Norman_Clyde

TG, once again you're right on target, and your presence on this board elevates the discourse considerably. One more point about risk: If you look at death statistics for this country, you'll find that it's less risky to climb mountains than to build model railroads in your basement. By this I mean that the main cause of premature death in this country is heart disease, and the main cause of heart disease is laziness. I know personally of at least one person who left a family devastated for this reason: he may have taken care of their material needs, but he didn't take care of his own body. Dennis, if you think the model railroad builder who dies of a heart attack at age 43 is somehow less selfish than the climber, I'm afraid I disagree. At least the climber is living consciously, knowing the risks and keeping them in sight.

What have these lonely mountains worth revealing? More glory and more grief than I can tell: The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling Can center both the worlds of Heaven and Hell. -Emily Bronte (who died young, of tuberculosis) It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come. -William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar) And lastly I'll paraphrase William Carlos Williams, who said "poems" where I'll say "mountains": It is difficult to get the news from mountains yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

I climbed this in September 1995-- it's definitely a chore with no snow. Lots of backsliding on small basalt marbles. But exposure was minimal. By the time the ridge tops out on the summit plateau, the angle is very low-- so low that we were able to cross a large swath of hard water ice without crampons. There were no crevasses at all between N. ridge and summit. It should go fine as a solo.

Poison ivy oils (or oak, or sumac) don't cause a reaction until they've combined with proteins in your skin. If you can wash the oils off within a few hours, or before they've soaked in, you can avoid the reaction. I've heard that Fels Naphtha soap is best for this, but since it's an oil, any reasonably good soap, as well as the petroleum products mentioned above, should work. I don't know about the alcohol. Once the reaction occurs, the oil is bound to skin proteins and can't be washed off. The reason it seems to spread around your body is that as the allergic reaction intensifies, areas of lesser oil exposure also flare up. You can't spread it on yourself or to another person once the rash shows up. I've heard the Rhus Tox is helpful. A couple of other things you can do: if you're intensely allergic, you can get poison ivy extract injections to desensitize you, employing the same principle of allergy shots. If the topical applications aren't working and you're miserable, you can see the doctor and take ten days worth of Prednisone-- but you will be trading in the itchy feeling for edgy, irritable and insomniac from the steroids.

I have a question for Mr. Gauthier and the MRNP rangers. Mike, the way you're quoted in the article makes it sound like the rangers never, ever refuse to let anyone on the mountain, even if they're grossly unprepared, because this would tread on their legal rights as taxpayers on public land. Can this really be true? Would you give the go-ahead to a party carrying day packs, wearing shorts and tennies? I hope you guys have the authority to say NO to the obvious pending disasters, otherwise why take the trouble to screen every party?

Nice one, Colin, another fine day well spent. I'm wondering: the N. Face appeals to me greatly as a solo, though I try to minimize crevasse risk when I'm on my own (Of course, if you were planning to ascend the Price then the N. face wouldn't worry you much). Any thoughts on this aspect of the climb?

I believe the party of two that was "rescued" mid-May had ascended the North Ridge. They were pinned down by weather after summitting, not by technical problems with the ascent. I forget their names but I think they've posted somewhere on cc.com about it.

RedMonk, if I were sitting across a table from you instead of communicating via this silly computer, I think we would find we agree with one another much more than disagree. I agree 100 per cent with your 5/31 11:43 pm post (I'd quote it but I'm still slow on how to do that.) I think this dialogue is helpful for us all. It seems to be helping me cope with the apprehension that grips me whenever people die in the mountains. I'm happy for all of you who have the chance to be out there on this beautiful day, I'm happy I have next weekend set aside to climb, and I'm happy to be spending this weekend with my family, that we're all together and safe. (Plus, I'm close to finishing my back yard climbing wall!)

jhamaker, I think the quotation is "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." But I don't know who said it. RedMonk, ultimate self-reliance is nice in theory, but it's not how a civilized society works. Whether you desire it or not, if society at large thinks you are in danger and need rescue, rescue will come to you whether you ask for it or not-- even if that rescue shatters the image you had of your own self-reliance. I imagine that a lot of us seek out the mountains because we feel coddled and softened by the trappings of civilization. I myself don't think I can be the person I ought to be unless I frequently test my own self-reliance in real life situations, and I thank God that wilderness still exists that I can reach and explore. I honestly believe that I would be more at home at a much more primitive period of human history, way way before cell phones. But wishing doesn't make it so. If you really want to be fully accountable for your own actions, then only climb solo, and never tell anyone where you are going. Don't even tell anyone you've gone climbing-- just vanish, without a trace, for days at a time. What would happen if you tried this? For sure, this action would minimize the chance that meddlesome rescuers will come to your aid. But your family would come looking for you anyway; they would call the cops, who would scour the state for any trace of you. It's the bonds of society, not cell phones, that form a lifeline between civilization and wilderness-- and those bonds are there for your sake, like it or not.

A buddy of mine climbed Stuart over Memorial Day. He said the road is open to one mile from the end. Lots of snow in Ingalls Basin-- they had to chop away a cornice to descend at Longs Pass. No cornices at Ingalls Pass, apparently. Ingalls Lake is still completely frozen over.

How about Slesse NE face?

Self reliance comes from intelligence and good decision making. TG's report is an excellent example. How many people would have lost composure and started to act rashly in his situation, alone on the summit in a storm? The big difference in his case is that he had the experience and judgment to keep his cool and get himself out of the situation.

