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Zeta Male

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Everything posted by Zeta Male

  1. Pinging or making a routine call does not give accurate location info to the Telco. At worst it says you are 'near' some tower. A 911 call transmits the GPS info and they know where you are usually withing +/- 2 meters. Assuming you have a GPS-capable cell-phone and are within range of ANY towers.
  2. Hypothermia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia I read the Wikipedia article before I posted; it doesn't answer the question.
  3. Relatives of the climbers may not want to read this. Folks, I know the searchers are the best qualified to take care of matters and I have much confidence that they will do the best thing, but I'd really like to see some effort put into having a a helicopter fly slowly and low up and down Zig-Zag and White River Canyons looking for signs of the two missing climbers; I've seen nothing to indicate that this has been done and, as Sean's post yesterday stated and others since have pointed out, there's nothing definitive that proves the two missing climbers didn't head out south towards Timberline Lodge, which they may have then missed. Sean (one of the rescuers) said in his post yesterday that most of the footprints found in the summit area are faint and subject to interpretation. The fact that the woman quoted hasn't completed numerous fast-and-light Cascade ascents doesn't make her an idiot, and while I'm skeptical that the noted reflection was anything more than the windshield of a car headed to Timberline, I've seen and heard nothing to indicate that a thorough aerial search of the southern flanks has been attempted. This bothers me. Eight-nine-ten years ago or so the body of a missing climber was discovered in one of the noted canyons years after he'd gone missing; authorities were quoted as being very surprised at the location since all of the initial rescue and recovery efforts had focused on the N/NE side.
  4. Pinging is nothing more than a handshake btwx the cell tower and cell phone. Something like Tower: "Hello, anyone there?" Phone: "Yep, phone No. 123 reporting in" or the phone says: Any Towers out there? Tower: Yep, tower 2 right here. I take it you know you've "pinged" when you've gotten a signal -strength indication?
  5. Care to comment on how long a person can survive who starts into hypothermia and doesn't get treatment? This would be useful for all of us to know for the future.
  6. I think they wanted to leave enough rope to signal James Kelly's location but wanted to take the rest with them, so they cut it.
  7. One or both of them could still be merely unconscious or otherwise immobilized - perhaps he/they stumbled into rocks in white-out conditions.
  8. Much thanks for the tremendously informative info Sean. There were quotes in the paper yesterday that suggested that the surviving climbers' being on the S/SE/SW side was as much a possibility as anywhere else but that the search of these areas was being discontinued only because it is so vast and therefore impossible to search thoroughly with the available resources; I found this, if accurate, somewhat disturbing.
  9. It lead to the empty snow-cave - the empty one with the equipment and room for three (probably the one that was occupied first).
  10. You folks who know the mountain: do you think the possibility that the two missing climbers made it to the summit area and descended to the S/SW, only to pass Timberline Lodge in white-out conditions, has been adequately addressed by the search team? This happens to novices, and the two climbers were not familiar with Mt. Hood; who knows how capable they were with a compass in their shape. I haven't been able to see yet any pictures of the snow-caves - the links given earlier lead to pictures way too big for my laptop monitor - in context with the footprints leading up and down from them; I take it the footprints that went up don't continue on the other side of the ridge?
  11. Right back at you, 'freak - really not learning anything worthwhile from you. Go start your own thread. Otherwise I thought some of the humans might be interested in the following excerpt (the parts which which I found interesting & informative) from an article from the Dallas Morning News (the full text: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/121806dnmetclimbersfolo.346e39c.html ). About 1 p.m., rescuers dug into an abandoned snow cave near the 11,239-foot summit of Mount Hood, where they had hoped to find Mr. James. A rope had been laid out in a Y shape – a signal climbers use to identify their locations – near a sleeping bag and ice axes. Two sets of footprints tracked away from the icy dugout – one toward the mountain's peak and the other down the mountain, ending in a circular pattern, near where rescuers discovered a second snow cave and the body. The search for the two remaining climbers is to continue today. 'We remain hopeful' "We remain hopeful," said Mike Braibish, a spokesman for the Oregon National Guard. "We are going to still collect information and pursue the rescue of the two other climbers." Rescuers would not explain why they suspended the all-night flying pattern of a military plane outfitted with heat-sensing equipment Sunday. Aerial information led searchers to Sunday's discoveries. Blizzards and hurricane-force winds battered Mount Hood most of last week, and the storms knocked out power to approximately 300,000 Oregon homes. Skies above the most-climbed peak in North America cleared Saturday, allowing airborne and snow-shoed rescue crews to reach the summit. The clear weather is expected to hold through Wednesday. There has been no communication from the climbers since Dec. 10, when Mr. James used his cellphone to call his family. He told them he was sheltering in a snow cave while his companions started back down the mountain, apparently to get help for him. Mr. James told his son he did not have his bivvy sack – a waterproof covering for a sleeping bag – and had only half an orange to eat. "By the tone of his voice, I could tell something was really wrong," said 25-year-old son Jason James. Sunday, the man who introduced Mr. James to climbing more than two decades ago while they were both students at Texas Tech University watched television reports, fearful that searchers had discovered his friend's body. He suspects his friend abandoned the first snow cave and ran down the mountain until hypothermia-induced delusions clouded his judgment, which would explain the footprints in circles. 'His last chance' "He probably figured it was his last chance," said Keith Airington, a veteran climber from San Antonio. "He knows they were looking for him. At some point you know you have to do something ... or you're not going to make it." I think the plane's checked out because it wasn't useful - there was a story yesterday that it couldn't find some rescuers who buried themselves in a snow cave at night. I don't think this means in and of itself that the remaining two climbers can't be found. But it does look like Monday's the last day for organized searching, I'm sorry to say.
