The return of winter has already claimed a life on the tallest mountain within the continental United States, with the loss of life of a hiker on slippery Mt. Whitney, in accordance with the Inyo County Sheriff’s Division.
Over the weekend, the hiker fell within the infamous “99 Switchbacks” part of the principle path, mentioned Lindsey Stine, Group Outreach Coordinator for the Inyo County Sheriff’s Division. The switchbacks start simply above Path Camp at nearly 12,000 toes, the place many hikers spend the evening earlier than making an early morning begin for the 14,500-foot summit.
In the summertime, when the path is dry, the switchbacks part is an extended slog, winding forwards and backwards up two miles, and almost 2,000 vertical toes.
When it will get a giant snow, because it did earlier this month, the path turns into buried and the entire slope turns into perilously steep.
Wes Ostgaard, who mentioned he has climbed Mt. Whitney 4 instances, posted on Fb that situations on Saturday had been so treacherous he and his climbing companions determined to show round.
“Winds had been extraordinarily intense, and with the latest snowfall, the wind was blasting snow in our faces,” Ostgaard wrote. The snow lined the path and, in lots of locations, rendered it “invisible,” he wrote.
When Ostgaard and his companions had been descending the switchbacks they encountered the physique of one other hiker who had apparently fallen above a bit of metal security cables after which slid one other 70 ft, or so.
“I consider it’s extremely unlikely he survived,” Ostgaard wrote of the hiker. “There was a good quantity of blood from [colliding with] the cables, and loads of blood round a rock he made contact with.”
Ostgaard used Starlink to contact his father round 12:30 p.m., who then contacted emergency providers. A helicopter arrived about 4 hours later, Ostgaard wrote.
One other hiker that day, Kirill Novitskiy, encountered the identical situations on the switchbacks on Saturday however made the “fallacious resolution” to maintain climbing.
He made it up with simply microspikes — little steel cleats that connect to the underside of footwear and supply winter traction on flat floor — or on mild slopes the place falling could be no massive deal.
However microspikes are notoriously insufficient for winter mountaineering, when a fall may very well be deadly.
As so usually occurs within the mountains, when Novitskiy returned to the steep switchbacks after a couple of hours touring on comparatively flat floor to and from the summit, he found situations had deteriorated a lot that he was in actual hazard and severely under-equipped.
“I had a few harmful locations the place the path turned a slope filled with powdery snow, and it was very straightforward to slide off,” Novitskiy wrote on Fb. “The worst half on the best way again had been the switchbacks. Virtually all of the path was lined with powdery snow introduced up with the wind, it was very onerous to go together with simply microspikes.”
Close to the cables he noticed a pair of trekking poles with no person round, after which encountered a bunch of 5 hikers on the backside of the switchbacks who advised him in regards to the accident.
Anybody making an attempt to climb Mt. Whitney from this level on within the winter season ought to carry crampons — a lot bigger spikes that connect firmly to mountaineering boots and dig deep into snow and ice to forestall falls – and an ice axe.
Specialists additionally advise touring in teams, and bringing a satellite tv for pc communication system to contact assist if something goes fallacious.
Up to now, the Inyo Sheriff’s Division has not launched the identification of the hiker who died.
In January this yr, a hiker from Texas died after making an attempt to climb Mt. Whitney in dangerous climate. His physique was discovered at an elevation of 12,000 toes close to North Fork Lone Pine Creek Path.
In June, a 14-year-old hiker turned delirious on Mt. Whitney and fell off of a 12,000-foot cliff. He survived.
