Quote from Peter Whittaker in "Lou Whittaker: Memoirs of a Mountain Guide" (page 138, of the hardback edition) about the 1981 icefall accident by Disappointment Cleaver:
"We left early in the morning, about three o'clock, and stopped for a break as we usually do, at a place called the Ingraham Flats, a little over an hour out from Camp Muir, on the other side of a ridge called Cathedral Rocks. There, a rope team of three climbers turned back from exhaustion. Chris Lynch led them back to Muir.
One of the four climbers on my rope had wanted to turn around then, too. I had been up here on the route the day before and I knew that there was so much new snow on the mountain that we'd probably turn around soon. We were more concerned about the danger of soft-snow avalanche than we were about an icefall. So I told him, "The chances of our going any higher than Disappointment Cleaver are real slim. Why don't you stay with us? It'll be a beautiful sunrise and a great experience for you." He agreed. He's one of the eleven still up there, buried in the glacier. It took me a long time to get a handle on that. I felt like I had talked someone into making the wrong decision.
After the others headed back to Camp Muir, that left five guides and twenty clients. Since we knew we wouldn't be making a summit attempt, the guides made a joint decision to go far enough to check out Disappointment Cleaver...."
I've never seen anyone question RMI's policy of always leaving Camp Muir even when they know they aren't going to the summit. A seldom mentioned tidbit is that they do so in order to retain all of the clients money. If they didn't, then they would have to consider allowing the client to reschedule or a partial refund (for when they don't even make Muir). Those who have observed RMI parties would probably question whether the departure of 3am referred to in the previous passage would be normal if they actually were planning to reach the summit too (it is usually earlier). Instead, it would appear that they were utilizing the fact that they were there (paid for by the clients that they were not intending to take to the summit) to scout out the conditions for a subsequent attempt with a different group.
I met someone that signed up for a climb one autumn, not knowing any better. The guides got him up to the top of the cleaver and said something like "Gee, if it was just my buddies with experience we would go, but all you folks are don't have much experience to deal with these icy conditions". So they turned around. The client later found out that RMI hadn't been summiting with their groups for more than a week prior to his trip. They never mentioned that in advance though.
[ 02-25-2002: Message edited by: mtnnut ]