  12. WTF - no 105mm cannons (to take care of the avi danger)?
  13. A special place where I can call idiocy - really?!?!?!?!?!?!? I'm there! Bye for now.
  14. Why didn't you delete my smack-down of Layton? You deleted his of Shimi, I think it was. I guess I got a little uppity with Layton. He's probably not all bad.
  15. Tremendous work, Scott - thanks for being there.
  16. STFU poser! Thanks for listing your backpacking gear, i'm sure you'd be rescued well before the summit, considering your 10 essentials encumbered bag of crap. Why don't you STFU Michael Layton, you obnoxious drooling, mouth-breathing pig!!!
  17. I like your style and wisdom, ShiniGami.
  18. Excellent post, to which I would only add that no climb plan should be regarded as complete without the climbers answering the question "What are we going to do if one of us breaks our ankle?".
  19. Look, people reading in here aren't going to go back and read almost 40 pages of comments just for the privilege of making their own in here. The climbers' note just re-iterated the obvious: if an emergency arose such that coming back down Cooper Spur was what made the most sense then that's what they'd do. But if they got to a point where descending the south side in accordance with the original plan made the most sense, then you'd have to think they were fools to do otherwise. They weren't fools. They prepped pretty thoroughly for their adventure, it sounds, but things went to hell, as they quickly can up there. They're not going to descend Cooper Spur in any and every emergency situation. They had to have known that the fastest connection to civilization would be to try to reach Timberline Lodge. What, do you think that if they suffered an emergency 100' above Timberline Lodge they're then gonna head back up the mountain and down the NF just so they'd comply with what they'd written in their note? I've "climbed" more Cascade peaks than you'll ever know including the very mountain at issue and, more importantly, I've turned back there and elsewhere when conditions indicated it would be wise. I've read enough posts in here to tell that you, on the other hand, are definitely arrogant, presumptive, probably foolhardy and therefore dangerous.
  20. I'm not an expert at all, but if James had hypothermia, wouldn't it be best for all three climbers to stay together and pool their body heat, fuel, warm clothing, etc.? From what I've been reminded of while reading these posts, yup. But I suspect that James's buddies must've decided at some point that he was so bad off that his only chance to survive would be if they descended for help.
  21. According to the phone call placed by James last Tues., the other two went to get help. That's why he was left alone. We don't know yet which of the climbers was found today. Actually, James was somewhat incoherent/disoriented during his last call. The part about "get[ing] help" was how the person taking the call interpreted and reported what James said. James's specific statement was something along the lines of one his buddies having "gone into town" and the other being on a plane home. So James wasn't communicating too clearly before his call was cut off; it appears he may have been suffering from hypothermia as early as last Sunday, when he made his last call.
  22. Speaking of reading previous posts.... Their original plan was to descend the south side and meet a ride at Timberline; the climbers' no-show there on Sunday triggered the initial search.
  23. That theory would fly in the face of every other theory that says it's warmer and safer in your cave then venturing out in the cold. Are there any known cases of people leaving their cave to be found elsewhere, without an accident, and without digging a new cave? have you ever sat in a wet tent or a snowcave in freezing conditions for several days in a row? One body isn't enough warmth to keep a snowcave very warm, three maybe, but not just one. at some point it's either get moving and get your core temp up, or die in your sleep from hypothermia. Thanks for another useful point.
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