RedMonk, you have a point regarding self-reliance, and no one says you have to carry a cell phone when you climb-- but really, if you have the abilities and the self-reliance in the first place, whether or not you carry a cell phone should not in any way change your decisions on the mountain. I know that some climbers may put themselves at more risk than they would otherwise, because they have a false sense of security thanks to a cell phone and the presence of SAR. If so, they're making a big mistake. But whether or not a person carries a radio or phone in the end is not what determines how self-reliant he/she is: rather, that is determined by how a person conducts himself on the mountain. Even if you somehow don't burden the system with a phone call after an accident, if you turn up missing, the system will be burdened just the same, but with less chance of helping you. I myself don't always carry a cell phone, and I don't much like its presence in my pack when I do-- I prefer not to have any links to the outside world, even potential ones-- but what generally convinces me that it's worth carrying is the idea that I might come across another party in trouble, and make a call that saves somebody else.

Check with Allison and AlpineK.

Deception is usually considered a 2 day affair because of a 6 mile approach to Royal Basin, but if you move fast you could do it in one long day (no longer than for Constance or the Brothers).

It's true, I don't know for sure that he descended Liberty Ridge, and I made that conclusion based on the fact that he called from St. Elmo Pass and not Schurman. Apparently he borrowed a cell phone from other climbers. I don't know if Schurman is staffed this time of year, but I was guessing that if he came down the Winthrop he probably would have been able to call from Schurman. I do not want to start rumors or add to the speculation-- my primary point was that the infamous hazard of weather on Liberty Ridge may not have been the primary factor in this tragedy. It may be that the same thing would have happened, had their snow cave collapsed anywhere on the summit plateau.

So far I've seen a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that these climbers had come up Liberty Ridge, but in fact they were at 13,900 feet-- i.e. on Liberty Cap, probably on flat terrain-- when they had to hunker down. The route itself is not as important to what happened as the collapse of the snow cave and to their being stuck high on the mountain in a storm. I know I'm reading between the lines, but it sounds to me like they attempted to descend because they were becoming seriously hypothermic and had to get moving. Unfortunately, it sounds like they attempted to descend Liberty Ridge instead of the Winthrop/Emmons. But they may have been disoriented as to direction. It also sounds like the one survivor did descend Liberty ridge solo, while missing the hard shell from one plastic boot. A difficult task for sure.

How will the Caped Crusader escape this time??? Tune in... TOMORROW! Same bat-time, same bat-channel!

Rock-ice, that may have been you I ran into close to the Snow-Source lake saddle. I went up to look for my axe, and as I should have known, it was a hopeless task-- but a good excuse for a little jaunt on my way back from Othello, WA. I packed snowshoes all the way up, but never put them on-- I actually sank further in the high basin, where the snowed-over avalanche debris held the occasional small pitfall (but no overhead drops). It was too warm and wet for any snow route of any steepness today. I did see Chuck and Charlie heading up to the Tooth-- hope you guys had a good climb.

I think this site would benefit if everyone followed that wise motherly advice.

Michael, it sounds to me like you displayed the kind of mountaineer's wisdom that keeps you around for another try. A self-loathing individual might press on, oblivious of reality, but one who respects the mountain and him/herself will have to turn around sometimes, disappointed or not.

Is there any proposal on the table to require snow machines in the park to be 4 stroke and muffled? If so, it has not been publicized very well. A kinder, gentler snowmobile might have only about as much impact as a car, but I suspect it could still be higher impact (because I bet there are more miles of trail than miles of road within the park, allowing snowmobiles to disturb a greater overall area than cars). I agree that the hordes of summer yahoos in Yellowstone make it seem more like a glorified theme park than wilderness. But two wrongs don't make a right. I don't want winter to catch up to, or surpass, summer in terms of human impact.

Fairweather, I usually find that your opinions are well founded and your arguments well thought out, even though they are often more conservative than my own. Although I feel a visceral sense of disgust for snow machines, jet skis, and the general mentality they seem to encourage, I do feel that snowmobilers have rights equal to the rest of us. But come on, don't you think there is something relatively unique about the Yellowstone environment, which does not exist anywhere nearby-- namely, the closest approximation to the large mammal wildlife that existed pre-European Conquest-- and that there may be something about snowmobiles that dramatically disrupts the unique environment of this park, which has been so painstakingly protected? Though libertarian/Republican types do not tend to promote non-human interests (wildlife, environment, etc.) as having any intrinsic value, some of us feel that it does, and that some human impacts are more grossly destructive than others-- even if we're just talking smoke and noise. Snowmobilers have other places to go. Those of us seeking the few pathetic remnants of wilderness in the lower 48-- animals and people alike-- have fewer choices. Is it the Federal government's primary responsibility to make Yellowstone safe for snowmobilers? I agree that the economy of West Yellowstone has come to depend on snowmobiling. The agricultural economies of Virginia and North Carolina depend on tobacco, too, and they have plenty of patriotic arguments for why they're different from opium or coca growers in other countries. If snowmobiles don't belong in Yellowstone-- and I believe that they don't-- then they should be banned, and the policy making this ban official should do its best to soften the blow to West Yellowstone.

On Memorial Day I will be coming back from work in Eastern Washington, and might have just enough time to sneak up to Chair Peak Basin to look for my lost axe. Anyone been up there lately? Has any melt/freeze crust developed, or will I be postholing in my snowshoes? Any info will be much appreciated.

It was nice to meet some of you guys/girls and connect some faces to the posts. I thought the group was having everybody on when they dangled Beckey's presence at Pub Club as bait-- then whom did I see but the man himself!