could have survived by finding temporary shelter ON the trail (where the latest someone would stumble upon her would be the morning) but I'm aware the trail itself was on a ridgeline (which means the highest winds).
She apparently was found on the windward ravine but we don't know local wind conditions - just a general west to northwest as the day progressed.
Here's my plan (so far) but I think there could be much more to it to survive.
She stays near the trail to maximize possibility of being found soon.
She digs a hole with rocks or creates a wall with rocks/logs/branches.
That gets her out of only some of the wind and she's still damn cold.
I can't imagine her generating any heat at all. Can you?
There's a lot of electronics up there and it's the highest thing around. It's had its share of fatalities too. The last time I was there was in August. After I passed the Lakes of the Clouds hut, which is about 1000' below the summit, I was in fog so thick I had to really pay attention to the trail. I'd come up from the west side so I bought a ticket and took the cog railway down rather than stumble around the loop. Even with that you couldn't see anything until almost at the terminal.
A few years ago a couple died on St. Mary Peak near Stevensville MT. The trail isn't too difficult, about 2500' of ascent, but it is 9351'. It was similar circumstances; a late November hike on a nice day where the weather deteriorated. It's not technical at all but at one point the trail passes a chute and they somehow fell down it, possibly trying to rescue a dog.
They had a cellphone and S&R had coordinates but in that sort of terrain it's hard to tell the vertical component. A helo flying at night finally located them by the glow of the cellphone screen so they could extract the bodies.
That actually confirms what another report said about a different set of hikers who also missed the same turnoff Emily Sotelo missed, where those two male hikers warmed the "frozen" cellphone under their armpits to make call to be rescued.
Given her goals of attaining the peaks, if she had a cellphone, she was perhaps recording her track - but maybe at some point the battery died?
We can probably safely assume she had a cellphone (even if just for photos). Plus she had to have her mom pick her up but I do note it was at a pre-planned location the mom was waiting for her to arrive.
It could be her phone battery was dead.
Oh. If you've been there, you know the area well then. Can you dig a hole in the ground or is it all granite below the topsoil?
I am acutely aware that digging a hole in summer using sticks and stones to do it is quite different from digging that same shelter in winter but I'm desperately trying to find a way she could have survived had she been me in the same situation.
What's the trail surface like? Soil? Rock? Vegetation?
The fact animals survive these conditions as "naked" as we are (i.e., without a fire) means something here. Yes, they wear better coats, but they also dig holes with their feet.
Do you think Emily Sotelo could have dug a hole near the trail to survive long enough just the first night to be stumbled upon in the morning?
She could be off the trail if she blocked the trail and somehow with a "message" saying "I'm here" if she needed to find soil soft enough to dig.
Can a hole be made or can rocks be gathered up to build an "igloo" on the trail for her to survive the night out of the wind?
I have a friend who was an AMC hutman. The hutmen are mostly college kids hired for the summer to pack in supplies to the huts. They tried mules but kids worked out better. If they had to dig holes they used dynamite.
This time of year what soil there is would be frozen. Building a rock shelter might work. There are a lot of rocks as the photo of the cairn attests and you find wind breaks here and there. Nothing elaborate, just a dry stone wall three or four feet high to crouch behind.
The ridge is in the alpine zone with dwarf vegetation, most of which doesn't even come up to your knee. You don't even see Krummholz; no tree can gain a foothold.
formatting link
That's the Greenleaf hut and it's low enough to have some sub-alpine trees. The problem is, as you can see from the photos, when you're on the ridge you're committed. It's not the sort of place you want to start freelancing.
Given the circumstances I would say the chances of survival were non- existent. I doubt she even had much high calorie food, if any.
I figured as much, so there would need to be a building UP, not down.
This picture of yours shows an almost perfectly sized read-made sturdy windbreak to the northeast in that photo, where it's not the same area of course, but the point is that kind of structure could be found where Emily Sotelo could have crawled to the leeward side to get out of the bone-chilling wind. Of course, the temperature would still have been in the single digits.
formatting link
I had to look it up! :)
Literally "crooked wood" in German. Stunted forest characteristic of timberline
formatting link
The fact nothing is growing in this picture of yours tells us how barren it is, but there is also a chance for a rock shelter based on the many rocks. Of course, it was night, she was tired, it was cold, etc.
formatting link
It looks sturdy enough to be kept out of the cold for Emily Sotelo, where I would assume they keep emergency supplies inside the building. Do they?
She knew about it almost certainly as she probably passed it, so maybe her best chance, even at night was to try to find it - but if she got knocked off the trail, then she couldn't even find the trail at some point.
It's looking more and more unfortunate that the minute the night arrived at around 6:30pm or so, she was already doomed - as I am still struggling to see how she could have survived on her own with what we know she had.
If the spot where she left the trail wasn't blessed with smallish rocks or tree stumps, then she'd be hard pressed to turn even the Krummholz into a suitable shelter in the very short time she had. I suspect she curled into a fetal position on the ground, and tried to shiver out the night.
You see it at the fringe of the subalpine zone. Around here (northern Rockies) the trees transition to subalpine fir and Engleman spruce. They slowly thin out as you hit the alpine zone and get more twisted before dropping out completely.
The zones are flexible. 7000' to 8000' around here with the summits between 9000' and 10000'. Mt Mansfield in Vermont is 4300' and has alpine vegetation. The Whites start to thin out at 4000' but it varies.
formatting link
Chocorua is only 3400' but the video shows the changing zones. I did that on Christmas break one year -- BUT I was with a group and we knew there was a cabin a little below the summit where we could spend the night before continuing on. It says something that the cabin has chains over the roof to secure it.
The guy is a bit of a drama queen. There is a lot of scrambling but it isn't technical. It does illustrate what we called the 'universal view'. Half the time when you got on the top you couldn't see anything. Like I said about Washington, I was lucky to see the trail in front of me.
There's always leftovers that they don't pack out, plus the bunks with blankets and so forth. I don't know how lost she was. The trail can be obscure over rocky ground although there are usually cairns if it's really difficult. The problem is if you lose the trail and start to panic.
Thanks. I'm thinking you break into the cabin and you are at least completely out of the wind, and if there's a blanket or two, you can last the night curled up on the floor under a bunk or in a closet.
So sad, but that's likely exactly what happened. She missed her turn. Night fell. The wind and chill picked up. She panicked.
Once she lost the trail completely, that was the beginning of the end.
She tried to sit out the night, which, with what she was wearing, wasn't enough. I hope the "warmth" that supposedly happens just before the end happened for her.
Reminds me of Beck Weathers.
I wonder if she had the strength to stay on her feet the whole night, even off trail, and keep going in _any_ direction, no matter what (down always goes to water and water always goes to roads).
Probably too dark to see though without a light. Arduous too. But walking all day and all night for a 20 year old in shape isn't a killer in and of itself.
Do you think she would have tried to walk her way out or take shelter?
There are quite a few shelters in the Whites, Greens, and Adirondacks but the Greenleaf hut is the only one on that loop.
I took a hike one September that started out as a beautiful fall weekend. Then the front moved in with high winds. I found one of the lean-to type shelters and set my tent up on the platform. Between the two, it was more or less comfortable. Of course I had a tent, sleeping bag, food, and stove so it was no big deal.
The next day was clear so I proceeded on. The next morning I woke up and noticed the tent was smaller that usual, which is saying a lot for a one man tent. I poked my head out to find several inches of wet, heavy snow. Packed up and headed out. The snow was rapidly melting and it started drizzling. Joy. The little creek I'd skipped across on the way in was a lot more challenging on the way out.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.